Q3 2023 may bring court decision to swap GBTC into Bitcoin spot ETF: Report

Grayscale’s CEO confirmed that the third quarter of this year will bring clarity on whether Grayscale will swap GBTC into a Bitcoin spot ETF product or not. 

Grayscale Investments is an American cryptocurrency management company, a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group (DCG). This company was founded in 2013. This company provides investment in crypto assets via its native funds e.g. Bitcoin Trust, Bitcoin Cash Trust, Ethereum Trust, etc. Since Q4 2021, Grayscale has wanted to convert its Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a Bitcoin spot ETF but faced rejection from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 

On 26 April 2023, During CoinDesk’s Consensus 2023 conference, Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein talked about the Grayscale vs SEC case and said that there are huge chances that Q3 2023 will bring the outcome in this case & that will decide whether Grayscale will convert its GBTC into Exchange-traded fund or not. 

“Grayscale expects to learn by the end of the third quarter whether it will be allowed to turn its $17.5 billion Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into an exchange-traded fund,” Grayscale CEO said.

In the latest speech, Grayscale’s CEO failed to claim that the court will rule in favour of Grayscale but confirmed that the company is eagerly waiting to get them out of this case. 

Risk ahead Grayscale vs SEC case

In June 2022, Grayscale sued the SEC agency over the rejection of its Bitcoin spot ETFs application.

Grayscale noted that the SEC agency approved many Bitcoin futures ETF products in between 2021 and 2022 but rejected all the Bitcoin spot ETF applications. Grayscale alleged that the SEC violated laws by not approving Bitcoin spot ETFs because Bitcoin spot ETFs are safer than Bitcoin futures ETFs. 

Experts believe that if Grayscale will lose the case against the SEC body then there are chances that the SEC body will shut down all the running Bitcoin futures ETFs products because this lawsuit is totally based upon the risk factors associated with bitcoin ETFs. 

Read also: Ripple welcomes crypto & blockchain dev to build protocol on XRPL