Yesterday saw a bunch of new Bitcoin ETF rejections added onto the list of those that have been declined by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Very long story short, there are a number of applications in place at the SEC, some of which have now been rejected and others are yet to be decided upon. As a result of this, the markets are becoming very sensitive to the SEC’s decisions and overall, the outlook for cryptocurrency is a bit bleak. Nobody is really sure what is going to happen until the bulk of these ETFs have been decided upon by the end of September 2018.

The general consensus is that if a Bitcoin ETF is rejected, the markets go down, if one is accepted, the markets shoot up (in theory).

Since yesterday’s announcement, it seems that the SEC have now decided to go on and review their most recent review, which has seen a total of nine ETFs rejected, because:

“The products did not comply with the requirements by the Exchange Act Section 6(b)(5), in particular the requirement that a national securities exchange's rules be designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices."

Now, according to Reuters, the SEC have established a new working group of four commissioners that are going to review their most recent decisions, as it stands there's no deadline in place and no framework through which they will complete their review, all we know is that a review will be taking place.

According to Reuters:

“SEC staff have delegated authority to make a decision on such applications, meaning the commissioners and the SEC chairman have the power to review the decision if they desire. The commissioners had previously voted 3-1 to reject another bitcoin ETF application, with Republican commissioner Hester Peirce dissenting on the basis she felt doing so stifled innovation.”

Whilst the SEC are unlikely to use this to backtrack on their recent decisions, they are no doubt going to use this to help inform the future decisions they are going to have to make going through September and beyond. Perhaps this review will indicate a change in how the SEC views these applications and hopefully, we see some changes in the way they handle ETF applications.

Reuters - SEC Review