Grayscale has amended its spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) application submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) once more.
However, the amended filing that the crypto asset manager has submitted has an important part missing from it.
In the latest amendment, there is no mention of the authorized participant that Grayscale will partner with for its spot Bitcoin ETF.
APs
The authorized participant is the firm that is responsible for creating and redeeming shares of an ETF in order to help investors cash out.
Usually, the SEC does not put a lot of pressure on ETF issuers, which are related to traditional assets, to explicitly mention authorized participants when they are submitting their applications for approval.
However, it has been deemed an important step for those companies that are trying to launch a Bitcoin ETF.
According to experts, this is probably the last step of the ETF application process, a product that is long-awaited after different amendments and reviews because the SEC did not wish to approve it.
Last week, companies like Valkyrie and BlackRock also revealed the companies they would be partnering with as authorized participants.
Valkyrie named Cantor Fitzgerald and Jane Street as their APs, while BlackRock opted for Jane Street and JPMorgan Securities.
The fees
Not only did Grayscale not mention its authorized participants, but it also did not specify the fees that would be associated with its ETF, something other applicants have already done.
The lowest fee that has been announced is by Fidelity, which has proposed fees of just 0.39%. BlackRock is planning on charging 0.49%.
Meanwhile, Galaxy and Invesco revealed that no fee would be charged for the first six months and then they would charge 0.59%.
Grayscale
However, it should be noted that Grayscale’s application is different from the others because it wants to convert its existing Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a spot Bitcoin ETF.
The asset manager has been engaged in a long battle with the SEC in the courts over this matter. The difference between GBTC and a Bitcoin ETF would be that investors would be able to redeem their shares.
Initially, GBTC had only been available to accredited investors i.e. those who fulfill certain income requirements, but a Bitcoin ETF can be traded open similar to stocks.
Grayscale’s application of converting the fund had initially been turned down by the SEC, citing the risk of market manipulation, which it had used for other applications as well.
This prompted Grayscale to file a lawsuit against the regulatory agency and a federal appeals court ruled in August that the rejection by the SEC was ‘capricious and arbitrary’.
This means that the SEC now has to review Grayscale’s application, along with that of everyone else. There are many prestigious firms that have submitted their applications for a Bitcoin ETF.
It is possible that the top regulator could still turn down applications, but analysts have predicted that the SEC is likely to approve at least one application in January.