In October last year, Grayscale officially "filed a lawsuit" against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for rejecting Grayscale's application to transform the Bitcoin Trust Fund (GBTC) into a Bitcoin spot ETF.

This lawsuit is currently attracting much attention from the industry because the verdict of the case will be closely related to the success or failure of the US Bitcoin spot ETF, and is expected to affect tens of millions of investors and ETF issuers.

Grayscale GBTC spot ETF decision may come out this week

Grayscale officials originally expected at the end of July that the court would make a ruling this fall. However, according to a recent tweet by Scott Johnsson, general partner of private equity firm Van Buren Capital, the court may make a ruling on the Grayscale GBTC transformation spot ETF case before the end of this week.

Johnsson explained that because U.S. district court clerks typically rotate in August, this often forces judges to "clean up their caseloads" before the new clerks arrive, and a whopping 30 of the 32 cases (94%) that went to public argument in March 2021/2022 were decided within 160 days of oral argument.

Judging from these precedents, more than 156 days have passed since Grayscale's public debate on March 7, and only a few cases debated in March have yet to be decided. Therefore, Johnson believes that the judge will most likely make a ruling on the Grayscale v. SEC lawsuit before the end of this week.

Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart predicted that he even believes the verdict could come as early as August 15, saying that this date has long been his "theoretical Grayscale case verdict date."

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas pointed out in April that after listening to Grayscale's debate with the SEC, they raised Grayscale's chances of winning from 40% to 70%. Many industry experts, including ARK Invest founder Cathie Wood and Messari founder Ryan Selkis, are betting that Grayscale will win.

Ark submits three more Bitcoin futures ETF applications

As for the review progress of the Bitcoin spot ETF, after the SEC confirmed the postponement of Ark 21Shares, a joint venture between Ark and 21Shares, last Friday, Blockworks reported earlier today that Ark and 21Shares have further proposed three new Bitcoin futures ETF applications, namely:

  • Ark 21Shares Active Bitcoin Futures ETF (ARKA)

  • Ark 21Shares Active On-Chain Bitcoin Strategy ETF (ARKC)

  • Ark 21Shares Digital Asset and Blockchain Strategy ETF（ARKD）

Nate Geraci, president of The ETF Store, commented that this may mean the company is "not very confident" about its bitcoin spot ETF being approved.