The giant Grayscale has dropped its plans for an Ethereum Futures ETF after it received a warning from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), while Bitwise also made a similar decision and shelved all plans for Ethereum ETFs.
Remarkably, Grayscale’s decision comes within a week of announcing the eventual launch of the ETF.
Response from Grayscale
It seems that the SEC is also increasingly making itself heard in this area. Earlier, Grayscale also received a statement from the SEC that they believe that Filecoin qualifies as a security for US financial legislation. In fact, that means that they see Filecoin as a kind of share.
For that reason, Grayscale’s Filecoin Trust qualifies as a investment company and should have registered with the SEC in a specific way and then communicated that to its investors.
Grayscale has not done so, but the company therefore believes that Filecoin does not qualify as a security for US financial law.
The big question now is whether canceling the Ethereum Futures ETF means that Grayscale has been told by the SEC that they believe Ether also qualifies as a security. That could potentially spell disaster for the industry.
Bitwise is scrapping the launch altogether
Those potential concerns about Ethereum are mounting as Bitwise completely scrapped the launch of an Ethereum ETF. Would the SEC really have gone to these parties to report that they see Ethereum as a security for US law?
Bitwise has so far not announced to the outside world what exactly happened, except that the Ethereum ETF will no longer be there. So should we really be concerned?
If Ethereum qualifies as a security in the United States, that would mean all centralized exchange platforms would have to remove the assets for their US clients. That would practically mean the end of Ethereum, at least when you look at the price value and adoption of the asset.