This Thursday, the 23rd of August 2018 marks the next Bitcoin Exchange Traded Futures (ETF) application decision deadline for the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This is one of many applications currently in place with the SEC, leaving many to wonder what will happen on Thursday, come the SEC announcement.
Let’s recap on the last two pieces of ETF news. Firstly, the rejection of the Winklevoss ETF – this caused the markets to crash. Then, the next ETF decision deadline for the CBOE ETF was extended till the end of September, causing the markets to crash once again.
Should we expect to see the markets crash on Thursday in like with this one then? Probably not.
What is this ETF?
This application has been made under The Proshares ETF. The initial application came in December though since then Proshares have made some changes to the applications. According to Ethereum World News:
“The ProShares ETF proposals were initially submitted to the SEC last December. According to the original filings, the ETF’s value will be determined by the Bitcoin futures contracts trading on the CME or the CBOE Futures exchange. ProShares had initially proposed the futures-based ETFs in September of last year, only to wait until Bitcoin futures contracts started being offered in December. Once they were filed on the 19th of December at the SEC, ProShares would go on to ask the SEC to withdraw the proposed rule change which outlined the pair of ETFs. At the end of January, the SEC would later announced that it was considering these ETFs. Their verdict is what we are waiting for on Thursday.”
See more for yourself, here.
This is why the Proshares ETF is unlikely to shake the markets up, simply because the value of the ETF will only be determined by the more significant ETF decisions lying in waiting, namely the ETF by CME and CBOE.
This is all so confusing
It’s frustrating isn’t it. In my opinion, the SEC have let this get out of hand a little, either that, or the media are making too much of a fuss around it. What we should do is just sit and wait for the SEC. Don’t panic about the markets moving too much (they are down now and probably won’t stoop much further) therefore we should just concentrate on what could happen in the future instead.
Let’s get September behind us, after this, we’ll know the true extent of the ETF dramas and for now, if we don’t let them bother us, they shouldn’t bother the markets too much either.