US-based asset management firm BlackRock has applied to list and trade shares of an investment vehicle tied to Ether, following its offering of other cryptocurrency products.
In a filing Friday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, BlackRock filed a registration statement on Form S-1 for its iShares Staked Ethereum Trust exchange-traded fund. The filing is a component of the SEC's process for firms to list investment vehicles corresponding to ETFs, but will not be a guarantee of approval.
BlackRock filed its Ether ETF on Friday. Source: SEC
Shares of the Staked Ether (ETH) fund, which BlackRock plans to list and trade on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker symbol ETHB, might be one in every of the primary offerings tied to staked cryptocurrencies. Grayscale Investments added staking functionality to its previously approved spot ETH and mini-ETH trusts in October.
The regulator has not given the green light to many crypto stake funds since spot Ether ETFs were first approved in May 2024. However, Canary Capital filed the same SEC filing for a staked injective product (INJ) in July, and Grayscale and Bitwise launched separate staking products tied to Solana (SOL) in October.
BlackRock manages the most important spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund, the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, listed under the ticker symbol IBIT.
Has BlackRock CEO softened on cryptocurrencies?
Larry Fink, co-founder of BlackRock in 1988, said before the 2017 Bitcoin bull market that the cryptocurrency “shows how big the demand for money laundering is on the planet.”
In the years that followed, and because the U.S. digital asset market grew in volume and usage, the CEO became increasingly bullish on crypto investing, including by supporting the launch of a spot Bitcoin ETF by BlackRock and others.
At the New York Times DealBook Summit last week, Fink said he had seen a “big shift” in his opinion on cryptocurrencies, but still called BTC “a fear factor.”
