SEC Bitcoin ETF Approval History: From Winklevoss to Thirteen Assets
A decade of denials, a vacated order, then an entire product category. The spot crypto ETF timeline with the real release numbers, from 2017 to the thirteen assets trading now.
TL;DR. The US spot Bitcoin ETF took more than ten years and a federal court to arrive. The first application came from the Winklevoss twins in 2013 and was disapproved in Release 34-80206 on 10 March 2017, by SEC staff rather than the Commission. Denials stayed the default until the D.C. Circuit vacated the rejection of Grayscale's conversion in August 2023. On 10 January 2024 the Commission approved eleven listings in one order, Release 34-99306, and trading began the next day. It didn't end there: in-kind creations in July 2025, generic listing standards in September 2025, staking in ether funds from October 2025, and thirteen assets in our tracker by September 2026.
The application that set the template (2013-2017)
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss filed the first US Bitcoin ETF application in July 2013 for the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust. The listing exchange, Bats BZX, filed the rule change on 30 June 2016, and the Commission took the full statutory runway before disapproving it on 10 March 2017. That order, Release No. 34-80206 (File No. SR-BatsBZX-2016-30), is worth reading because almost every denial for the next six years reused its logic. The SEC didn't say bitcoin was bad. It said the listing exchange couldn't police the market it depended on:
"The Commission continues to believe that surveillance-sharing agreements between the exchange listing shares of a commodity-trust ETP and significant, regulated markets related to the underlying asset provide a 'necessary deterrent to manipulation.'"
From there the order set the test quoted back at applicants for years: whether "regulated markets of significant size exist, in either bitcoin or derivatives on bitcoin, with which the Exchange has, or could enter into, a surveillance-sharing agreement." In 2017 the answer was no. Most volume sat on offshore venues with, in the order's words, "little to no regulation governing trading."
The closing paragraph left a door open, and applicants spent six years walking through it: bitcoin was "still in the relatively early stages of its development" and "over time, regulated bitcoin-related markets of significant size may develop."
Who actually signed the 2017 rejection
This is the part most timelines get wrong, and it's more interesting than a name. The March 2017 order was not a decision by the Commissioners at all. Its signature block reads:
"For the Commission, by the Division of Trading and Markets, pursuant to delegated authority. Eduardo A. Aleman, Assistant Secretary."
The footnote points to 17 CFR 200.30-3(a)(12). The SEC delegates routine exchange rule filings to staff so the Commissioners don't vote on each one. Staff act in the Commission's name and the order carries full legal force, but no Commissioner has necessarily read it.
Delegated actions come with a safety valve: under Rule 431 of the SEC's Rules of Practice a party can petition the Commission to review what staff did. BZX did, review was granted, and on 26 July 2018 the Commissioners issued Release No. 34-83723, "Order Setting Aside Action by Delegated Authority and Disapproving a Proposed Rule Change." The operative line does two things at once:
"the earlier action taken by delegated authority, Exchange Act Release No. 80206 (Mar. 10, 2017), 82 FR 14076 (Mar. 16, 2017), is set aside and, pursuant to Section 19(b)(2) of the Exchange Act, SR-BatsBZX-2016-30 is disapproved."
So the 2017 staff order was formally wiped and the same filing was disapproved again at Commission level sixteen months later. That matters for reading the rest of the saga. When people say the SEC "rejected bitcoin ETFs twenty times," they're mixing staff orders, Commission orders, instituted proceedings and applicant withdrawals, which are four different things. We haven't found a reliable public count that separates them, so this article doesn't give a number.
The years of no (2017-2021)
The pattern held through two SEC chairs. Applications came from VanEck and SolidX, Bitwise, WisdomTree and others; some were disapproved, some withdrawn. The reasoning barely moved: without a surveillance-sharing agreement with a regulated market of significant size, a listing exchange couldn't meet Section 6(b)(5) of the Exchange Act.
Then came a compromise that would later be used against the agency. In October 2021 the SEC let bitcoin futures ETFs onto the market, starting with the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO), which began trading on 19 October 2021. CME bitcoin futures trade on a CFTC-regulated venue, so the "regulated market" box was ticked. Futures exposure carries a cost spot doesn't, because the fund rolls expiring contracts and usually pays up to do it. How big that drag is depends on the curve in a given year and published estimates vary widely, so we won't put one percentage on it. Mechanics in our spot vs futures Bitcoin ETF comparison.
Grayscale, the court, and a vacated order
Grayscale Bitcoin Trust was the strangest thing in the category. It held bitcoin and filed 10-Ks, but its shares were quoted on OTCQX rather than listed, and with no creation and redemption mechanism nothing forced the price toward net asset value. Grayscale's own fact sheet said the shares "have not reflected the value of Bitcoin held by GBTC" and "instead traded at a premium or discount to such value, which at times has been substantial." That discount is the whole story of GBTC before and after conversion.
