The US SEC and Fidelity convened to talk about Fidelity’s Wise Bitcoin Origin Trust application, going over product operational functionality and diagrams. Fidelity and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently met to discuss Fidelity’s application for an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that would allow it to trade Bitcoin on the spot.
In a meeting, six SEC employees, nine Fidelity employees, and two representatives of the Cboe BZX Exchange went over the operations of the Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust, according to a document released on December 7.
“The discussion concerned Cboe BZX’s proposed rule change to list and trade shares of the Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust under Cboe BZX Rule 14.11(e)(4). Fidelity also provided the attached presentation.”
The filing included PowerPoint presentations that were used in the meeting to show how the Bitcoin ETF operates. The filing suggested the most successful course of action to the US regulator, stating that “arbitrage and hedge are more efficient with physical creations”:
“Allowing for physical creation and redemption is critical to enhance trading efficiency and secondary market pricing for all participants.”
On June 19, Fidelity filed an application with the SEC for a spot Bitcoin ETF, just days after BlackRock and a number of other asset managers had done the same.
Nonetheless, Fidelity’s application for a spot Bitcoin ETF in 2022 was previously denied by the SEC. This follows reports that the SEC is holding meetings with prospective Bitcoin ETF applicants to go over different application-related topics.
According to insider information there were recent talks about “important technical details” pertaining to U.S. exchanges listing shares of a spot Bitcoin ETF.
On the other hand, documents made public by the SEC in November revealed that the Commission had separate meetings with representatives of Grayscale and BlackRock. The approval date of a spot Bitcoin ETF has been the subject of much conjecture in the recent past. Among the 13 asset managers who applied, Hashdex predicts the first U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF will launch in the second quarter of 2024.
Dramane Meite, head of product for Hashdex in the United States and Europe, stated, “The precise timing of a spot Bitcoin ETF in the U.S. remains unclear, but in 2023, the narrative around this product switched from a question of ‘if’ to a matter of ‘when.” Meanwhile, analysts covering exchange-traded funds for Bloomberg, Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart, are still optimistic that all spot Bitcoin ETFs will be approved simultaneously on January 10. This corresponds with the deadline set by the SEC to accept or reject ARK Invest’s app