The VanEck “spot” Bitcoin exchange-traded fund has been rejected by the US Securities and Exchange Commission today. Meanwhile, it’s another market-dipping day.

Hopes have been, if not high, at least existent for the approval of investment firm VanEck’s Bitcoin ETF application.

It’s an ETF that would directly track the price of Bitcoin and allow the asset to be “physically” held in custody, as opposed to the currently approved futures-backed BTC ETFs in the US.

A spot ETF approval has been widely regarded as a further potential Bitcoin and crypto price-pumping catalyst. Alas, for now, it’s not to be. But it always felt like a long shot, given the rhetoric from SEC boss Gary Gensler over the past several months.

In its ruling, the SEC once again expressed its concerns that the Bitcoin spot market is subject to “fraud and manipulation”.

For the moment then, American-based institutional investors will have to suffice with Bitcoin ETFs linked to futures – contracts that bet on the future price of BTC. 

 

Mooners and shakers

At the time of writing, the overall crypto market cap, according to CoinGecko, is down about another three per cent since this time yesterday. It’s zoning in around the US$2.91 trillion level.

The dippage is nothing to freak out about – at least that’s the overwhelming consensus of the numerous crypto technical analysts we’re following on social media.

Sure, many are pointing to a “rising wedge” pattern in the charts for Bitcoin, which is a bearish signal for a further break down…

Rising wedges aside, analytical thought is still strong among many, however, that the Bitcoin/crypto bull market remains completely intact, even if things were to take a sizeable dip in the next day or so.

After all, experienced crypto traders and HODLers are well used to swift, temporary retracements of 30 per cent or more, even in bull markets. In fact, especially in bull markets – whales need to take their profits.

 

In the meantime, let’s look for a positive note or three to finish on in the top 100 by market cap… At press time, the layer 1 smart-contract platform Algorand (ALGO), founded by MIT professor Silvio Micali, is up a pretty decent 13 per cent in the past 24 hours.

Can’t see any particular catalysts for that, but it does have a rapidly expanding ecosystem…

A selection of other notables going against the grain and faring pretty well today include: OG crypto metaverse Decentraland (MANA) +26%; fellow gaming metaverse The Sandbox (SAND) +9%; and Helium (HNT) +8%, a project Stockhead took a good look at back in July.

 

 

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