The US Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) recently approved “on an accelerated basis” rule-change proposals from three exchanges looking to list spot Ethereum exchange-traded products. Most observers had expected the SEC to reject the applications on the basis that they were filed as commodity ETFs and the SEC deems Ether (or ETH, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum platform) to be a security.
“The approval order leverages research from Bitwise and the SEC examining the correlation between spot Ether prices and the price of regulated Ethereum futures contracts,” says Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at crypto index fund manager Bitwise. “The fact that there is a large, robust and regulated futures market in Ethereum had a big impact on the decision.”
Another factor was removal of staking from the filings. Ethereum relies on staking to ensure the security of the network, rewarding users who participate in block production and validation through a portion of newly created ETH.
Higher staked amounts help secure the network further by making it more immune to 51% attacks.
