Gary Gensler Provides Ethereum ETF Update While Slamming ‘Highly Centralized’ Crypto Industry

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler says that the approval process for spot market Ethereum (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) is “going smoothly.”

In a new interview at the Bloomberg Invest Summit in New York, Gensler indicates that the SEC will give final approval to the ETH ETF applications, but stops short of giving a timeline.

He says that the agency’s staff is working through the particulars of required registration and disclosure statements for the ETH ETFs.

“I don’t know the timing, but it’s going smoothly. You can almost follow it publicly. You see these filings…

And it’s really about the asset managers making the full disclosure so that those registration statements can go effective and those lawyers know what that is. It’s something our Division of Corporation Finance handles hundreds, if not thousands of times over anybody’s career. It’s smoothly functioning. It’s really up to the asset managers to make the proper disclosures.”

Bloomberg exchange-traded fund (ETF) expert Eric Balchunas recently said ETH ETFS may be approved by July 2nd.

In the same interview, Gensler also lobbed criticism at the crypto sector, calling it “highly centralized.”

“So much of this field is highly centralized. It’s not decentralized. That’s not what’s happening here. It’s highly centralized around a few platforms that are also centralizing and commingling things that we would never allow anywhere else. And we don’t. The law doesn’t allow you to be trading against your customers and operating a so-called exchange and trading in front and possibly also taking investments in a investment contract or security and then listing and getting the listing pop.

These are all happening potentially at these, and we see some of the leading [ones who] two years ago would have filled a room much bigger than this if they were sitting on this stage are now sitting in jail or awaiting jail.”

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