Yesterday, the crypto community was hit by news that the Chicago Board and Options Exchange (CBOE) withdrew its proposed rule change application with the U.S SEC that was expected to lead to the launch of a Bitcoin ETF.
However, no reason for the withdrawal was stated in the notice released by the SEC, resulting in different speculation by enthusiasts about what went wrong.
Jan van Eck, the chief executive of VanEck who is listed as a party to the ETF proposal, has today disclosed the reason for the decision to pull out the application.
The top official told CNBC that the recent shutdown of the U.S Government is a major reason behind the withdrawal.
The SEC is affected by the shutdown… we were engaged in discussions with the SEC about the bitcoin-related issues, custody, market manipulation, prices, and that had to stop.
He continued,
Instead of trying to slip through or something, we just had the application pulled and we will re-file and re-engage in the discussions when the SEC gets going again.
In a nutshell, since the SEC will likely not meet up with it’s February 27, deadline for announcing a decision on the proposal, the firms decided to pull out rather than face an unfair automatic rejection.
On a more positive note, it is likely that the VanEck SolidX Bitcoin Trust application will be resubmitted as soon as the U.S Government resumes work properly.
Crypto Market’s Reaction To CBOE Bitcoin ETF Withdrawal
It is obvious that everyone expected the negative news to test the strength of the crypto markets, but the results so far are outstanding.
Since the announcement, the markets have lost slightly above $1billion with the market cap dropping from $120.6 billion to $119.6 billion at press time.
Also, major cryptocurrency Bitcoin is seeing losses less than 1% with prices hovering between $3630 to $3550, figures that are consistent with the crypto market since the start of the year.
With top altcoins also recording losses within the same range, it wouldn’t be wrong to believe that the majority of the cryptocurrency market share lies with institutional investors.
If that belief is true then predictions by Bitcoin enthusiast, Anthony Pompliano that the bear market late last year, wiped out most speculative Bitcoin investors would be correct.
At this point, it seems that the crypto market is ready for the next level of growth and it should only get better from here.
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