GetBlock Magazine - What Happened? Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenschein said the investment firm will focus on converting its Ethereum trust — the world's largest — into spot exchange-traded products. Grayscale previously withdrew its application to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch an ETH-based futures exchange-traded fund (ETF), which had been pending since October last year.
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What else is known? Sonnenschein explained the withdrawal of the application by the fact that a number of futures products are already available to investors. VanEck's EFUT and ProShares' EETH futures ETFs currently available on the market account for more than 90% of trading volume.
Grayscale previously paved the way for the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs by winning a lawsuit against the SEC, in which the regulator's refusal to allow such products to market was found to be unfounded. This allowed the company to convert its GBTC Bitcoin trust into a spot fund. Along with it, 10 more new funds from various investment companies, including BlackRock and Fidelity, were admitted to the market on January 11.
Following the incredible success of these funds, which total net inflows of $11.77 billion at the time of writing, companies have switched to creating similar products based on the largest altcoin.
Thus, Grayscale filed an application to convert its Ethereum trust into a spot ETF. Applications to launch new ETFs were submitted by BlackRock, VanEck, ARK Invest, Fidelity, Invesco and Hashdex. The SEC has repeatedly postponed the deadline for a final decision on these products, with the next key date being May 23. However, according to media reports, the regulator is inclined to reject the applications.
Grayscale previously announced the launch of Bitcoin Mini Trust, an additional version of the already functioning GBTC Bitcoin spot fund. Its commission will be only 0.15%, which is much lower than its competitors. Management fees for the main GBTC are 1.5%, the highest fees in the US crypto ETF sector, which could be one of the reasons for the continued outflow of funds from the fund.
