Leading players in the crypto industry — Grayscale Investments, venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and the think tank Crypto Council for Innovation — have submitted a collective position to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) demanding a rejection of unified regulation for all new exchange-traded products. In my view, this is a fundamentally important signal: the market is tired of "one-size-fits-all" approaches that fail to account for the technical and legal nature of digital assets.
The appeal emphasizes that each ETF or similar exchange-traded instrument should be evaluated by the SEC on an individual basis — relying on specific risks, the issuer's structure, and the underlying asset. The companies categorically oppose the automatic extension of rules created for classic investment funds to products where the underlying assets are not recognized as securities. This is especially relevant in light of recent spot bitcoin ETFs: their approval showed that innovative structures require targeted analysis, not the mechanical transfer of old regulations.
What the industry proposes
Key points of the appeal include the introduction of more predictable and clear timelines for reviewing applications, as well as the creation of a mechanism for confidential pre-clearance of documents before official submission. This would allow issuers to adjust product structures at an early stage, reducing regulatory costs and shortening time to market. In the current paradigm, where the SEC delays decisions for years and sometimes outright rejects applications without transparent reasoning, such measures appear not just desirable but critically necessary.
Notably, the initiative comes from entities that have themselves repeatedly faced the SEC's rigidity — Grayscale won a court case against the regulator in 2023 over the conversion of GBTC into an ETF, setting a precedent that changed the market. Now the industry is trying to consolidate this success at a systemic level.
My comment: If the SEC heeds these arguments, we will see an acceleration of innovation in the digital asset space — from ETFs on altcoins to tokenized funds. However, the likelihood of a complete overhaul of the regulator's approach remains low: bureaucratic inertia and the commission's caution regarding cryptocurrencies are unlikely to disappear overnight. Nevertheless, pressure from giants like a16z and Grayscale creates a solid foundation for future changes.