In March 2017, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) denied the first ever bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) proposal.
Since then, many bitcoin ETF applications have been filed by nearly ten companies, and many of them have been rejected by the SEC for similar reasons.
This week, in a presentation to the SEC, Bitwise revealed that the overwhelming majority of the trading volume in the bitcoin exchange market is fake and that a substantially large portion of the global bitcoin volume comes from the United States.
Ironically, the fake volume plague in the cryptocurrency exchange market may increase the probability of a bitcoin ETF approval.
The Fake Crypto Volume Paradox
Two years ago, when the SEC rejected the first bitcoin ETF proposal filed in the U.S., the commission emphasized three factors:
- Vulnerability to manipulation
- Lack of regulations in overseas markets
- Lack of surveillance
“The Commission believes that, in order to meet this standard, an exchange that lists and trades shares of commodity-trust exchange-traded products (“ETPs”) must, in addition to other applicable requirements, satisfy two requirements that are dispositive in this matter. First, the exchange must have surveillance-sharing agreements with significant markets for trading the underlying commodity or derivatives on that commodity. And second, those markets must be regulated,” the SEC said at the time.
In the past two years, major overseas cryptocurrency markets in the likes of…