United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler has said that the approval of US-based spot Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) is contingent on issuers responding to SEC comments.
According to Gensler, the SEC will not unduly extend the process. Earlier on May 23, 2024, the SEC accepted eight 19b-4 files for spot Ether ETFs on multiple US exchanges, subject to S-1 registration statement clearances for trading.
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas has said that the procedure could take weeks or months, but he predicts the first week of July as the base case. The SEC has yet to explain why it appeared to change its stance on spot Ether ETFs just days before the first decision deadline. However, Gensler told Reuters that the move was influenced by Grayscale’s Bitcoin ETF legal challenge in 2023.
Grayscale’s convincing legal case for Bitcoin futures ETFs played a significant role in the approval of spot Bitcoin ETF. Pelosi and other Democratic members of the House of Representatives backed the FIT21 bill, which was approved on May 22 in the US House of Representatives, which is considered a significant development for the cryptocurrency sector.
Avalanche Core Wallet Enhances Security with Blockaid Integration
Decentralised Blockchain network Avalanche and Web 3.0 security firm Blockaid have announced a collaboration to immediately include Blockaid’s security measures into Avalanche’s Core wallet, which is the main wallet of the Blockchain network. The security integration checks for increasingly complex phishing scams and exploits that affect Web 3.0 users using Blockaid’s threats database.
A Blockaid spokespeople said that too many false positives were loosening the screening standards and allowing hostile actors to exploit additional flaws to carry out their activities. Acknowledging a changing threat landscape will enable them to keep one step ahead of transaction simulators, he said.
Apparently, Blockaid has now flagged certain transactions as suspicious during testing and has also sent warnings on the same.
NY Attorney General Files Lawsuit Against NovaTech Crypto Trader For $1B Fraud
New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed a lawsuit alleging that hundreds of thousands of customers lost more than $1 billion to two crypto businesses with overlapping founders.
According to the lawsuit, more than 11,000 New York residents, primarily members of the New York Haitian community, lost tens of millions of dollars after investing in NovaTech.
The lawsuit says that NovaTech misrepresented its licensing and registration status. Prior to establishing NovaTech, the Petions were among the founders of AWS Mining, which ceased operations in 2019. That company was said to have been a Ponzi scam as well, and was unable to generate enough income to provide the promised returns.
Cynthia Petion has, however, said that the company’s monies were lost as a result of a data breach and they are currently being recovered. The firm had previously mentioned on X (formerly Twitter) that it was hacked in May 2023.
