Cole-Frieman & Mallon Comment Letter to SEC

On June 12, 2019 our law firm submitted a comment letter to the SEC with respect to the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF application.  In our comment we stated that we believe it is in the best interest of the bitcoin market that the Bitwise ETF be approved.  We made this statement based on our firm’s experience with asset managers generally, and specifically with asset managers in the digital asset space.  We also believe that the various Bitwise presentations and research prepared for the staff (here, here, and here) present strong arguments for the approval of the Bitwise ETF.

The Bitwise ETF application was originally submitted to the SEC by the listing Exchange (NYSE Arca) on January 28, 2019 and has subsequently under gone two statutory extensions (see here) as the SEC tries to figure out how they are going to regulate the digital asset industry.  Ultimately the SEC will need to make a final decision (accept or reject) by mid-October.  The various comment letters (found here) show overall support for the Bitwise ETF and generally implore the SEC to approve the application.

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For more information on this topic, please see our collection of cryptocurrency fund legal and operational posts.

Bart Mallon is a founding partner of Cole-Frieman & Mallon LLP.  Cole-Frieman & Mallon has been instrumental in structuring the launches of some of the first cryptocurrency focused hedge funds. For more information on this topic, please contact Mr. Mallon directly at 415-868-5345.