Gary Gensler, chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has said in response to a request from Congressman Tom Emmer, that the regulator has not yet approved any spot Bitcoin ETFs because the applications do not meet Securities Act standards to curb fraudulent or manipulative practices.
The SEC chairman has again asserted his position of "neutrality" toward the technology and promised that he will "take a hard look" at the issues raised by Emmer.
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Emmer and his colleague Darren Soto sent back in November 2021 a letter to Gensler calling the agency's stance on spot Bitcoin ETFs "unacceptable."
CoinRoutes co-founder and CEO David Weisberg has called the SEC chief's response "nonsense." He has argued that prices in the futures and spot markets are 99% correlated, and the latter are "extremely transparent" and can show aggregate "glass" for all regulated platforms in the United States.
In February, the SEC delayed its decision on Grayscale Investments' application to launch a spot Bitcoin ETF. The investment firm called the regulator's actions regarding the approval of exchange-traded funds based only on Bitcoin futures "arbitrary and unlawful."