On January 23, the SEC's official website, only a day after it happened, posted information about the withdrawal of the Bitcoin ETF application. No official reasons were stated, but experts believe that the Chicago Board Options Exchange (Cboe) withdrew its application for a rule change that would have allowed it to launch a bitcoin-linked exchange-traded fund (ETF), previously proposed by the firms VanEck and SolidX, in order to avoid a possible rejection.
The application was filed back in early summer 2018. The securities commission postponed the decision deadline more than once, but February 27 was to be the final deadline for issuing a verdict. Experts had warned earlier that the probability of a positive decision did not exceed 10%. Other specialists did not believe at all that the SEC would be able to make a positive decision.
Later, in January of this year, another application to open a Bitcoin ETF was filed by the company Bitwise. The desire to "stay in the game" and open a futures bitcoin fund was also confirmed by the Winklevoss brothers. VanEck, meanwhile, also reported that despite the withdrawal of the application, it is not abandoning its plans to open a bitcoin ETF. The company plans to continue discussing the matter with the SEC, after which it will refile the application. According to the company's head, the withdrawal of the application was largely facilitated by a combination of circumstances, in particular the shutdown, which seriously slowed down the work of many government bodies (in December, the state budget for the current year was not adopted). Therefore, the application's authors preferred not to take risks, but to withdraw it in order to refile it once the shutdown ended and government agencies were working at full capacity. In addition, according to a number of experts, the Commission is currently clearly short of staff to review all submitted documents on time.
