ARK Investment Management, led by Cathie Wood, in collaboration with Swiss cryptocurrency firm 21Shares, has submitted a registration for their proposed ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
On January 4, the company filed a Form 8-A to list its shares as securities on the Cboe BZX Exchange. This move came on the same day that both the VanEck Bitcoin Trust and Grayscale Bitcoin Trust also registered their shares on the Cboe BZX Exchange using Form 8-A, with listings on both the Cboe BZX Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange Arca. A day earlier, the Cboe BZX Exchange had already given the nod to Fidelity's spot Bitcoin ETF registration.
The SEC has a deadline of January 10 to either approve or reject the Bitcoin ETF proposal by ARK Invest and 21Shares. To date, the SEC has consistently declined to greenlight any spot Bitcoin ETF on a U.S. exchange, despite numerous pending applications. Notably, the SEC turned down the same ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF proposal on January 26, 2023, citing concerns over insufficient safeguards against fraud and manipulation.
In a significant development in August 2023, Circuit Judge Neomi Rao of the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Grayscale Investments' petition to review their spot Bitcoin ETF application, leading to a re-evaluation of the SEC's rejection of Grayscale's GBTC listing application. This decision has prompted the SEC to reassess all current spot Bitcoin ETF applications. If approved, the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF plans to charge an annual management fee of 0.80% to cover various operational costs including marketing and exchange listing.
