The SEC’s strategic delay is to prevent any party from gaining a first-mover advantage. The Ethereum spot ETF may be approved in May next year.

On December 16th, James Seyffart, an ETF analyst at Bloomberg, reiterated in an interview on The Scoop podcast that he believes a Bitcoin spot ETF is likely to be approved before January 10th next year. It is reported that Seyffart has held this view since October this year, with a 90% chance of approval before January 10th next year, as the ETF applications from Ark and 21Shares (submitted in April, earlier than BlackRock) have reached the final deadline. The SEC has been strategically delaying to arrange various applications, or at least approving some applications at the same time, to avoid giving one company a first-mover advantage. However, Grayscale's ETF application is currently different from others and may not be approved at the same time.

Regarding the issue of Ethereum spot ETF, Seyffart said that Ethereum and Bitcoin are completely different, and the SEC may emphasize the difference between Ethereum's current PoS and Bitcoin's PoW. If the SEC wants to stop this approval process, it may postpone the decision or assert that Ethereum is a security. But Seyffart believes that the SEC has implicitly accepted Ethereum as a commodity, so he believes that the Ethereum spot ETF is "more likely" to be approved before the end of May (the final deadline for Ark, 21Shares, and VanEck).