Bitwise’s spot Chainlink exchange-traded fund (ETF) has appeared on the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation’s registry, a usually positive sign that the fund is moving closer to launch.
The Bitwise Chainlink ETF was added to the DTCC’s “active” and “pre-launch” categories on Tuesday under the ticker CLNK. The listings don’t guarantee that the US Securities and Exchange Commission will approve the ETF, but they have historically been a good indicator that a product is set to be greenlit.
DTCC is a post-trade market infrastructure platform that clears, settles, and records transactions, serving as a central hub for markets to ensure trades in assets like stocks and ETFs are processed efficiently and securely.
Bitwise is yet to file a Form 8-A for its Chainlink product, one of the final documents that must be lodged before securities are offered on an exchange, and often means that a product’s launch is imminent.
Bitwise filed a Form S-1 statement for the ETF in August to register the product with the SEC. The ETF seeks to track the price of Chainlink (LINK), the token powering Chainlink’s decentralized oracle network to provide real-time data to smart contracts onchain.
Grayscale is another crypto asset manager that has a spot Chainlink ETF in the works. However, it may face more regulatory challenges than Bitwise’s as it seeks to incorporate staking.
Government shutdown slows ETF process
Dozens of spot crypto ETFs are currently awaiting SEC approval amid the US government shutdown, which is in its 42nd day but is expected to end sometime this week after the Senate passed a funding bill.
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Crypto asset managers have filed ETFs to track increasingly speculative altcoins in the hopes of attracting investor attention, from Dogecoin (DOGE) and Solana (SOL) to Aptos (APT), Avalanche (AVAX) and Hedera (HBAR).
New SEC listing standards could see more approvals
Industry analysts are now expecting more spot crypto ETFs to be approved as the SEC created new generic listing standards that enable the approval of crypto investment products without them needing to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
The SEC’s new listing standards were released on Sept. 17, less than two weeks before the US government shutdown, leaving little time for the new rules to be put to use.
Since then, the government shutdown has forced the SEC to operate with limited capacity and funding.
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