The Securities and Exchange Commission's dogged fight to stop a Bitcoin ETF ended with a whimper on Friday, when the clock ran out for the agency to appeal a key court ruling. This makes it all but certain that a Bitcoin ETF will hit the markets in a relatively short time—the crypto analyst gnomes at Bloomberg gave 90% odds that a product will debut by Jan. 10.
The agency's decision not to appeal the August court ruling in Grayscale v. SEC most likely didn't come about because Chair Gary Gensler had a change of heart. Instead, the reason for the SEC folding its cards probably lies in the fact that its legal resources are already stretched thin in light of Gensler's campaign against crypto—and because the three judges in the case totally shredded the SEC's rationale for denying the ETF in the first place.
