Americans may get a bitcoin spot ETF soon (w/ Craig Salm)

Aug 31, 2023

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Welcome to Chain Reaction.

A podcast that unpacks and dives deep into the latest trends, drama and news in crypto with some of the biggest names in the industry to break things down block by block for the crypto curious.

For this week’s news episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Craig Salm, chief legal officer at Grayscale Investments.

Grayscale is a digital asset investment firm that aims to provide products and services, like its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), to institutional and individual investors. The company was founded in 2014 and is one of the world’s largest digital asset currency managers. It currently owns 3.4% of outstanding bitcoin, “worth tens of billions of dollars,” according to a recent legal filing.

The firm was making headlines this week after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Grayscale in a lawsuit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on the matter of a bitcoin ETF. This ruling is in response to the SEC denying Grayscale’s application to convert its GBTC product into a bitcoin spot ETF in June 2022.

We discussed why the ruling matters for Grayscale and its GBTC investment vehicle; as well as what it could mean for the crypto ecosystem and other firms like BlackRock, Citadel and Fidelity that also filed applications for bitcoin spot ETFs.

We also talked about the SEC’s argued difference between bitcoin futures ETFs, which have been approved by the agency, and bitcoin spot ETFs, which have not been approved by the agency.

Not quite caught up on bitcoin ETFs? Here’s some TechCrunch coverage:

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