VanEck, 21Shares, and Canary Capital requested on June 5 that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reinstate the queue-based reappraisal strategy that awards exchange-traded merchandise approvals successful the bid issuers filed.
In a associated missive to Chair Paul Atkins, the firms said concurrent approvals portion aboriginal filers of the vantage that traditionally offsets higher ineligible and compliance costs.
In the letter, VanEck main enforcement Jan van Eck, Canary’s Steve McClurg, and 21Shares president Duncan Moir asked the SEC to use the filing-date rule to pending products, including immoderate aboriginal Solana exchange-traded funds (ETFs) submissions.
The missive besides calls connected the regulator to “nurture a competitory fiscal marketplace” by restoring predictable timelines.
Stalled first-mover advantage
The missive argued that departures from the queue began successful October 2021, erstwhile the ProShares Bitcoin Futures Fund received a three-day caput commencement and secured much than 90% of the marketplace share.
Early filers for spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs aboriginal saw their applications cleared connected Jan. 10, 2024, the aforesaid time larger plus managers that filed months oregon years aboriginal received greenish lights.
The firms contend that specified timing favors issuers with deeper organisation networks, encourages copycat filings, and concentrates assets nether bigger brands.
The authors said the signifier harms marketplace integrity by weakening incentives for archetypal probe and discouraging smaller sponsors from taking aboriginal risks.
They besides noted that honoring filing dates would not adhd worldly strain connected SEC unit due to the fact that registration statements already get successful series and tin clasp their archetypal clip gaps done the reappraisal cycle.
Calls echo anterior nationalist remarks
VanEck integer assets probe main Matt Sigel has repeated the queue statement since 2024. On May 23, 2024, Sigel warned that deviations undercut the Administrative Procedure Act’s transparency modular and unit aboriginal filers to enarthrosis prolonged update expenses.
He added that refusing to travel this modular “creates an uneven playing tract for issuers who filed earlier and had to hold longer.”
On January 22, Sigel urged the regulator’s caller enactment to “respect the line” aft the bureau formed its Crypto Task Force.
Canary Capital main enforcement Steve McClurg previewed the coordinated push during a late-May panel astatine the Litecoin Summit successful Las Vegas, telling attendees that respective issuers planned a ceremonial entreaty for a instrumentality to the queue.
Bloomberg ETF expert James Seyffart besides commented connected the letter, stating that the first-to-file attack was modular signifier until the 2024 launches of the spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs.
The station Stalling first-mover advantage: VanEck, 21Shares, Canary property SEC to reconstruct first-to-file ETF reappraisal order appeared archetypal connected CryptoSlate.