Fidelity, one of the world’s largest asset management companies, has refiled paperwork for its Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust, a spot bitcoin ETF. This comes two weeks after BlackRock’s iShares unit submitted paperwork for the iShares Bitcoin Trust, also a spot bitcoin ETF. Fidelity had originally applied to launch the Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust in 2021, but the application was rejected by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2022.
Since the BlackRock spot ETF filing, a number of other fund companies have followed suit, including Invesco and WisdomTree. Fidelity’s paperwork includes a surveillance sharing agreement with an unnamed U.S. spot-based bitcoin trading platform, which is intended to help ease SEC concerns about market manipulation. Fidelity also noted that access to a vehicle such as a spot bitcoin ETF would have protected investors from losses due to custodian and centralized exchange insolvencies.
The SEC has yet to make a decision regarding any of the new applications. While many are optimistic about the application from BlackRock – which has received a green light for all of its previous 575 ETF applications, except one – some remain skeptical. CoinShares’ chief product officer Townsend Lansing said on a podcast Monday that he sees a 10% chance that BlackRock’s application gets approved, arguing that the SEC wants to see the majority of bitcoin trading facilitated on a U.S. crypto exchange.