The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC) has approved a slew of spot bitcoin exchange-trade products in a landmark decision.
SEC chair Gary Gensler announced the decision in a statement on Wednesday, authorizing eleven funds to begin trading from Thursday.
The move comes after digital asset manager Grayscale Investments won a key victory over the SEC in August of last year when a federal appeals court overturned the commission’s rejection of the firm’s application to convert its Bitcoin trust into an exchange-traded fund.
Gensler said that the court decided that the market watchdog failed to adequately explain its reasoning behind the disapproval of Grayscale's listing and trading of the digital assets.
He added that based on these circumstances and those discussed more fully in the approval order, he feels the most sustainable path forward is to greenlight the listing and trading of cryptocurrency shares through firms offering the product based on spot prices.