In a Tuesday report, Standard Chartered said that it was likely that the U.S. SEC would give spot ETH exchange traded funds the green light by the final deadline of May 24
Exchange traded funds (ETFs) giving investors exposure to Ethereum (ETH) will be approved in May, UK multinational bank Standard Chartered has projected.
In a Tuesday report, the bank said that it was likely that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would give spot ETH exchange traded funds the green light by the final deadline of May 24.
And when the funds start trading, the bank expects the value of ETH will go as high as $4,000. ETH is currently priced at $2,372, as per CoinGecko, and hit an all-time high of $4,878 in November 2021.
A number of high-profile firms including BlackRock have proposed their own spot ETH ETFs. Such exchange traded funds—sought in earnest now that Bitcoin spot ETFs are available in the U.S.—would allow investors to gain exposure to the second-biggest digital asset without the need to buy and store it themselves.
Standard Chartered said that the investment vehicles were likely to get the approval from the regulator because the Securities and Exchange Commission has not said ETH is a security. Meanwhile, the SEC has come down hard on crypto firms selling what it deems to be unregistered securities.
The CFTC has said ETH is a commodity—an asset that can be bought and sold, unlike a security—for years.
The Securities and Exchange Commission approved 10 Bitcoin ETFs on January 10 after a decade of denials. The BTC investment vehicles then started trading the next day and have since been a success.
Standard Chartered said last year that bitcoin would hit $100,000 per coin by the end of 2024. In today’s report, Geoffrey Kendrick, head of Standard Chartered Bank’s forex and digital assets research, added that this price range “still looks achievable.”
