
On Sept. 6th, Cathie Wood's $60B investment firm and 21Shares, a digital asset management firm, filed an application to the SEC for a spot-exchange-traded fund tracking the price of Ether.
The Ark 21Shares Ethereum ETF is the first application for a spot Ether ETF in the United States. The trust would hold ETH on behalf of the trust, and the ETF would reference the CME CF Ether-Dollar reference rate and adjust for expenses and liabilities. Shares of ETF will be traded daily at 4 p.m. EST based on the reference index.
The news had little price impact, with ETH trading generally flat over the past seven days.
The move comes after some analysts predicted it may only be a matter of time before a spot crypto ETF receives approval from U.S. regulators.
On August 29, the U.S. District of Columbia Court of Appeals sided with Grayscale, ruling that the agency didn't justify its decision to reject the asset manager's application for a spot Bitcoin ETF last year. The court found that the SEC's decision was arbitrary, considering the similarities between Grayscale's proposed product and ETFs tracking Bitcoin futures, previously greenlit by the agency.
In June, the SEC received a flurry of applications for spot Bitcoin ETFs after BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, submitted its own filing.
The prospectus notes risks resulting from the decentralization of Ethereum's developers and validators, such as network disruptions such as hard forks. Quantum computing's advancements also serve as a reminder of potential dangers posed by the advancement of quantum computing.