The CEO of Osprey Funds – an issuer of over-the-counter bitcoin trust OBTCs – did not hold his breath at this year’s approval of a Bitcoin Exchange Traded Fund (BTC) (ETF) in the US.

Speaking to Jared Blikre and Seana Smith of Yahoo Finance on July 19, Greg King said he believes the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), led by Gary Gensler, will be too busy for BTC ETFs in 2021. To make cuts.

King recalls the hype in the crypto industry surrounding the appointment of Gensler, who, despite his previous comments on crypto regulation, is known for his courses, who has taught blockchain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the past few years.

“You have seen a range of uses from established companies to newbies pursuing this Bitcoin ETF idea,” King said. The CEO himself chatted with SEC staff for several years when Osprey – the parent company of Osprey Funds – filed for its own Bitcoin ETF in 2017. King argued:

“If a Bitcoin ETF goes through the Gensler administration, it will not be the case this year in my opinion.” […] There is also quite a bit of language and rhetoric, and issues raised by employees with previous applications need to be addressed. So this is not a car race. “

In addition, disappointing expectations of a “slam dunk” may have played a role in the market correction this summer, with King claiming that the “market is in a partial correction” of that disappointment.

While for King the high number of Bitcoin ETF applications in the US at the beginning of the year was included in Bitcoin’s unusual bull run in 2021 and its stagnation subsequently contributed to the downturn, he also added that the recent radical regulatory remarks in the US in relation to private stablecoins were not “particularly helpful for Bitcoin or Ethereum”.

This week, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told members of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets – also known as the Plunge Defense Group – that the government must act quickly to establish a regulatory framework for stablecoins. Earlier this year, Yellen also warned that cryptocurrency abuse is a growing problem.

At the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell reiterated Yellen’s appeal, saying that if stablecoins are “going to be an important part of the payments universe, then we need an adequate regulatory framework that will be blunt.” It turns out we don’t have any. “

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Given this context – and since crypto ETFs have already been approved in Canada, Europe and other jurisdictions – King said the US was “determined to lag behind,” but “that is clearly the choice”:

“I think if I had to guess more generally whether a Bitcoin ETF makes sense at this point, I think they are thinking about it, but really more about the precedent we will have in approving one. “