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(Reuters) -New U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission guidance on disclosure requirements for exchange-traded products tied to cryptocurrencies marked the first step toward approval of dozens of applications for ETFs linked to everything from Solana and XRP to President Donald Trump's eponymous meme coin.
The guidance, issued last Tuesday, signaled a dramatic shift by Republican leadership in how the top U.S. markets regulator deals with the crypto sector. The SEC has launched a task force to draft new regulations, refocused its crypto enforcement team and paused or altogether walked away from high-profile enforcement cases that many thought the agency was winning.
The 12-page document is the first part of the new landscape for crypto funds that SEC staff members are designing. Asset managers also anticipate guidance from the SEC's division of trading and markets on ways to streamline the application process, said people familiar with the discussions. This should accelerate the pace for new product debuts.
"The SEC is moving forward on creating a framework for how they'd like to see all these crypto assets included in investment funds" to address the "explosion" in the number of ETFs now awaiting a regulatory verdict, said Sui Chung, CEO of crypto index provider CF Benchmarks.
Industry participants said they saw few surprises so far.
"The most interesting and important thing about this guidance is that it exists," said Matt Hougan, chief investment officer of Bitwise Asset Management, which has more than half a dozen crypto ETFs awaiting SEC approval.
"It suggests that the SEC acknowledges that crypto ETPs are becoming part of the mainstream and so it's trying to lay down rules of the road to save both issuers and SEC staff time and hassle."
The SEC guidance spells out that in order to be approved, issuers must clearly address, in "plain English", all factors that make crypto-based ETFs distinctive, such as custody arrangements and risks of the hyper-competitive landscape.
The next document, however, is likely to prove more significant. According to several people familiar with the ongoing discussions, who could not speak publicly due to the confidentiality of those proceedings, the SEC staff is seeking to create a new listing template to replace the current need for exchanges to submit a special form each time they want to list a new crypto product.
That form, known as a 19(b)4, asks for an exemption from current listing rules for the specific ETF. Eliminating that from the process could cut the time between filing and launch da
tes from as much as 240 days to only 75 days.