Approval for spot bitcoin ETFs hinges on a court battle between crypto firm Grayscale and the SEC. Yahoo Finance Markets Reporter Jared Blikre checks out bitcoin’s price action amid regulatory pressures.
Video Transcript
– Well, amid the surge in tech stocks, small caps, and government bonds, one asset class isn’t participating in the latest run up. Bitcoin has held a tight trading range over the last three weeks as the industry braces for a critical decision in federal court, where Grayscale Investments, the manager of the world’s largest publicly traded crypto fund is suing the SEC to allow a spot Bitcoin ETF to operate in the US market.
Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre is here with those details. Hey, Jared.
JARED BLIKRE: Hey, there. And I thought before I got into the court case, I just begin with a year to date look at what’s happening in cryptocurrency land. Bitcoin, up 85%. But as you said, Rachelle, we haven’t seen a lot of that price action made recently. This is a– let’s see, let’s get a year to date chart on there. And you can see over the last three weeks, basically treading water going sideways.
However, given the fact that we are in the upper right hand side of this chart, this consolidation is actually bullish. And when you see what’s overhead, let me put a three-year chart, the most price action in Bitcoin is lying directly ahead. And that’s basically 30,000 to 40,000, goes up to maybe 50,000. But a ton of price memory in there. So not surprising to see Bitcoin at least taking a pause, and it could still reverse.
But back to the main point. This court case that we were talking about, Grayscale versus the SEC, they want to sue the SEC in order to allow them to convert into an ETF. They are currently an ETN, it gets into the weeds there. But they want to be able to be based their reference price on spot Bitcoin.
And we saw in anticipation of a decision of that in this case, we saw BlackRock file for a Bitcoin ETF, a spot Bitcoin ETF only a few weeks ago. Then a bunch of other issuers piled on. Fidelity did as well, and they just issued a note, they just filed an amendment only today or yesterday with regard to their previous amendments. So things are moving along there. But is it going to be approved? Is the spot Bitcoin ETF going to be approved on its own merits or is it going to be forced and shoehorned in because of this court case? We don’t know.
But nevertheless, Bitcoin poised– poised, I should, say to break higher. But as we know in crypto, anything can happen.
– It’s true, we’re always waiting for that breakout moment here, still waiting for it. But thank you for getting us up to speed, our very own Jared Blikre there.
