Bitcoin has moved up a bit since the very recent decline. The SEC has just suspended two Bitcoin vehicles. The volume is pretty thin. Is a new rally budding? Or do these events point to a precipitous decline?

The memory of the SEC turning down prospective Bitcoin ETFs is still fresh and now the agency has made the headlines again as it halted two Bitcoin trading vehicles in the U.S. In an article on CoinDesk, we read:

Announced on Sunday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued an order seeking to suspend the trading of the Bitcoin Tracker One and Ether Tracker One exchange-traded notes, issued by XBT Provider AB, a Swedish-based subsidiary of the U.K. firm CoinShares Holdings.

In the official order, the SEC cited a “confusion amongst market participants” based in the U.S. as to the nature of the financial instruments as the reason for the move.

The suspension is in effect as of 5:30 p.m. EDT today, and will last through 11:59 p.m. EDT on September 20. Further, trading on other, non-U.S. exchanges will not be interrupted during the suspension, the release suggested.

The principal reason is inconsistencies in the descriptions of the mentioned vehicles. These descriptions varied from ETFs to ETNs to certificates depending on the source. The SEC seems to have decided that such discrepancies could be misleading to investors and so it decided to suspend them, at least temporarily. There’s no great mystery to the SEC decision. The agency’s mandate covers such action and Bitcoin products seem to be on its radar. Bitcoin is not regulated enough for the SEC to view Bitcoin ETFs as safe and other kinds of products tend to be not mature enough or not clear enough to be marketed to investors. The lack of clarity is imperative in the discussed case. It will probably still take at least a couple of years for Bitcoin products to be approved by the SEC.

Weak Rebound

On BitStamp, we have seen a rebound of sorts from the very recent local lows. Is there any momentum to the current move up?