In October 2021 Grayscale filed to convert the trust into a listed spot ETF on NYSE Arca. The SEC denied it in June 2022 on the familiar surveillance grounds. Grayscale sued, and on 29 August 2023 the D.C. Circuit ruled for Grayscale, finding the denial arbitrary and capricious: the agency accepted CME surveillance for futures and couldn't explain why the same arrangement failed for spot. The SEC's own January 2024 order describes what the court did, and the wording matters:
"On review of the Grayscale Order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that the Commission failed to adequately explain its reasoning. The court therefore vacated the Grayscale Order and remanded the matter to the Commission."
Vacated and remanded is not the same as ordered to approve. The court knocked out the explanation, not the outcome, and the SEC was free to write a better denial. It chose not to, and that choice is where the reasoning actually changed.
10 January 2024: what the order actually did
Release No. 34-99306, dated 10 January 2024, is one document covering eleven rule filings on three exchanges. NYSE Arca listed Grayscale, Bitwise and Hashdex; Nasdaq listed the iShares Bitcoin Trust and the Valkyrie Bitcoin Fund; Cboe BZX listed ARK 21Shares, Invesco Galaxy, VanEck, WisdomTree, Fidelity and Franklin. Trading began the next day, 11 January 2024, which is where the bitcoin flow series in our tracker starts.
Two details usually get lost. It was signed "By the Commission" by Secretary Vanessa A. Countryman, so after years of staff-level denials the approval was a Commission decision. And the eleven were not all approved under one rule: ten went in as Commodity-Based Trust Shares, while the Hashdex product used NYSE Arca Rule 8.500-E, covering Trust Units. That registration took its own path and today trades as the Hashdex Nasdaq Crypto Index US ETF (NCIQ), an index fund rather than a single-asset bitcoin trust.
Chair Gensler published a statement the same day. It is regularly misquoted as saying the court left him no option. He didn't say that. What he wrote was:
"Based on these circumstances and those discussed more fully in the approval order, I feel the most sustainable path forward is to approve the listing and trading of these spot bitcoin ETP shares."
And, in the same statement, a sentence issuers have been living with ever since:
"While we approved the listing and trading of certain spot bitcoin ETP shares today, we did not approve or endorse bitcoin."
"Most sustainable path forward" is an administrative-law judgement, not a surrender. The Commission had lost on reasoning, a fresh denial would have been litigated again, and approving was the position it could defend.
Ether, six months later
Ether moved faster because the argument was settled. The SEC approved the exchange rule changes in Release No. 100224 on 23 May 2024, published at 89 FR 46937, but that only cleared the listing standard. Each fund still needed an effective S-1, which came on 22 July 2024, and trading began on 23 July 2024, where our ether flow series starts. Grayscale's filings confirm it for the converted trust: the shares "began trading on NYSE Arca on July 23, 2024."
Those products launched without staking, a real gap since a direct holder could stake and a fund holder could not. That is no longer the state of play, and any article still describing it that way is out of date.
The timeline, with documents
| Date | Event | Document | What changed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 2013 | First US spot Bitcoin ETF application | Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust, filed via Bats BZX | Starts a decade of review |
| 10 Mar 2017 | Disapproval by SEC staff | Release 34-80206, SR-BatsBZX-2016-30 | Sets the "market of significant size" test |
| 26 Jul 2018 | Commission sets aside its own staff order and disapproves | Release 34-83723 | Same outcome, now Commission-level, under Rule 431 |
| 19 Oct 2021 | First bitcoin futures ETF trades | ProShares BITO | CME futures accepted as the regulated market |
| Oct 2021 | Grayscale files to convert GBTC | SR-NYSEARCA-2021-90 | Sets up the case that breaks the deadlock |
| Jun 2022 | SEC denies the GBTC conversion | The "Grayscale Order" | Grayscale sues |
| 29 Aug 2023 | D.C. Circuit rules for Grayscale | Grayscale Investments v. SEC | Order vacated and remanded, not an order to approve |
| 10 Jan 2024 | Eleven spot bitcoin listings approved at once | Release 34-99306, 89 FR 3008 | Trading opens 11 Jan 2024 |
| 23 May 2024 | Ether listing rules approved | Release 100224, 89 FR 46937 | Clears the listing standard for ETH |
| 23 Jul 2024 | Spot ether funds begin trading | S-1s effective 22 Jul 2024 | Second asset in the category |
| 29 Jul 2025 | In-kind creations and redemptions permitted | Release 34-103571 | APs can deliver coin instead of cash |
| 17 Sep 2025 | Generic listing standards approved | NYSE Arca Rule 8.201-E (Generic); SR-NASDAQ-2025-056 | New crypto ETPs no longer need a bespoke 19b-4 |
| Oct 2025 onward | Staking switched on inside US ether funds | Issuer 8-K filings | Closes the yield gap of the 2024 launches |
What changed after the first approval
Three post-2024 decisions did more for the category than the January order, and none made the same headlines.
