Chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Jay Clayton has said that the organisation is getting ever closer to finally approving a bitcoin ETF. However, Clayton went onto warn that further work needs to be done to avoid the manipulation of price and make sure the market is transparent.

Speaking to CNBC’s Bob Pisani during an interview, Clayton was asked how close we actually were to seeing an approved bitcoin ETF.

His response?

"Yes. But there's work left to be done."

A bit ominous yes, but it’s good to know that the SEC isn’t just brushing it off and inevitably going to reject the proposed ETF’s.

Watch the video here.

Manipulating price

Clayton has said that the SEC wants more info about custody as well as assurances against price manipulation.

"How do we know that we can custody and have a hold of these crypto assets? That's a key question. An even harder question — given that they trade on largely unregulated exchanges is — 'How can we be sure that those prices aren't subject to significant manipulation?"

Clayton continued, saying that progress has been made in these regards but he does clarify that "people needed to answer those hard questions for us to be comfortable that this was the appropriate type of product."

After the SEC once again delayed their final decision on the bitcoin ETF, one commissioner from the regular, Hester Peirce has said that the agency should already have approved the bitcoin ETF’s.

Peirce highlighted that the commission hasn’t been very open-minded when approaching the bitcoin ETF.

It will be interesting to see how this situation plays out and when the ETF proposals actually get approved but if Clayton’s words are anything to go by, we won’t be waiting too long. For more news on this and other crypto updates, keep it with CryptoDaily!