Asset manager Hashdex recently had a meeting with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to address concerns about its application for the Hashdex Bitcoin Futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) to hold spot Bitcoin. The meeting took place on Oct. 13, with SEC officials and representatives from Hashdex, NYSE Arca, Tidal Financial Group, and law firm K&L Gates in attendance. During the meeting, Hashdex presented its mechanism for trading and holding spot Bitcoin in the ETF on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), which is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Hashdex’s filing is different from other spot Bitcoin applications because it does not have a surveillance-sharing agreement with crypto exchange Coinbase. Instead, Hashdex proposes to acquire spot BTC from physical exchanges within the CME market, relying entirely on CME pricing for transactions. The strategy is also built on the SEC’s Teucrium Order, which states that the Bitcoin futures market is developed enough to support financial products seeking exposure to BTC.
According to a source familiar with the matter, the SEC may request further information before the application’s first deadline on Nov. 17. Hashdex currently manages over $380 million in assets and has 14 exchange-traded products (ETPs) across seven countries. The SEC approved Hashdex’s Bitcoin Futures ETF in April 2022, and if the rule change is approved, the ETF will be able to hold spot Bitcoin as well.
In other news, a crypto recovery firm called Unciphered is petitioning former Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas for access to a hard drive containing over 7,000 Bitcoin. Thomas has been unable to access the drive for years because he forgot the password, and he has used eight out of his ten attempts. Unciphered claims to have developed a method to crack the hardware and access the BTC keys. The firm has already accessed the data on a similar hard drive and is offering to help Thomas regain access to his Bitcoin. There have been many stories like Thomas’ involving users unable to access their keys, resulting in the potential loss of billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin.