February 15, 2022
Current SEC policy regarding spot BTC or ETH ETFs is non-sensical and damaging to the retail consumer. A recently approved futures based approach, BITO, was loathed by crypto community as it virtually guaranteed losses of 10% per year through contango. However, Hedge Funds and Wall Street could pick Main Street's pocket for about 1% a month by buying spot and shorting futures. And by the way, the USO oil ETF based on futures has to be one of the worst products ever invented. That is not protection, that is outright rape.
The SEC claims to be about small investor protection, but they are only protecting the interests of Wall Street and their guaranteed arbitrage profits. Wall Street is so woefully far behind in offering legitimate crypto products it is apparent that the SEC is doing its best to handicap the entire crypto industry as much as possible for as long as possible in order for their overlords to develop a coherent strategy.
Most likely this is because Wall Street will make very little from an ETF. However SPACs, a stripped down version of disclosure, were a gold mine for Wall St. but a disaster for Main St. 248 SPACs came in 2020. 613 came in 2021. Very few of them were profitable for investors, and some were outright fraud that the SEC has yet to address.
The SEC can not say in 2022 that BTC or ETH is a manipulated market. The average daily volume is on par with DIS, JPM, or XOM. No rational person would argue that.
Canada and now today Europe has a spot BTC ETF/ETP offering. I can only come to the conclusion the SEC wants to deny US investors an inflationary life raft and cripple their access to new and innovative technology.
The time to approve a spot BTC ETF is NOW