Richard Levin of Nelson Mullins, who chairs the firm’s FinTech and Regulation Practice, was featured in a January 8 article by Katie Greifeld and Allyson Versprille of Bloomberg. The article focuses on several potential exchange-traded fund (ETF) issuers – who are also Bitcoin investors – who filed amended forms with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Levin noted, “Past rejection orders indicated the SEC had concerns about fraud and wash trading in the underlying Bitcoin markets and that surveillance of a market of significant size was needed to address this concern.” He added, “The rejection orders did not define what constitutes a market of significant size.”

He also stated, “Chairman Gensler and the other two Democrat SEC Commissioners could reject the proposed ETFs because the surveillance agreements do not result in surveillance of a market of significant size.” He further added, “The coverage of the proposed ETFs also fails to recognize Chairman Gensler and two other Commissioners could embrace the comments of critics of the proposed ETFs, notably Better Markets, which raised this issue in their comment letters on the proposed ETFs.”

Bloomberg subscribers may read the article here.