Canary Capital has filed a registration statement for a Litecoin LTC -0.12% exchange-traded fund with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, days after doing the same for its XRP product.
The cryptocurrency investment firm filed an S-1 registration statement for the Canary Litecoin ETF on Tuesday. The fund aims to “provide exposure to the value of LTC held by the trust,” according to the filing. The names of the administrators and managers have not been disclosed.
Steven McClurg founded Canary Capital and previously founded Valkyrie Funds, which manages other spot crypto ETFs.
Canary Capital said in a statement that Litecoin plays a “leading role in the broader crypto ecosystem” and will therefore be “attractive to a broader range of institutional investors.”
“Canary believes that Litecoin offers a unique and attractive opportunity for investors seeking exposure to a time-tested and reliable cryptocurrency,” the company said in an emailed statement. Ta. “As one of the longest-running blockchains with 100% uptime since its inception, Litecoin has a proven track record of security and reliability in critical enterprise-grade use cases.”
Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seifert said in a post about He said the product held Litecoin.
Seyffart also pointed out that Litecoin could be similar to Bitcoin in a regulatory sense. The SEC approved a spot Bitcoin ETF earlier this year.
“Due to the fact that Litecoin has forked from Bitcoin, we believe it is likely that as a commodity it will have similar regulatory status to Bitcoin,” Seifert said in a statement to The Block. “However, gaining ETF approval under the current administration would require a large, liquid, federally regulated futures market in the United States, and Litecoin does not currently meet that requirement.”
It is also possible that future presidential elections will be affected. Former President Donald Trump, considered industry-friendly, said he would fire SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.
“So I think this is primarily a bet on a possible Trump victory and a change in SEC leadership,” Seifert said. “We will need to see a 19b-4 filing before the SEC action begins.”
A 19b-4 filing is a document filed by an exchange on behalf of an issuer and, once filed, begins the SEC approval process.
Canary Capital filed an S-1 registration statement for a spot XRP ETF earlier this month, and Bitwise has filed a similar product. Spot XRP ETFs have not previously been approved by the SEC and could face challenges if approved. The SEC is embroiled in a legal battle with Ripple after accusing the company of raising $1.3 billion through the sale of XRP, which it considers to be an unregistered security.
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