Standard Chartered expert says the SEC will approve Ethereum spot ETF by May 2024

Geoffrey Kendrick said that the American securities regulatory body will follow the same approach for Ethereum spot ETF, as was done in the case of Bitcoin.

As we know, 20 days ago the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved 11 Bitcoin spot ETF products, following a dedicated meeting with 5 SEC commissioners. There are also some Ethereum spot ETF applications in the queue on the SEC’s table & waiting to get the green signal. In the last few weeks, the majority of the ETF experts predicted that there is only a 50% chance that the SEC will approve.

In the latest, Geoffrey Kendrick, the head of Standard Chartered Bank’s forex and digital assets research, also shared his opinion on these applications via a report on Tuesday.

Kndrick, said that he expects that the SEC body will green signal Ethereum spot ETFs before 23 May 2024 and also predicted that the trade price of Ethereum will be $4,000 if his prediction is accurate.

Kendrick is optimistic about the SEC’s future decision on Ethereum because so far the SEC body never considered Ethereum as a security token in any of the legal actions against crypto companies.

Furthermore, he also dragged attention toward Grayscale Ethereum Trust and said that Grayscale also waiting to get approval to convert its ETF trust into an ETF product and if the Securities regulatory will reject then Grayscale will appeal, just like in the case of Bitcoin spot ETF where the court judge ruled the SEC to review & approve Grayscale’s application.

Standard Chartered executive Kendrick expects the SEC to approve a spot Ethereum ETF on May 23, saying that if ETH mimics BTC’s pre-approval performance, it could potentially target $4,000. The main reason is that the SEC has not classified ETH as a security and futures ETFs have…

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) January 31, 2024

Earlier this we reported that some ETF experts said that Ethereum spot ETF products are different things for the SEC body because the decision on Ethereum by the SEC body will remain pivoted to the lawsuits against crypto companies, mainly Ripple vs SEC suit.

A few examples noted that the Ripple vs SEC suit proved that XRP was never a security token but the SEC body is still strongly active to fight against Ripple and there are chances that the outcome of this legal battle will create a type of hurdle for other cryptocurrencies from the perspective of legal status.

Read also: London court trial accused British-Chinese woman of £5bn Bitcoin fraud in China