Stalling first-mover advantage: VanEck, 21Shares, Canary press SEC to restore first-to-file ETF review order

VanEck, 21Shares, and Canary Capital requested on June 5 that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reinstate the queue-based review system that awards exchange-traded product approvals in the order issuers filed. 

In a joint letter to Chair Paul Atkins, the firms said concurrent approvals strip early filers of the advantage that traditionally offsets higher legal and compliance costs.

In the letter, VanEck chief executive Jan van Eck, Canary’s Steve McClurg, and 21Shares president Duncan Moir asked the SEC to apply the filing-date principle to pending products, including any future Solana exchange-traded funds (ETFs) submissions.

The letter also calls on the regulator to “nurture a competitive financial marketplace” by restoring predictable timelines.

Stalled first-mover advantage

The letter argued that departures from the queue began in October 2021, when the ProShares Bitcoin Futures Fund received a three-day head start and secured more than 90% of the market share. 

Early filers for spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs later saw their applications cleared on Jan. 10, 2024, the same day larger asset managers that filed months or years later received green lights. 

The firms contend that such timing favors issuers with deeper distribution networks, encourages copycat filings, and concentrates assets under bigger brands.

The authors said the pattern harms market integrity by weakening incentives for original research and discouraging smaller sponsors from taking early risks. 

They also noted that honoring filing dates would not add material strain on SEC staff because registration statements already arrive in sequence and can retain their original time gaps through the review cycle.

Calls echo prior public remarks

VanEck digital assets research chief Matt Sigel has repeated the queue argument since 2024. On May 23, 2024, Sigel warned that deviations undercut the Administrative Procedure Act’s transparency standard and force early filers to shoulder prolonged update expenses.

He added that refusing to follow this standard “creates an uneven playing field for issuers who filed earlier and had to wait longer.”

On January 22, Sigel urged the regulator’s new leadership to “respect the line” after the agency formed its Crypto Task Force. 

Canary Capital chief executive Steve McClurg previewed the coordinated push during a late-May panel at the Litecoin Summit in Las Vegas, telling attendees that several issuers planned a formal appeal for a return to the queue. 

Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart also commented on the letter, stating that the first-to-file approach was standard practice until the 2024 launches of the spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs.

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