- A federal appeals court sided with Grayscale Investments in its lawsuit against the SEC.
- The court ruled that the SEC must reverse its rejection of the Grayscale spot Bitcoin ETF and review the application.
- Major cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and BNB, saw significant gains following the court ruling.
In a watershed moment for the cryptocurrency industry, a U.S. federal appeals court sided with GBTC issuer Grayscale Investments in its lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over its application for a spot Bitcoin ETF. The court ruled that securities regulators must reverse their rejection of a spot Bitcoin ETF and review Grayscale’s application for it.
BTC gets 6% on the court side in grayscale.
According to a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Grayscale’s petition for review was granted and the SEC was ordered to vacate its previous order denying the GBTC issuer’s application for a spot Bitcoin ETF. The ruling comes more than a year after Grayscale sued the SEC for rejecting its application.
In a separate court opinion filed by Circuit Judge Rao, the court cited the SEC’s unequal treatment of the spot BTC ETF and the BTC Futures ETF, emphasizing that the federal agency should treat the case equally. The court also noted that securities regulators unreasonably applied the Howey test while evaluating the application of grayscale.
“The rejection of Grayscale’s proposal was arbitrary and capricious because the Commission failed to account for its different treatment of similar products.”
US Court of Appeals
The judges criticized the SEC for failing to explain how Grayscale’s spot BTC ETF would affect the price of Bitcoin futures traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. They also highlighted that securities regulators have dismissed evidence that could have alleviated concerns related to the application of grayscale.
The federal appeals court ruling sent Bitcoin prices up 5.9%. The latest development also triggered a significant rally in the prices of other cryptocurrencies, including ETH (4.6%), BNB (6%), XRP (4.5%), ADA (6%), and others.