Hester Peirce urges the SEC to stop delaying approval of ETFs and to treat spot Bitcoin ETPs with the same standards as it did the futures-based ETPs so let’s read more today In our latest cryptocurrency news.

The SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce urges the SEC to stop delaying the decisions of crypto ETFs, slamming the watchdog for failing to greenlight the spot BTC ETFs. She said the organization should provide more guidelines and regulatory clearance for the funds and exchanges that want to launch such products. In her latest speech that can be seen on the SEC website, she urged the Commission to stop denying spot crypto exchange-traded products and argued that in the past 13 years, BTC grew into a mature asset that attracts investors from a wider range of backgrounds. With the adoption rate growing, and ETPs getting approved in Canada, the Commission should follow along.

She said that all approved futures-based ETPS fell under the 1940s act but in April this year, the Commission approved the first non-1940 act ETP holding BTC futures for listing. The “Crypto mom” believes the SEC displayed double standards as it had approved a BTC futures-based ETF in 2021 and still impeding the listing of ETFs in the country. Regarding the SEC’s concern about market manipulation and fraud, Peirce added that the futures and spot ETFs are two similar products so if one is approved, the other should be as well:

“The reasoning underlying the Commission’s denials of spot bitcoin ETPs is itself general and conclusory, which makes it difficult to know how approval could be achieved.”

Peirce refuted that a spot BTC ETP will exposure retail investors to a risky asset since she thinks that they could gain exposure to BTC via other means regardless so instead of posing more barriers for funds to launch these products, she said the authority should see it as a complementary product for the growing demand of crypto:

“This kind of product, depending on how it is designed, could enable retail investors to gain exposure to bitcoin through a securities product that, because of the effective ETF arbitrage mechanisms, likely would track the price of spot bitcoin closely. It likely would be inexpensive to manage such a fund, so fees likely could be low.”

She also criticized the watchdog for trying to cobble up with the regulatory framework citing the recent $100M Blockfi settlement.