In-kind creations and redemptions, 29 July 2025. Release No. 34-103571 approved nine rule filings across Nasdaq, Cboe BZX and NYSE Arca to let bitcoin and ether trusts create and redeem in kind rather than only in cash. Authorised participants can now deliver coin for shares and take coin on redemption, which cuts a step, a spread and a taxable transaction out of the plumbing. See how authorised participants work.
Generic listing standards, 17 September 2025. This is the one that quietly rewrote the rest of the story. Until then every new crypto ETP needed its own 19b-4 rule change, comment period and Commission order, which is what made each approval a news event. On 17 September 2025 the SEC approved generic standards, including NYSE Arca Rule 8.201-E (Generic) and the Nasdaq equivalent filed as SR-NASDAQ-2025-056, so a product meeting the criteria can be listed without a bespoke order. Grayscale's 8-K describes moving its ether trust off the "Original Listing Standards" of May 2024 onto the generic ones.
Staking, from October 2025. The generic standards also unlocked staking, and issuer filings show the sequence. Grayscale filed 8-Ks on 6 October 2025 for its ether trust and mini trust confirming the staking condition had been satisfied, using third-party providers while the ether stays in the trust's own custodial wallets. 21Shares announced staking for TETH on 8 October 2025, with a twelve-month waiver of its 0.21% sponsor fee. BlackRock took a different route: rather than add staking to ETHA it registered a separate fund, the iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHB), effective 11 March 2026. Fidelity signed its staking agreements on 7 August 2026, keeping 15% of rewards and passing 85% to the fund as quarterly cash distributions, effective 21 August 2026.
ETHA itself still doesn't stake, and says so in its annual report: neither the trust, the sponsor nor any custodian "will, directly or indirectly, employ the Trust's ether in Staking Activities," so it "will not earn any form of staking rewards." That's a per-fund choice now, not a regulatory ban. We compare the products in Ethereum ETF staking explained.
Solana and XRP stopped being forecasts
Older versions of this timeline, ours included, called Solana applications pending and XRP's path unclear. Both statements expired about a year ago, and our own flow data shows it.
Our Solana series starts on 27 October 2025 and our XRP series on 14 November 2025. These are not paper filings. Solana funds include BSOL (Bitwise Solana Staking ETF), GSOL (Grayscale), SOLC (Canary Marinade), FSOL (Fidelity), VSOL (VanEck), TSOL (21Shares) and SOEZ (Franklin), with QSOL (Invesco) and MSOL (Morgan Stanley) also registered. On XRP: the Bitwise XRP ETF (ticker XRP), Canary XRP ETF, XRPZ (Franklin), GXRP (Grayscale) and TOXR (21Shares).
Note how many of those names contain the word "Staking." The argument about whether a US fund could stake was settled before Solana funds launched, so they were built with it from the start. Current status and fees: Solana ETF approval status and XRP ETF outlook.
One asset became thirteen
After September 2025 the launches stopped arriving one at a time. Below is every asset we track, with the first date in our flow series and cumulative net flow since, as of 23 September 2026. The small numbers aren't a rounding error. They're the point: listing is now cheap enough that funds launch into demand that may never show up.
| Asset | First day in our flow series | Cumulative net flow to 23 Sep 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | 11 Jan 2024 | +$57.3bn |
| Ether | 23 Jul 2024 | +$13.8bn |
| Solana | 27 Oct 2025 | +$1.54bn |
| Hedera | 28 Oct 2025 | +$68.7m |
| Litecoin | 28 Oct 2025 | +$8.3m |
| XRP | 14 Nov 2025 | +$1.60bn |
| Dogecoin | 24 Nov 2025 | +$15.3m |
| Chainlink | 2 Dec 2025 | +$199.9m |
| Avalanche | 26 Jan 2026 | +$55.4m |
| Sui | 18 Feb 2026 | +$87.2m |
| Polkadot | 6 Mar 2026 | +$10.6m |
| Hyperliquid | 12 May 2026 | +$340.5m |
| BNB | 28 May 2026 | +$2.7m |
Bitcoin and ether account for roughly 95% of everything that has flowed into the category. Live numbers are on our flow dashboard and fund directory; the 2026 launch list with tickers and fees is in new crypto ETFs of 2026.
