grayscale, The world’s largest institutional crypto fund manager has launched a campaign to pressure US regulators to convert its BTC trust into a spot-based exchange-traded fund.
Grayscale has launched a public campaign with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to encourage investors to add comments to their applications. The world’s largest digital asset manager is seeking approval to convert its popular BTC fund into a spot-based ETF, but the financial regulator is still delaying.
Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshine on February 22 tweeted It is reported that the semi-online petition had gone live.
“Today Grayscale announced the launch of a new public campaign to encourage US investors to submit comments on our application with the SEC to convert $GBTC into a spot bitcoin ETF.”
Putting pressure on the SEC
The campaign aims to garner enough support from US institutional investors and finance professionals so that the SEC can finally take notice and approve spot-based crypto funds.
So far, the fanatical regulator has only approved a small number of bitcoin funds that are backed by futures contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), and not physical assets.
Sonenshin explained that there is a standard 240-day review period during which the public is invited to submit comments to the SEC for consideration as part of the application process.
“The purpose of this campaign is to educate and inspire the investment community to take action and raise their voices on this historic decision.”
A landing page has been created on the Grayscale website to instruct investors and executives on how to submit their comments to the SEC. It suggested that interested parties email the SEC with their reasons why the regulator should approve the conversion. Nate Gerasi, president of ETFstore, commented:
“The SEC is about to be inundated w/ public comments in support of GBTC conversion to ETFs… Grayscale has set up a webpage to facilitate the process. Sure, it’s lovely.”
Comments are on the rise
As reported by BeInCrypto over the weekend, comments were already pouring in and nearly 200 responses were recorded at the time. Grayscale has now made it official, encouraging that list to grow.
One of the recent comments on the official SEC application page clearly stated:
“The SEC’s job is to protect investors. The statute of limitations is not achieving this goal. Grayscale Bitcoin Trust as it currently stands, its conversion into a spot ETF is a inferior investment vehicle compared to the one it was supposed to be. The futures ETFs that were approved are more risky for investors and show double standards by the administration.
Grayscale originally proposed converting the world’s largest BTC fund to a spot ETF in October, however, the SEC delayed the decision as it did on February 4th, along with several others.