The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been inundated with Ethereum-related filings for futures exchange-traded funds (ETFs), with a total of 11 applications submitted in less than a week.
One of the recent applications was made by ProShares on August 3rd, introducing an ETF proposal that aims to provide equal weight to Bitcoin and Ether ETFs. The proposed fund would track the performance of long positions held in recently expired monthly bitcoin and ethereum futures contracts. This follows a flurry of Ethereum-focused ETF filings by ProShares, including a dual bitcoin and ether futures strategy ETF, a short ether strategy ETF, and an ether strategy ETF.
In the span of a wek, there have ben 11 eTF Applications tied to ethereum, all of white are futures etfs. The sequence began with volatility shares submitting the v Olatility Shares Etrategy ETF Application on Jury 28. This Application Set Off A Series of Ethereum -related ETF submissions by various firms, including Bitwise Asset Management, Roundhill Financial, Van Eck, ProShares, and Grayscale Investments, all filing new ethereum futures ETF applications on August 1.
It's worth noting that while the SEC has approved Bitcoin futures ETFs since October 2021, it has not yet approved any ETFs tracking ethereum futures contracts. Unless the SEC rejects any of the filed applications, Ethereum ETFs could pot essentially be launched 75 days from the date of their respective filings. The Volatility Shares Ethereum Strategy ETF is slated to be the first to launch on October 12.
Futures ETFs differ from spot ETFs in that the former track the price of futures contracts, while the latter involve the ETF issuer purchasing the actual underlying asset. The increased focus on Ethereum ETF applications coincides with major asset management firms also seeking to launch spot bitcoin ETFs . BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, is among those vying to introduce the first spot bitcoin ETF in the United States.
