After the numerous rejections of the proposals that could be described as minor, a decision was expected on the proposals of CBOE, VanEck and SolidX.
There was a first postponement that moved the decision to the end of September, although now the SEC could postpone its decision until February 2019.
Given that it is standard practice for the SEC to take all the time necessary to decide on proposals that are so out of line, there are those who argue that the final decision will surely be postponed until 2019.
In this regard, it is worth mentioning an official report by the Attorney General of New York, Barbara D. Underwood, who believes that there are still several unresolved problems in the space.
The document states that exchanges suffer from serious problems including conflicts of interest, lack of efforts to prevent illegal activities, limited or illusory protection for client funds, etc…
Today Underwood is always at the centre of attention for having accused exchanges of the calibre of Binance, Kraken and Gate.io.
The State of New York is by far one of the most challenging in terms of controlling the operation of exchanges. This document may not be an isolated case, although it must be reiterated that these exchanges do not have offices in the US and do not accept American investors.
Commenting on this report, economist and analyst Alex Kruger, who also deals with cryptocurrencies, shared on Twitter that, according to him, the chances of an ETF on bitcoin being approved in 2018 are zero.
In particular, Kruger refers to passages in the Underwood report that highlight the fact that exchanges have not taken serious steps to block price manipulation for example.
It must be said, however, that the proposal of CBOE, VanEck and SolidX is very different from the others that have been rejected so far and, within the SEC itself there are commissioners clearly in favour of these new financial instruments.
If on the one hand, the postponement until 2019 might seem more and more likely, on the other, a possible rejection is not yet certain, also because there should be time to solve at least some of the problems detected.
