Cathie Wood’s ARK submits Amended Bitcoin Spot ETF Application

• ARK’s amended application comes a week after BlackRock filed for its Bitcoin spot ETF which included a similar agreement.
• The recent filings have brought the bulls back to the trading scene.

Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest has amended its Bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to include a surveillance-sharing agreement.

ARK filed the amended application on 28 June, nearly a week after BlackRock, the $9 trillion dollar asset manager, applied for its own spot Bitcoin ETF with the SEC, which included a similar agreement.

So far, no BTC ETF applications included any such agreement until BlackRock did so.

ARK filed its initial proposal with the SEC in April. The latest revised filing may help ARK finally secure the SEC’s approval.

The Spot BTC SSA agreement is a collaboration between ARK, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) BZX Exchange, and a crypto platform. The filing does not specify the crypto trading platform. It did, however, assert that the platform accounted for a “substantial portion of US-based Bitcoin trading.”

Ark said in the filing that,

“This Spot BTC SSA, in combination with the information available through [Intermarket Surveillance Group] related to CME Bitcoin Futures, which the Exchange believes on its own represents a regulated market of significant size, would further strengthen the Exchange’s ability to detect and deter manipulation of the Shares.”

An SSA is a type of arrangement in which service providers exchange trading information with regulators. The regulator says that this information sharing is necessary to prevent potential market manipulation. The information comprises trading activities, clearing activity, and customer identification.

SEC adamant on obtaining trading information

The SEC has been adamant that none of the applicants have demonstrated their ability to properly protect investors from manipulative trading practices.

The SEC rejected a spot Bitcoin ETF that ARK first filed in June 2021, along with the global crypto ETF provider 21Shares. The regulating body highlighted a failure to demonstrate how the service provider can prevent market manipulation by crypto traders. In fact, the SEC has rejected every such product so far.

The SEC approved the first leveraged Bitcoin futures ETF by Volatility last week. BITX, an exchange-traded fund, traded for the first time on 28 June, reporting a successful launch with $5.5 million in trading for the day.

These recent BTC ETF filings have created a buzz, with the bulls back to the trading scene. At press time, BTC was trading at a little above $30,000. The token reflected a surge of 20% within a fortnight.

Source: TradingView