January 21, 2019

How US Government Shutdown Affects Bitcoin [BTC] ETF Approval

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is due to make a decision on the Vaneck Solidx bitcoin ETF next month, and the deadline cannot be extended further. However, since the U.S. government is currently shut down, a securities lawyer explains what is likely to happen to the ETF, including the likelihood of an automatic approval.

Also read: Indian Supreme Court Moves Crypto Hearing, Community Calls for Positive Regulations

ETF Could Be Automatically Approved

Jake Chervinsky, a lawyer who focuses on litigation involving securities, commodities, futures and other derivatives, explained in a series of tweets on Friday how the current U.S. government shutdown could affect the upcoming decision on the Vaneck Solidx bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).

The commission has designated a date by which it shall either approve or disapprove the proposed rule change filed by Cboe BZX Exchange to list and trade shares of Vaneck Solidx bitcoin [BTC] Trust. The “final deadline to approve or deny the ETF is February 27. That’s 240 days after the ETF proposal was first published in the Federal Register,” Chervinsky tweeted, emphasizing:

The SEC doesn’t have the power to extend the 240-day deadline. The statute absolutely prohibits any further delays … By law, that means if the SEC fails to make a decision by the February 27 deadline, the ETF will be automatically approved.

However, he proceeded to explain why it is “*extremely* unlikely” that the bitcoin ETF will be automatically approved.

SEC Not Totally Shut Down

While many U.S. government departments have completely shut down due to political deadlock between President Trump and Congress over the southern border wall, the SEC posted a notice on its website stating that “Effective Thursday, Dec. 27 and until further notice, the agency will have a very limited number of staff members available.” The commission added that they will “respond to emergency situations involving market integrity and investor protection, including law enforcement.”

The SEC has posted its operational plan during a shutdown on its website. The document explains that the agency will discontinue “review and approval of applications for registration . . . with respect to new financial products,” which include bitcoin ETFs, Chervinsky clarified.

He believes that the commission views “preventing controversial financial products like bitcoin ETFs from being auto-approved due to blown deadlines” as one of the “activities necessary for a short period in order to ensure an orderly shutdown of operations,” elaborating:

In fact, the SEC has *already* taken action during the shutdown to avoid missing deadlines on other proposed rule changes … the SEC has a skeleton crew handling proposed rule changes during the shutdown.

Therefore, if the government shutdown continues until Feb. 27, “that same crew should be around to issue an order approving or denying the ETF,” the lawyer wrote.

Chance of Approval

While acknowledging that there is still a chance the SEC could approve the bitcoin ETF, Chervinsky believes that if the shutdown continues past the deadline then the chance “is near zero.” He further asserted that even if the ETF is automatically approved:

It isn’t likely to stay in effect for long. Automatic approval isn’t a lifetime guarantee & can be undone easily. When the shutdown ends, the SEC can just force the ETF to be delisted.

The lawyer also commented on Bakkt’s pending approval by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). “Unlike the SEC, the CFTC has no statutory deadline for making a decision on Bakkt,” he clarified. “So it can delay as long as it wants. Don’t expect anything on Bakkt until after the shutdown (maybe months after).”

What do you think will happen to the Vaneck Solidx bitcoin ETF? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.

The post How US Government Shutdown Affects Bitcoin [BTC] ETF Approval appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Bitcoin.com is author of this content, TheBitcoinNews.com is is not responsible for the content of external sites.

source: https://news.bitcoin.com/us-government-shutdown-bitcoin-etf-approval/

Published at Mon, 21 Jan 2019 06:25:06 +0000

You might be interested in …

July 28, 2026

Understanding Bitcoin Forks: When Blockchains Diverge

Understanding the Technical foundations of bitcoin Forks At the core of⁣ bitcoin‍ forks lies the decentralized nature of ⁣its ‍blockchain ‍protocol, which ‍allows self-reliant nodes to validate and record transactions. A fork⁤ emerges when the […]

March 24, 2017

Why The Bitcoin Miners Are Destined To Lose The Hard Fork Wars

Excuse me for indulging myself, but there are many points of view towards what may be an impending hard fork for bitcoin. This may come across as a loosely coherent ramble, but at least it is short and sweet. There is enough here to put it on wax, so here’s what I see, in the big picture.

This is in response to the Medium post created by Peter Rizun yesterday, outlining how this hard fork may play out, and essentially showing a way BTU wins, in the long run. (Roger Ver tweeted his support for this post, so I read it and posted most of these thoughts in the comments section, and here we are.)

“Today approximately 40% of the network hash power is signaling that they wish to begin producing larger blocks.” https://t.co/sNuxOWP5wL

— Roger Ver (@rogerkver) March 24, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

In my humble opinion, the problem I see coming is if BCU breaks off, it will become an altcoin, as has been established by the bitcoin exchange establishment. These miners can mine all the blocks they want, if the greater community doesn’t trust their developers, doesn’t want an altcoin, and isn’t buying BCU, it is irrelevant by design.

The market will decide who wins, and anybody who is not a miner wants to stick with Core and their chain. The miners are one thing, the market is something else. The miners might win a battle, but they would lose that war. They should keep that in mind.

Without those miners, BTC would definitely take a hit, but the Core developers could then quickly move to a 2MB upgrade and get SegWit and The Lightning Network approved, creating greater bitcoin functionality, from a trusted group of developers, and an incredible upside in off-chain scalability that an on-chain approach would be hard pressed to match. All without the centralization and control of the miners.

Users will follow anyone who is going to implement SegWit. The market is sold on this concept as a boon to bitcoin functionality. BTU has not done a very good sales job at all regarding their position. Scaling away from miners will hurt mining, but it will let bitcoin reach its full potential.

BTU needs to sell their mined Bitcoins to a market. I’m not seeing much of a market for BTU, outside of the miners and BTU investors, themselves. The miners do not control bitcoin, and even Core does not control bitcoin. Maybe, just maybe, The People control bitcoin’s future growth? Anyone who thinks the market doesn’t have a handle on who each side is looking out for here is fooling themselves.

Just seeing how the community is responding, keeping my ear to the ground, the greater community will not follow the miners, who are primarily looking to turn a digital buck in bitcoin. They will follow Core, who is looking after the greater good. Miners will lose that tug of war.

It has become clear that BTU developers cannot replace BTC developers, as the recent bugs have shown the world, but BTC miners can be replaced. There are plenty of people around the world who want that job, and can do it just as well.

This power struggle is really temporary in nature. People will not follow miners looking for profit first, and who want to hijack the entire system, from now on, in order to get it. That is not leadership.

At the end of the day, The People will decide to back Core. The only question is when will the dissenting miners, clouded by visions of endless bitcoin profiteering, figure this fact out?

If the miners didn’t get the memo, that the vast majority of the market will stick with Core and not dump BTC for any BTU altcoin, use this. Like bitcoin itself, it’s far from perfect, but it’ll do just fine.

How do you think a hard fork would play out? Should there be an increase in block size? Let us know what you think below!

Images courtesy of bitcoin Core, AdobeStock

The post Why The Bitcoin Miners Are Destined To Lose The Hard Fork Wars appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.

June 10, 2018

Bitcoin ETF Coming Soon: Crypto Fund Manager

bitcoin ETF Coming Soon: Crypto Fund Manager Advertisement Get exclusive fiat and cryptocurrency analysis on Hacked.com for just $39 per month. Click here now! John Hyland, the global head of exchange-traded products for Bitwise Asset […]