The SEC punts, markets tank.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) decided to postpone their decision on the VanEck Bitcoin ETF at least until September 30, 2018.

The original comment date was set for August 16th.

This delay comes on the heels of a letter sent to the SEC detailing how this ETF proposal answered many of the concerns previously laid out by the SEC.

More about that can be found here:

https://www.ccn.com/van-eck-responds-to-secs-bitcoin-etf-concerns-in-new-letter/

The original application was filed in June along with the backing of finance heavyweight the CBOE.

The reason for the push-back?

This particular application had received over 1,300 comments from the community, roughly 13X that of the Winklevoss application.

It likely has to do with a provision in the Securities Exchange Act that allows the SEC to extend comment periods by 45 days if it decides it needs a longer time period to consider the application.

Such a push-back would get us to September 30th.

“Accordingly, the Commission, pursuant to Section 19(b)(2) of the Act designates September 30, 2018, as the date by which the Commission shall either approve or disapprove, or institute proceedings to determine whether to disapprove, the proposed rule change.”

(Source: https://www.ccn.com/us-sec-postpones-decision-on-vaneck-solidx-bitcoin-etf-to-september/)

This perhaps isn't the final decision date either.

According to the Exchange Act mentioned above, the SEC can extend its decision by up to 240 days from the date published in the Federal Register.

That would push things back to around March.

Yikes.

Prices take a beating:

The price of bitcoin is trading down around $6,200 currently, about $1,000 lower than where it was just a day or so ago before the SEC's announcement to delay their decision came out.