What the history actually predicts
Read whole, the record says three things worth carrying forward.
- The binding constraint was procedure, not policy. For a decade the answer turned on whether a listing exchange could get surveillance data, and that was settled by litigation, not argument. Once generic standards existed, approval mostly stopped being a question.
- Approval says nothing about demand. Nine of the thirteen assets we track have taken in under $250m in total since launch. Getting listed and getting bought are unrelated problems, and flow data is where the difference shows up. Our guide to reading ETF flows covers what the daily numbers can and can't tell you.
- The interesting decisions come after launch. In-kind mechanics and staking changed what a crypto ETF is far more than the eleventh ticker did. That's where to look next, whether the argument is about options, in-kind for altcoin funds, or how staking rewards are taxed.
One caveat. This is a history of public documents, not advice about what to buy. Every release number and date here comes from an SEC order or issuer filing, but a fund's fee, structure and staking policy can change with one 8-K, so check the current prospectus of anything you're considering.
FAQ
When was the first US spot Bitcoin ETF approved?
On 10 January 2024, in Release No. 34-99306, the SEC approved eleven rule changes across NYSE Arca, Nasdaq and Cboe BZX to list spot bitcoin products, and trading began the next day. The order was signed "By the Commission" rather than issued by staff under delegated authority.
Who rejected the first Bitcoin ETF in 2017?
Not the Chair, and not the Commissioners. Release 34-80206 of 10 March 2017 was issued "for the Commission, by the Division of Trading and Markets, pursuant to delegated authority" and signed by Assistant Secretary Eduardo A. Aleman. The listing exchange petitioned for review under Rule 431, and on 26 July 2018 the Commission set that staff order aside and disapproved the same filing in Release 34-83723.
What was the Grayscale v. SEC ruling?
On 29 August 2023 the D.C. Circuit held that the SEC failed to adequately explain why it accepted CME surveillance for bitcoin futures but rejected it for spot. As the SEC put it in the January 2024 order, the court "vacated the Grayscale Order and remanded the matter to the Commission." It did not order the SEC to approve anything.
Did Gensler say the court left the SEC no other option?
No. That quote does not appear in his 10 January 2024 statement. What he wrote was that "based on these circumstances and those discussed more fully in the approval order, I feel the most sustainable path forward is to approve the listing and trading of these spot bitcoin ETP shares." He also added that "while we approved the listing and trading of certain spot bitcoin ETP shares today, we did not approve or endorse bitcoin."
Can US ether ETFs stake now?
Yes, and several do. Grayscale confirmed staking for its ether trust and mini trust in 8-Ks on 6 October 2025, 21Shares announced it for TETH on 8 October 2025, and Fidelity began after its registration went effective on 21 August 2026, keeping 15% of rewards as a fee. BlackRock chose not to stake inside ETHA, which still says it will not earn staking rewards, and launched a separate staked fund (ETHB) in March 2026 instead.
Why did so many altcoin ETFs launch in 2026?
Because of the generic listing standards approved on 17 September 2025, including NYSE Arca Rule 8.201-E (Generic) and the Nasdaq equivalent (SR-NASDAQ-2025-056). A product meeting the criteria no longer needs its own rule change and Commission order, which removed both the delay and the drama from each new listing.
How many Bitcoin ETF applications did the SEC reject before 2024?
There is no clean public count, and figures like "more than twenty" mix staff orders under delegated authority, Commission-level orders, instituted proceedings and voluntary withdrawals. What is documented: denial was the default from 2013 until the D.C. Circuit ruling of August 2023, and the Winklevoss filing alone was disapproved twice, in March 2017 and again in July 2018.
Sources and further reading
- SEC Release No. 34-80206 (10 March 2017), order disapproving the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust listing.
- SEC Release No. 34-83723 (26 July 2018), order setting aside the delegated action and disapproving SR-BatsBZX-2016-30.
- SEC Release No. 34-99306 (10 January 2024), approval of eleven spot bitcoin listings.
- Statement on the Approval of Spot Bitcoin ETPs, Chair Gary Gensler, 10 January 2024.
- SEC Release No. 34-103571 (29 July 2025), in-kind creations and redemptions for bitcoin and ether trusts.
- Issuer filings on EDGAR cited above: Grayscale 8-Ks of 26 September and 6 October 2025, the 21Shares TETH release of 8 October 2025, the iShares Ethereum Trust ETF annual report and the Fidelity Ethereum Fund 8-K of 10 August 2026.
- Internal: What is a Bitcoin ETF, Grayscale GBTC analysis, Major Bitcoin ETF funds.
