Better late than never. Global asset manager Franklin Templeton has applied for a spot Ethereum ETF, becoming the latest to step into the fiercely competitive ETF race. The $1.5 trillion-valued firm recently filed a Form S-1 registration statement with the SEC, joining a galaxy of ETF applicants that include Ark and 21Share, BlackRock, Grayscale, VanEck, etc. While the above-mentioned AUMs filed their Spot Ethereum ETF applications in Q4 2023, FTI’s move has once again set the ball rolling in the regulator’s court.
The SEC, on the other hand, has so far chosen to push back applications, adopting the same tactic with Invesco and Galaxy’s Ethereum ETF as of the latest update. Industry experts have expressed no surprise, noting that more delays will continue to happen in the coming months. ETH ETF’s crucial deadline now rests around May 23rd, which is also the cutoff time for VanEck, according to popular crypto investor Lark Davis.
He even predicted that the ETH price would go up to $4000 by then. Others, like Stevan Nerayoff, shared a more radical outlook. Nerayoff, a former Ethereum consultant, stated, “SEC chair Gary Gensler’s indirect approval for Prometheum Inc. to designate ETH as a security that effectively endorses an ETF covertly.”
Here is the list of the Spot Ethereum ETF filings.
Franklin Templeton’s filing has undoubtedly sparked a buzz in the community. Earlier, FTI’s spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund received the green light from the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC].
Ethereum Validators Line In
In anticipation of the upcoming Dencun upgrade, staking among Ethereum validators has marked a substantial increase. More entities are rushing in to participate, leading to a rise in the validator entry queue. This is corroborated by data where the figure stood at 6187, representing over 200k Ether worth nearly $500 million, at press time. The entry of new players leads to a network build-up-like scenario that might take a little over 48 hours to be sorted out.
It is to be noted that there are limitations on the number of new validators that can join the network per epoch. One Ethereum epoch lasts roughly 6.4 minutes. These new players are called validators and can be either individuals or entities that need at least 32 Ether to stake in the network, enabling them to participate in running Ethereum’s proof-of-stake consensus blockchain.