Coinbase Chief Legal Officer: SEC designates S-1 as Ethereum spot ETF registration option, indicating that it believes ETH is not a security

Odaily News The U.S. SEC approved Form 19b-4 for multiple Ethereum spot ETFs this week, including those from BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale. Although the form has been approved, ETF issuers need to make the S-1 registration statement effective before they can start trading. Legal experts have different views on whether the U.S. SEC's approval of the Ethereum ETF means that everything has changed. Paul Grewal, chief legal officer of Coinbase, said in an interview: "I do think this is a watershed in the long-standing debate about the status of ETH. For a long time, the SEC has been evasive about its position and failed to indicate whether Ethereum is a security, a non-security, a commodity, or something else." Grewal claimed that because the issuer used the S-1 form, a certain percentage of the assets in the fund can be securities: "By specifying S-1 as a registration option, the SEC means that, by definition, these funds do not include assets that account for more than 40% of the portfolio that are securities." He added: "There is no other conclusion that can prove this except that ETH is not a security." The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. (The Block)