Key takeaways:
- The most recent Wall Street company to apply for a spot Ether Exchange Traded Fund in the US is Franklin Templeton.
- Franklin stated that it would anticipate staking Ether from the cold storage wallets of the trust and that as a result, the trust would earn staking incentives, which would be considered income.
The most recent Wall Street company to apply for a spot Ether Exchange Traded Fund in the US is Franklin Templeton.
On February 12, the asset management company valued at $1.5 trillion filed the S-1 report with the US Securities Exchange Commission. The Chicago Board Options Exchange would offer it as the “Franklin Ethereum ETF” if it were approved.
Remarkably, Franklin said that it planned to stake a portion of the ETF’s Ether in order to generate extra revenue, a move that is reminiscent of ARK 21Shares’ updated S-1 filing from last week.
“The Sponsor may, from time to time, stake a portion of the Fund’s assets through one or more trusted staking providers, which may include an affiliate of the Sponsor.”
Franklin stated that it would anticipate staking Ether from the cold storage wallets of the trust and that as a result, the trust would earn staking incentives, which would be considered income.
SEC approval is being sought by BlackRock, VanEck, Fidelity, Invesco Galaxy, Grayscale, and Hashdex, among other spot Ether ETF candidates.
VanEck’s application must be decided by May 23, ARK 21Shares by May 24, Hashdex by May 30, Grayscale by June 18, and Invesco by July 5. The SEC has this deadline. Applications from Fidelity and BlackRock must be decided by August 3 and August 7, respectively.
But according to James Seyffart, an analyst for Bloomberg ETFs, a judgement on all applicants should be made by May 23. This is comparable to the way the US securities authority decided on all spot Bitcoin ETFs on January 10.
Eric Balchunas, a fellow Bloomberg ETF analyst who works for Seyffart, recently reduced the likelihood that a spot Ether ETF will be approved in 2024 from 70% to 60% on January 30. One of the ten ETF issuers who introduced a spot Bitcoin ETF in the US last month was Franklin.
Although Franklin joined the Ether ETF race somewhat late, it recently lauded the network foundations of other blockchains, like Solana and Ethereum, which raised the possibility that the ETF issuer would consider branching out beyond Bitcoin.
