Last week, the Cboe BZX Exchange refiled its request to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a proposed rule change that would allow it to list and trade shares of an exchange-traded fund (ETF) issued by the VanEck SolidX Bitcoin Trust.  Cboe had withdrawn its request one week earlier due to the partial government shutdown, however Jan van Eck, CEO of Van Eck Associates, said that the entities had planned to refile the application once the government reopened and the SEC was back to operating at full capacity.

A decision on the proposed rule change, which was first proposed in June 2018, had been delayed by the SEC several times, and the agency had been scheduled to make a final decision on the application by February 27, 2019 before it was withdrawn.  Now that it has been refiled, the SEC will have up to 240 days to make a decision on the application following its publication in the Federal Register.

However, the SEC has been approaching the issue of bitcoin ETFs very carefully, which means a final decision on this proposal, along with other bitcoin ETF applications, may not come until close to the end of the year.