A United States court of appeals is about to hear oral arguments regarding Grayscale Investment’s lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over its decision to deny the Bitcoin (BTC) spot exchange-traded fund (ETF). from Grayscale.
According to a judicial motion filed on January 23, both sides will present their arguments in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on March 7, 2023, at 9:30 a.m. local time.
Oral arguments are oral presentations by attorneys that outline why their clients should win the case. Each party to the case takes turns speaking and responding directly to the judge’s questions and is given an equal amount of time to do so.
Mark your calendars. Oral arguments in our case challenging SEC decision to deny $GBTC conversion to spot #bitcoin ETF was just scheduled for
*Tuesday, March 7, 2023 @ 930 AM EST*. pic.twitter.com/PMQVUsebMO—Craig Salm (@CraigSalm) January 24, 2023
In a message on Twitter on January 24, Grayscale’s General Counsel Craig Salm said the newly filed motion was “welcome news”, for previously they were anticipating that oral arguments would be scheduled “as soon as the second quarter of the year.”
The composition of the argument panel in the Grayscale case will be revealed on February 6, 30 days before the oral hearing date, while the amount of time for argument will be set in a separate order, according to the motion.
Grayscale launched its legal dispute against the SEC in June 2022 after the regulator rejected its request to convert its $12 billion Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a spot ETF.
Earlier this month, Grayscale filed a rebuttal brief with the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, alleging that the SEC acted arbitrarily in treating spot-traded ETFs differently from futures-based traded products and that the The SEC overreached its duties when it denied Grayscale’s request to launch a Bitcoin ETF.
Grayscale’s CEO, Michael Sonnenshein, reiterated a similar point during an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box on January 24:
“It’s important to remember the role that regulators like the SEC play vis-a-vis investors. They’re not here to tell investors what they should or shouldn’t invest in. They’re here to ensure all the right information is disclosed […] so that investors are aware of all associated risks”.
“Crypto is here to stay. Regulators are not here to tell investors what to and what not to invest in. They’re here to ensure all the proper disclosures are made…so investors understand all the risks associated,” says @Grayscale @sonnenshein. “That’s really the role of the SEC.” pic.twitter.com/k30y6DewBe
— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) January 24, 2023
Sonnenshein said that They “certainly expect” a decision from the courts regarding their case against the SEC in the “second or third quarter of this year.”
“The frustrating thing for investors and certainly for the Grayscale team is that we are actually a business that was born in the US, made use of existing US regulatory frameworks to bring cryptocurrency to investors in a safe and compliant way. “.
“We met with both chambers yesterday and today, what we’re really hearing […] is that if the SEC had already approved this Bitcoin spot ETF […] a lot of the recent investor hurt we’ve seen in cryptocurrencies would have been avoided,” added.
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