SEC recently met with Grayscale, BlackRock over spot bitcoin ETF listings, memos show
Quick Take
- The agency met with Grayscale Investments on Monday after a court issued a mandate last month to have the SEC re-review the ETF bid.
- A separate meeting was also held with BlackRock and Nasdaq employees.
Grayscale Investments recently met with the Securities and Exchange Commission as it continues to seek approval for its application to convert its Grayscale Bitcoin 
BTC
+1.94%
Trust into a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund.
In a memo published by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the asset manager on Monday met with officials from the SEC’s division of trading and markets to discuss potential listing matters concerning the shares of the product.
“The discussion concerned NYSE Arca, Inc.’s proposed rule change to list and trade shares of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (BTC) under NYSE Arca Rule 8.201-E,” the memo said.
The meeting comes after Grayscale last month filed a new registration statement with the SEC in its latest attempt to covert the trust product into a spot bitcoin ETF. A D.C. circuit court also issued a formal mandate last month to assert its August ruling, directing the regulator to re-review the firm's application.
An earlier filing showed that last week, Grayscale and the Bank of New York Mellon agreed to have BNY Mellon serve as the transfer agent for shares of the trust.
GBTC intends to list the shares on NYSE Arca under the symbol GBTC, and issue the shares on an ongoing basis upon approval of its S-3 form and a separate 19b-4 filing from NYSE Arca, according to the S-3 filing submitted on Oct. 19.
BlackRock meeting
Other major asset managers, including BlackRock and Fidelity, are also seeking approval from the SEC for spot bitcoin ETFs. SEC Chair Gary Gensler said last month that the regulator is "doing work" on the filings.
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James Seyffart, an ETF Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said in a post on X that he had also "heard rumblings of other potential spot bitcoin ETF issuers meeting with SEC in the last week or so."
A separate memo dated Nov. 20 showed that the SEC also had a meeting with BlackRock and Nasdaq employees.
"The discussion concerned The NASDAQ Stock Market LLC’s proposed rule change to list and trade shares of the iShares Bitcoin Trust under NASDAQ Rule 5711(d)," the memo stated.
An attached presentation detailed "In-Kind" and "In-Cash" redemption models.
"Based on this it looks like BlackRock prefers in-kind for their #bitcoin ETF (makes sense as its probably cleanest structure for them & end investors)," Seyffart said.
(Updates with details on BlackRock meeting.)
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