Image credit: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg

Disclaimer: This story was originally published on May 23, 2024.

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Spot Ether exchange-traded funds in the United States have materialized following the decision by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to approve several filed ETH exchange-traded products.

The SEC has granted accelerated approval for proposed rule changes to list and eventually trade shares of various Ether-based ETFs, including the 19b-4 filings from BlackRock, Fidelity, VanEck, Grayscale, Franklin Templeton, ARK 21Shares, Invesco Galaxy, and Bitwise, on their respective exchanges, a May 23 filing shows.

However, trading of the spot ETH ETFs hasn’t officially begun yet. Besides the cleared 19b-4 filings, the SEC would need to give its blessing to the ETP issuers’ respective S-1 registration statements.

Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart said on X that this process, in some examples, usually takes “up to five months.” Yet, he believes approval of the S-1 documents “will be at least somewhat accelerated.”

The journey leading up to the eventual approval of the Ether ETF was filled with a mix of optimism and doubt. Recently, on May 20, Bloomberg’s Seyffart and Eric Balchunas suggested a 75% chance of a positive outcome. However, regulators caused a major upheaval when the SEC reportedly asked applicants to update their 19b-4 filings ahead of the May 23 deadline. A notable amendment across all filings was the removal of staking.

The latest milestone for the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization comes more than four months after the SEC approved several spot Bitcoin ETF applications, which marked an industry first.

The price of ETH soared to over $3,900 immediately after the SEC order but then fell to more than $3,700 at press time.

Elsewhere, the US House passed FIT21, legislation establishing a clearer definition of the SEC’s and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s oversight over the digital asset industry.