According to three industry insiders, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has granted preliminary clearance to at least three of the eight asset managers intending to start trading exchange-traded funds linked to the spot price of ether on Tuesday of next week.

According to the sources, approval is contingent upon applicants providing authorities with their final offering documentation by this coming Friday. According to one, all eight are anticipated to launch at the same time.

According to an SEC representative, the organisation doesn’t address specific filings.

\The introduction of the ether products would be a significant victory for the cryptocurrency industry’s drive to bring digital assets into the mainstream, after the introduction of nine U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs in January. After bitcoin, ether is the second-largest cryptocurrency globally.

Industry sources who spoke on background due to the confidentiality of the discussion with the SEC said that BlackRock, VanEck, and Franklin Templeton are among the eight asset managers whose applications are likely to be approved by the SEC next Monday afternoon, July 22. Trading in the products is expected to begin the following day.

Late Monday afternoon trading saw ether trade at $3,433.07, up 7.1% for the day and a 14.4% gain for the cryptocurrency over the previous week.

After a ten-year battle with the SEC over worries about market manipulation, spot ETFs tracking the price of bitcoin were finally launched in January.

The SEC lost a legal battle by digital asset management Grayscale Investments, forcing it to approve the ETFs despite warning that the products were extremely dangerous.

According to Morningstar Direct statistics, the nine new products attracted around $6.6 billion in assets within their first three weeks of trading, making the launch one of the most successful in the history of the ETF industry. The ETFs had drawn a net inflow of $33.1 billion as of the end of June.

MarketVector Indexes’ digital asset product strategist, Martin Leinweber, stated that he anticipates much more moderate inflows into the new ether ETFs as well as more volatility in ether’s price because of its lower market size and trading volumes in comparison to bitcoin, which hit a new high following the ETFs’ introduction.

Compared to ether’s $359 billion market value, bitcoin is worth slightly more than $1 trillion, according to CoinGecko.

Leinweber stated, “It’s important to temper expectations.”

Galaxy Research, whose sister business Galaxy Asset Management has an ether ETF with Invesco, has predicted that the ether products may draw $1 billion in monthly inflows, despite the fact that demand estimates vary greatly.

According to Thomas Perfumo, head of strategy at cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, ether inflows do not have to equal bitcoin ETF levels in order to be deemed successful because of the smaller market size of ether.

September saw the start of issuer filings for the ether ETFs. At first, executives were not optimistic that the SEC would approve the items because they discouraged interactions with authorities.

However, the agency shocked the market in May by approving the first of two significant regulatory obstacles, which called for exchanges to list the products.

Gary Gensler, the chair of the SEC, told Reuters last month that the Grayscale case had affected his decision to approve the ether products since the underlying market conditions were comparable.

(Adapted from LiiveMint.com)