The chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Jay Clayton, is in the latest cryptocurrency news centered around regulation. As Clayton recently noted, Bitcoin exchanges lack sufficient transparency and monitoring for the market to see the approved Bitcoin Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs).
According to CNBC’s reports, Clayton made the following statements at the Consensus Invest Conference in New York a couple of days ago:
“What investors expect is that trading in the commodity that underlies that ETF makes sense and is free from the risk of manipulation. It’s an issue that needs to be addressed before I would be comfortable.”
Clayton is seen as a big no-sayer when it comes to Bitcoin ETFs – but is also a person that feels that a Bitcoin ETF would be too easily manipulated and that there is no enough safeguarding in place to prevent as much.
Overall, the current Bitcoin market is too nascent to have a sort of tools that the SEC would like to see at the disposal of its exchanges in order to approve an ETF, which would be a method of investing in the entire Bitcoin market without actually holding Bitcoin.
The other issue are the safe custodians of Bitcoin which are apparently lacking as well. As Clayton noted:
“We’ve seen some thefts around digital assets that make you scratch your head. We care that the assets underlying that ETF have good custody, and that they’re not going to disappear.”
To sum things up, the Bitcoin markets according to Clayton have a ways to go before the SEC allows anyone to offer a Bitcoin ETF. Obviously, the buying and selling of Bitcoin is still legally allowed, but the prospect of trading against the whole market is a ways off.
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