This agency has requested written comments on both proposals for approval or disapproval of Form 19b-4 by the applicant. SEC’s Form 19b-4 is a separate public disclosure document approved by the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets, distinct from Form S-1, a registration statement that must be approved by the Division of Corporation Finance. The SEC’s requests have a 35-day deadline from the date of filing with the Federal Register for both the notice and the comment response.
The Hashdex ETF will be traded on the New York Stock Exchange Arca, and Franklin Templeton will be traded on Cboe BZX. On November 15, the SEC extended the decision deadline for the registration applications.
The questions address issues related to the approval of potential ETFs. Commenters are invited to assess the susceptibility to manipulation of the funds and whether the exchanges that will hold them have significant scale.
Commenters on Franklin Templeton are required to further consider market manipulation in the BTC market, the company’s supervisory sharing agreement with Coinbase, which will support price discovery and supplement efforts to detect manipulation and fraud, as well as the relationship between the spot price and the futures price of BTC.
The proposed structure of Hashdex’s fund is more complex than Franklin Templeton’s. Hashdex Bitcoin ETF is structured as a futures ETF holding BTC for immediate delivery. Instead of relying on Coinbase’s supervisory sharing agreement, Hashdex will purchase BTC from other exchanges on CME and rely solely on that pricing mechanism.