Investors awaiting approvals from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a range of altcoin ETFs will have to wait longer as the partial shutdown of the U.S. government is underway. The regulator stated that it will not review or approve product applications nor provide any other non-emergency support to applicants during the shutdown, as outlined in the contingency operational plan highlighted on the website.
The SEC is currently reviewing over 90 applications for ETFs based on various altcoins, token combinations, and different digital asset strategies, and Bloomberg analysts predict that likely approvals, starting with products focused on Solana, will be announced in early October.
– The crypto ETF approval season has officially arrived! – joked Bloomberg’s senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas in a post on Tuesday.
Issuers from the traditional finance and digital asset worlds have also proposed funds based on XRP, Cardano, Litecoin, and Dogecoin, among others. Now, the timeline for October seems increasingly unlikely as Republicans and Democrats in the Senate attempt to resolve the budget stalemate. As of Wednesday evening, both sides were entrenched with budget proposals, none of which had garnered enough votes to overcome the filibuster.
Meanwhile, government agencies have had to scale back their daily operations. The SEC has noted that it will have limited staff until further notice. Speaking on stage during the Token2049 event in Singapore, Vladimir Tenev, CEO of Robinhood, told a packed crowd that while there may be some delays, there is optimism that this will be overcome and that there will not be too many interruptions. In a post on X on Wednesday, Nate Geraci, co-founder of the ETF Institute trading group, wrote that the shutdown would definitely impact the launch of new spot crypto ETFs.
