Bitcoin and major tokens gave back all weekly gains as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission delayed key ETF decisions that were expected on Friday, dampening traders’ hopes of a long-term recovery.
Bitcoin (BTC) slid under $26,000 to retrace all gains made earlier this week. In the past 24 hours, majors dogecoin (DOGE) and solana (SOL) fell as much as 5.5%, and ether (ETH) lost 3.7%. Elsewhere, bitcoin cash (BCH) slid 7.7%.
Only tron (TRX) and toncoin (TON) were in the green on Friday, up over 1% each on no immediate catalysts.
The rush for the exits ahead of the weekend came as the SEC said late Thursday it had delayed until October making a decision on all of the spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) applications filed by applicants including BlackRock, WisdomTree, Invesco Galaxy, Wise Origin, VanEck, Bitwise and Valkyrie Digital Assets earlier this year.
This followed from Tuesday’s reports of a U.S. federal court ordering the SEC to “vacate” its rejection of the trust issuer’s bid to convert the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into an exchange-traded fund.
GBTC is a publicly traded bitcoin fund offered by Grayscale (Grayscale and CoinDesk share the same parent company, Digital Currency Group), which could potentially open the door for a spot bitcoin ETF in the U.S – even as the SEC has disapproved every such ETF application it’s reviewed to date.
