TL; DR
Full story
It wouldn’t be an ‘ETH ETF approval/rejection deadline day’ without mentioning the ETH ETFs.
So here goes (with a unique angle).
Staking is one of the fundamental concepts of crypto (and Ethereum in particular).
It’s the idea that you can lock down your crypto, which helps secure the network, and in return you earn ‘staking rewards’ aka ‘interest’.
So if all these ETH ETFs get approved and they suddenly start buying and holding a ton of ETH, will they deploy them?
Short answer: no.
Here’s what was announced on Tuesday by Cboe (i.e. the exchange that plans to list spot ETH ETFs from Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Ark Invest, Invesco and VanEck):
“Neither the Trust, nor the Sponsor, nor the Custodian, nor any other person associated with the Trust will, directly or indirectly, take any action that would subject any portion of the Trust’s ETH to the Ethereum proof-of- stake validation or used to earn additional ETH or generate revenue or other income,”
So it sounds like it’s off the table – which makes sense given that the ETF providers have to buy and sell ETH as their customers buy and sell it (they can’t risk it being blocked).
This may have been a sticking point for approval that ETF providers were only recently made aware of, hence the changes to the proposals.
It appears that even though staking is an option for ETH, the ETH ETF will work in much the same way as the BTC ETF: helping investors invest in crypto without directly owning crypto.
Hopefully we get good news today!