Grayscale Fights for Fairness in the Race for a Bitcoin ETF

• Grayscale Investments, the sponsor of the world’s biggest Bitcoin trust, GBTC, is urging the SEC to consider its proposal for a Bitcoin ETF.
• The firm argues that approving only other proposals would grant an unfairly discriminatory and prejudicial first-mover advantage.
• Grayscale is asking the SEC to be fair and consider GBTC’s nearly 1 million investors.

First-Mover Advantage in ETFs

The first-mover advantage is very real in ETFs. Investors tend to be driven by fees when it comes to broad investment products like U.S. stocks. But when it comes to more thematically driven ones, being first to market usually means collecting more in assets than the next player down.

Grayscale’s Fight for Fairness

Little wonder, then, why the firm behind the world’s biggest bitcoin trust would take issue with the SEC’s considering all of the folks that recently applied for a spot-bitcoin ETF… while it’s suing the SEC for denying its proposal to convert that trust to an ETF last summer.

In a comment letter submitted to the SEC yesterday, Grayscale Investments said: “…Approving only the [other] proposals would reflect a positive but sudden and significant change in the Commission’s application of the relevant statutory standard, and as such would improperly grant an unfairly discriminatory and prejudicial first-mover advantage to these proposals.”

The firm calls on the SEC to be fair and consider the interests of GBTC’s nearly 1 million investors.