On April 1, Cathie Wood's ARK Invest became the latest applicant to get denied by the SEC for a Bitcoin spot ETF. The ETF would have traded on the Cboe in partnership with 21Shares and Coinbase, and the parties first submitted their application last June—so it took nearly a year to get a response, and the response was a No.
What will ARK do next?
"We will reapply," said Wood on stage at the FTX/SALT Crypto Bahamas conference on Wednesday.
Wood continued: "I find it fascinating they have approved the Bitcoin futures, and not the underlying. It just doesn't make sense to me, especially considering the fees associated with that kind of ETF."
Indeed, in October the SEC finally approved the first Bitcoin ETF (exchange-traded fund) from ProShares, but it's a product pegged to Bitcoin futures contracts rather than the current price of Bitcoin. An ETF bundles securities and commodities like stocks that can be bought and sold on the open market; many in the crypto industry think a Bitcoin "spot" ETF would bring in a flood of retail investors who are looking to get exposure to crypto, but are too intimidated to buy it themselves from a crypto exchange.