Solicitation Notice Issued By SEC, Is BTC ETF On The Horizon?

Solicitation Notice Issued By SEC, Is BTC ETF On The Horizon?

With institutional finances getting prepared to heave into the market and save the fading digital asset class of crypto, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission will clearly be looking for accountability and a “manipulation free sphere”, which will level the ground for all investors.

The chairman of the SEC, Jay Clayton has spoken about the lack of surveillance and pure and simple fraud at the CoinDesk Consensus Invest Conference as well as why he isn’t prepared for the Bitcoin ETF to happen:

“It’s an issue (manipulation) that needs to be addressed before I would be comfortable. We’ve seen some thefts around digital assets that make you scratch your head. We care that the assets underlying that ETF has good custody and that they’re not going to disappear.”

Earlier this week, the SEC published a solicitation notice that aimed to encourage cable companies to provide viewable data of the most common blockchains in a way that “there is no loss in data completeness and accuracy due to the data transformation tools and processes applied.”

The SEC says potential businesses aims to:

“Provide blockchain data to support the SEC’s efforts to monitor risk, improve compliance, and inform Commission policy with respect to digital assets. The SEC is seeking information for potential sources to support the goal of acquiring data for the most widely used blockchain ledgers, including the universe of available information and transaction details.”

This can be seen as going in the right direction as far as the Bitcoin ETF is concerned, the involvement of institutional grade money will involve a compromise. “These compromises could even go against the tenets of blockchain—that of privacy and freedom.” At one point, there was a lot of people who lost their hard earned money - especially during the ICO craze of 2017 and early 2018 - which forced regulators to “flex their muscles” and punish founders as they set out new guidelines on which ICO projects should be classed as securities and which are not.

By pure coincidence, the solicitation notice came at a time when the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) of the SEC made cryptocurrencies top of their list for things to look into this year. The OCIE published a report saying that they will continue with their mandate, “complementing and advising the SEC in their effort to protect the American people.”

Seeing that the quick rise of cryptocurrencies is a potential risk to retail investors, they state that they will keep on overseeing the sale, trading and management of virtual assets, such as Bitcoin, “and where the products are securities, examine for regulatory compliance.”

What are your thoughts? Let us know what you think down below in the comments!

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