On Wednesday, January 23rd, the SEC published a notice stating that the CBOE BZX Exchange had decided to pull their proposed rule change. This would allow it to list shares of the VanEck & SolidX Bitcoin Trust ETF.
This ETF proposal was originally filed in June 2018 and was in the last approve/deny stage with the SEC. The SEC had to make a decision by February 27th to either approve or deny the ETF.
There is no clear answer as to why they decided to withdraw their proposal, but some lawyers speculate that the U.S. government shutdown has played a big role in the decision. It is as if they are trying to prevent a full rejection due to lack of staffing because of the shutdown.
All is not lost though, as VanEck CEO, Jan van Eck told CNBC that the proposal will be submitted at a later date.
“We were engaged in discussions with the SEC about the bitcoin-related issues, custody, market manipulation, prices, and that had to stop. And so, instead of trying to slip through or something, we just had the application pulled and we will re-file when the SEC gets going again.” – Jan van Eck
