Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Urges SEC to Approve Spot Ethereum ETF

Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, has urged financial authorities to approve the Spot Ethereum exchange-traded fund (ETF). Expectations for the approval of the Spot Ethereum ETF are growing.

According to industry sources on the 23rd, Paul Grewal, Chief Legal Officer (CLO) of Coinbase, requested approval in a statement submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), stating, “We see that the Spot Ethereum ETF applied for by Grayscale meets the rules and requirements proposed by the exchange.”

He emphasized, “Ethereum has a strong and decentralized governance system, so it is not vulnerable to fraud or manipulation,” and “Furthermore, Ethereum is not a security.”

In October last year, Grayscale had previously applied to convert the Spot Ethereum trust to an ETF. In addition, the world’s largest asset managers, BlackRock, along with Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, and Ark Invest, are also preparing to launch a Spot Ethereum ETF.

In the industry, the Spot Ethereum ETF is expected to be launched as early as May. Bernstein, a U.S. asset manager, predicted in a report released on the 18th that the SEC will approve the Spot Ethereum ETF as early as May or, at the latest, within this year. Standard Chartered (SC), a British investment bank, also forecasted last month that approval would be granted on May 23, the first review deadline among the applications for the Spot Ethereum ETF.

Meanwhile, the SEC approved the exchange listing and trading of the Bitcoin spot ETF on the 10th of last month. Following this decision, 11 Bitcoin spot ETFs began trading on the 11th. Commodities from BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, Ark Investment, Invesco, WisdomTree, Bitwise Asset Management, Valkyrie, and Grayscale Investments are currently being traded.