For those who don’t know, there’s a conspiracy theory that the SEC has been compromised by entities in the offshore crypto industry. This conspiracy seems to have its roots in the Ripple community, where many believe that XRP was targeted by the regulator purely because it was competition to offshore crypto projects, primarily Ethereum. This conspiracy seemed like nothing more than that – a conspiracy. That was until earlier this year when it was revealed that a crypto company called Prometheum had somehow received regulatory approval from the SEC. The fact that Prometheum seems to have been the only crypto company to get this kind of green light has resulted in calls by the Blockchain Association and others to investigate its approval process. What’s the connection to the offshore? Well, one of Prometheum’s biggest investors is reportedly Wanxiang Blockchain, a Chinese non-profit which was one of Ethereum’s earliest investors. Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin was also once noted as one of Wanxiang’s co-founders.
But this is just one side of the story. The side of the story that’s interested me has been the relationship between Valkyrie and the SEC. Believe it or not, but Valkyrie’s largest client was (and could still be) Tron founder Justin Sun. This is why I was surprised that Valkyrie had been the first to secure an approval for an Ethereum Futures ETF. Besides the fact that the SEC probably knew that Justin Sun was (or still is) Valkyrie’s largest client, Valkyrie itself was one of the smallest asset managers among the applicants. Logically, you’d think the SEC would approve an Ethereum futures ETF from the largest asset managers first, though in this case they were all approved at the same time. Regardless, Valkyrie’s peculiar connections to Justin Sun has had the effect of me paying much closer attention to any headlines about this asset manager. Assuming that the SEC has been compromised by the offshore crypto industry (which is very much up for debate), then Valkyrie’s commentary could be the one you want to listen to when it comes to things like the spot Bitcoin ETF. The most recent update came from Valkyrie’s CIO. He said that in the next couple of weeks, the SEC will put out another request for comment in preparation for listing, which Valkyrie predicts will happen sometime in February. If we see this request for comment come to pass, then it’s safe to say that I’ll be watching February very closely.