SEC Comm: A Bitcoin ETF Could Help Fairly Price Grayscale’s GBTC

In a Bloomberg interview, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said the approval of a Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund by the regulator could help price nonexchange-traded instruments such as Graysclale’s Bitcoin Trust, otherwise known as GBTC, more fairly.

The commissioner has again reiterated that in her opinion, the SEC is treating crypto-related financial instruments unfairly, applying to them unique requirements:

“Recently I issued a second dissent, saying: to me, it appears that the current Commission is not interested in approving any exchange traded products that's available to a retail audience that has crypto underlying  <...> which suggests to me that we have one standard for crypto products and then another standard for other types of products. And I don't think that's right.”

Exchanges make price discovery easy

When asked whether the lack of an approved exchange-traded BTC instrument makes GBTC a more risky investment, she said:

“No, I think that's a great point. And I think it is. I mean, I don't want to think about any product and I haven't tracked that product the way that you have. But I think that in general, with the reason that products that trade on exchanges are attractive is because they do offer this really good price discovery process and they work really, really well. And so that's why people like to trade products on exchanges.”

Toilet paper ETF

She also jokingly said that if she were creating her own ETF right now, it would be something related to toilet paper:

“If I were making an ETF ticker now, I guess it would have to be something related to toilet paper. So PP or something like that.”

Joking aside, the lack of an approved Bitcoin ETF remains an obstacle to greater crypto adoption.