Key Points
Eric Balchunas, a senior Bloomberg Intelligence analyst, has reduced his forecast for the approval of Ethereum Spot Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) in May to just 25%.
Diminishing Odds for Ethereum Spot ETFs
Balchunas expressed his pessimism in a recent post, indicating his uncertainty towards the approval of these investment products.
His views align with a post by James Seyffart about Bitwise Invest’s recent Ethereum ETF filing.
Bitwise Invest registered shares of its ETH ETF with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) via a Form S-1 registration statement.
This is the first step in applying for the exchange products.
A 19b-4 form, which announces the firm’s intention to list the ETF on a stock exchange, was filed subsequently.
Bitwise plans to issue shares of the ETH investment vehicle on NYSE Arca, as per the 19b-4 modification filing submitted to the SEC.
These filings occurred amidst rumors that the SEC was trying to classify ETH as a security, which could impact future listings of ETH ETFs.
Despite the uncertainty, Bitwise Invest is confident about approval by the May deadline.
However, experts like Eric Balchunas remain skeptical about the likelihood of approval.
Balchunas stated that, despite his respect for the developments, he believes the chances for approval are low.
With only seven weeks left until the May deadline, Balchunas noted that the silence from the SEC is disheartening.
Bitwise’s New Correlation Analysis
Bitwise’s recent spot Ethereum ETF filing includes a new correlation analysis.
This is the first ETH correlation analysis to mimic the SEC’s precise assessment process of Bitcoin (BTC), yielding a promising result.
Bitwise conducted several studies to mirror the SEC’s evaluation of Bitcoin specifically.
These include the same 2.5-year sample period, exact intraday correlation intervals, the same correlation statistic, and others.
For hourly, one-minute, and five-minute correlations, the differences in correlation values across the whole sample period are limited to 0.2%, 8%, and 5%, respectively.
