The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rejected Wilshire Phoenixâs bid for a bitcoin-based exchange-traded fund (ETF).
In a filing posted Wednesday, the securities regulator wrote the New York-based Wilshire Phoenix had not proven the bitcoin (BTC) market is sufficiently resistant to market manipulation. Wilshire, a newcomer to the financial services industry, first applied for the ETF last summer with NYSE Arca.
âThe Commission concludes that NYSE Arca has not met its burden under the Exchange Act and the Commissionâs Rules of Practice to demonstrate that its proposal is consistent with the requirements of Exchange Act Section 6(b)(5), and, in particular, the requirement that the rules of a national securities exchange be âdesigned to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practicesâ and âto protect investors and the public interest,'â the filing said.
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, known as âcrypto momâ in the space, published a dissent, writing that the agency applies a âheightened standardâ to bitcoin products. As an example, she said the SEC had not required surveillance-sharing agreements with markets of significant size, an argument the agency outlined in its rejection of Bitwiseâs bitcoin ETF application.
âThis line of disapprovals leads me to conclude that this Commission is unwilling to approve the listing of any product that would provide access to the market for bitcoin and that no filing will meet the ever-shifting standards that this Commission insists on applying to bitcoin-related productsâand only to bitcoin-related products,â she wrote.
The SEC has rejected all previous bitcoin ETF proposals filed to date. Wilshire hoped to buck the trend by basing its ETF proposal on U.S. Treasury bonds in addition to bitcoin. William Herrmann, Wilshireâs managing director, previously told CoinDesk the fund would automatically rebalance itself in response to bitcoinâs price volatility. Should the cryptocurrencyâs price fluctuate too much, the fund would invest more heavily into bonds, and reverse that position as the price stabilizes.
This automatic rebalancing came as a response to the SECâs previous rejections. The agency rejected a number of bitcoin ETF applications out of concerns the bitcoin market is not significant in size and potentially easy to manipulate.
Last year, the agency published a rejection order for Bitwise Asset Managementâs bitcoin ETF proposal on these grounds.
UPDATE (Feb. 26, 22:46 UTC): This article has been updated with SEC Commissioner Hester Peirceâs dissent, published Wednesday.