- Earlier this year in Febraury SEC refused the approval of WisdomTree for registering Bitcoin ETF.
The head of Digital Assets ETF provider Wisdom Tree, Will Peck, noted that the United States “ultimately got there” on consenting to a Bitcoin spot investment vehicle but negotiating with claims of market manipulation could be a challenge.
While talking to a crypto news outlet on 29th September 2022 at Converge 22 conference, Will Peak mentioned that Wisdom Tree will not follow Grayscale by taking legal action against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for refusing its bitcoin ETF application.
Peck said the company plans to “engage more productively” with the SEC without litigation. Still, dealing with some of the regulator’s reasons for turning down Spot the Bitcoin ETF application may take time.
Peck noted, “We’re all kind of watching this and seeing what’s going to happen.” Adding more, he said, “The reasons that [the SEC has] given have really been around the potential for market manipulation — that Bitcoin trading does not happen on regulated venues […] There’s been some questions in the past about custody, the ability of qualified custodians, whether banks or otherwise, to be able to custody crypto assets on behalf of a registered firm like this.”
He also mentioned, “I think it seems that the first one around market manipulation’s king of the hardest nut to crack, where there’s been the biggest slowdown.”
The legal battle of Ripple vs. SEC started with the financial regulator filing a lawsuit against the payment protocol firm in 2020. The case has seen a lot of twists.
It turned in its way, which started with the allegation of the SEC against Ripple Labs and its executives for using XRP, which according to the agency, is unregistered security.
Earlier this year, in February, WisdomTree again filed for a spot-bitcoin product after facing rejection in December 2021. The SEC quoted a lack of surveillance, shared agreements, and the subsequent inability to restrain manipulative or fraudulent practices in the spot market. The December rejection was among the list of denials from the U.S. securities regulator.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/09/30/wisdomtree-belives-market-artifices-will-be-hardest-nut-to-crack-in-bitcoin-etf-approval/