A judge has ordered that the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) denial of Grayscale’s spot Bitcoin ETF application be reviewed, according to an opinion issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Tuesday.
The decision represents a landmark moment for crypto. The SEC has denied several applications for spot Bitcoin ETFs, which allow investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin without holding the coin, for a decade while citing market manipulation concerns.
Seen within crypto circles as a potential gateway to mainstream institutional adoption, a spot Bitcoin ETF would enable investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin through a traditional stock exchange and effectively hold the coin in a brokerage account.
After the court’s decision was released, Bitcoin rallied 5% to $27,300 in under an hour, according to CoinGecko.
The SEC and Grayscale have 45 days to appeal Tuesday’s court decision. If that happens, the case could either be sent to the U.S. Supreme Court or be subject to an en banc panel review, where all of the court’s judges would weigh in during a rehearing.
According to the Yale Journal of Regulation, which refers to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit as America’s “second most important court,” en banc reviews are rare. A majority of the court’s judges would need to approve an en banc review.
Grayscale took the SEC to court last June. The firm’s lawsuit followed a rejection from the SEC to convert its flagship Bitcoin fund, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, into a spot Bitcoin ETF.
GBTC has $16.2 billion in assets under management, according to Grayscale’s website. Relative to its Bitcoin holdings, shares in the trust trade at a discount because of the offering’s structure.
Bitcoin futures ETFs have been welcomed on Wall Street by the SEC since ProShares’ Bitcoin futures ETF launched on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021. Bitcoin futures ETFs give investors exposure to contracts that trade on CFTC-regulated exchanges, such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME).
