Franklin Templeton Joins Ethereum ETF Race

Franklin Templeton a major asset management firm in the US, has applied for a spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) investing in Ethereum.

In the United States, Franklin Templeton has become the most recent Wall Street firm to submit an application for a spot exchange-traded fund that will invest in ETH.

The asset management company that manages investment portfolios worth $1.5 trillion submitted the S-1 form to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission on February 12.

If approved, the name “Franklin Ethereum ETF” would be displayed on the Chicago Board Options Exchange. It is interesting to note that Franklin Templetonhas indicated that it intends to stake a portion of the ETF’s Ether in order to generate additional income.

This is comparable to the updated S-1 filing that ARK 21Shares submitted the previous week. Franklin stated that it would anticipate staking Ether from the cold storage wallets of the trust and that as a consequence, the trust would be entitled to staking rewards which would be considered and treated as revenue.

“The Sponsor may, from time to time, stake a portion of the Fund’s assets through one or more trusted staking providers, which may include an affiliate of the Sponsor.”

The other spot Ether ETF applications that are competing for approval from the SEC are BlackRock, VanEck, Fidelity, Invesco Galaxy, Grayscale, and Hashdex.As of May 23, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is required to make a decision about the application submitted by VanEck, ARK 21Shares, Hashdex, Grayscale, and Invesco.

By August 3 and August 7, respectively, we must make the decisions on the applications submitted by Fidelity and BlackRock. James Seyffart, the Bloomberg ETF expert anticipates that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission will reach a decision on all spot Bitcoin applications by the 23rd of May.

On January 30, Seyffart’s colleague Eric Balchunas, who is also an ETF analyst at Bloomberg recently reduced the likelihood of a spot Ether ETF approval in 2024 from 700 percent to sixty percent. Last month, Franklin was one of the ten exchange-traded fund (ETF) issuers that introduced a spot Bitcoin ETF in the United States.

However, Franklin recently complimented the network fundamentals of Ethereum,Solana, and other blockchains which inspired the hypothesis that the ETF issuer may want to expand beyond Bitcoin. However, Franklin entered the spot Ether ETF competition later than others.