Bitcoin Cash Up 17% After Grayscale Prevails Over SEC in ETF Case

Bitcoin is on the rise Tuesday following news that crypto firm Grayscale won a court appeal against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)—and BTC-related cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin Cash and Stacks are seeing even larger gains.

While BTC has posted a 7% gain over the past 24 hours, sitting at a current price of $27,970 per CoinGecko, Bitcoin Cash has jumped 17% to a price of about $223. It’s currently the biggest gainer among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap.

Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency that was created via a blockchain that forked away from Bitcoin in 2017, and has persisted since then. That means the creators copied Bitcoin’s code and then went on to create an entirely separate asset and network. It’s the 18th most valuable cryptocurrency by market cap per CoinGecko, as of this writing, although both its price and market cap pale in comparison to BTC itself.

The next-largest gainer today in the top 100 is also tied to BTC. It’s Stacks, a layer-2 network built on top of the BTC network to enable smart contracts, which can power things like decentralized apps (dapps) and NFT collectibles. Stacks has risen about 13% today to a current price of $0.51.

Meanwhile, another Bitcoin-related coin, Bitcoin SV—itself forked from Bitcoin Cash—has popped 10% over the past 24 hours to a current price of $34 per coin. Broadly, the entire cryptocurrency market is up more than 5% in the past day, according to CoinGecko.

The upward movement is tied to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruling Tuesday, which said the SEC was wrong to reject an application by Grayscale to convert its Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a formal BTC spot exchange-traded fund (ETF). The court said that the SEC “failed to adequately explain” its rejection of Grayscale’s ETF application.

The SEC now has to review the application, but still has 45 days to appeal the judge’s opinion. The SEC has repeatedly denied Bitcoin spot ETF applications, citing market manipulation fears. A spot ETF would let investors gain exposure to the leading cryptocurrency without actually holding and storing BTC.

Many such applications are still in play, including from BlackRock and WisdomTree. A spot Bitcoin ETF is seen by many as a route to mainstream institutional adoption for crypto. While Tuesday’s court decision does not ensure that a spot BTC fund will be approved, it does clear a prominent legal hurdle in the pursuit by Grayscale and others.