The Director of Digital Asset Strategy at VanEck, Gabor Gurbacs, talked about the SEC and regulatory agencies during a podcast of WhatBitcoinDid. He has also bee talking about the future of the Bitcoin ETF presented.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission took the decision to delay several virtual currency exchange-traded funds (ETF) during the last year. However, there is still one pending that has been proposed by VanEck. The whole crypto market is expecting this ETF to be approved by the SEC at the beginning of the coming year.

A few days ago, the SEC released a statement informing that they would be taking a final decision about he VanEck proposal in February 2019. This is in line with what VanEck was expecting from the SEC. Gabor Gurbacs has also commented that Bitcoin is completely under the regulation of the Commodity Future Trading Commission (CFTC) since it was deemed as a commodity back in 2015.

Nevertheless, ETFs are related to the SEC and it must be in charge of deciding whether a proposal is valid or not. The Bitcoin ETF is a security, and this is why it is under the regulatory jurisdiction of the SEC. Furthermore, there are other securities that are based on commodities such as gold or oil.

At the same time, he said that regulatory agencies are trying to understand how to better deal with these new assets that grew during the last few years. If a Bitcoin ETF is approved, he believes that it will be very positive for the whole market that is expecting this to happen. With a new Bitcoin ETF, the space will be more regulated and it will be easier to protect investors.

Gurbacs commented about this issue:

“So, the ETF is like the one tool to bring trading into a more regulated space and better protect investors. And there’s again, there’s a ton of work that we have done on the pricing end like years of work, on what’s the right price for Bitcoin and they’re in a fragmented system and that is representative liquidity and then we’ve done some work on surveillance.”

The SEC mentioned in the past that the cryptocurrency market was not mature enough for a Bitcoin ETF since prices could be manipulated. With more regulated institutions entering the market, with more serious developments such as the Bakkt platform and with more regulatory agencies involved in the space, the market could be more professional and less manipulated.

Earlier this year, the stablecoin Tether (USDT) was accused of manipulating Bitcoin prices during bear markets.

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