The Winklevoss twins are continuing to grow their business even though the Security and Exchange Commission rejected their proposal to create a Bitcoin-based exchange-traded fund twice.
In an interview with Bloomberg, the creators of the Gemini Exchange made it clear that Wall Street’s reluctance to adopt cryptocurrencies does not bother them — the two brothers are continuing to grow the business.
“Wall Street is taking cryptocurrencies seriously, however, the vast majority of Wall Street firms are still not participating in the cryptocurrency market, which remains primarily are retail-driven market,” said Tyler Winklevoss, who serves as chief executive of Gemini. “This will change over time, but it will take time.”
To be fair, the situation is already incrementally changing. For example, recently the New York Stock Exchange owner, Intercontinental Exchange, launched a crypto trading platform. Goldman Sachs opened a Bitcoin trading desk back in May. Even Wall Street’s top talents are trying to get on board.
Yet Bloomberg still believes that for the time being numerous institutional investors are likely to remain reluctant not least because the U.S. government is not enthusiastic about crypto. The chairman of the FedReserve, for example, has recently slammed digital assets. Simultaneously, the SEC still has not fully clarified its position on some of the key points involving coins as well as allow “additional financial instruments to enter the market.” So far, it is only clear that neither Etherum nor BTC are securities. Besides, the institution is still reviewing the ETF application filed by Cboe Vaneck; the decision is expected by September 21, 2018.
Thus, many questions remain hung in the air. However, one thing is for sure: If the SEC had approved the twins’ ETF, it would have “opened the volatile cryptocurrency market up to pension funds and other large investors.”
That did not happen, and now the Winklevoss brothers have decided to alter their focus. Currently, they are preoccupied with expanding their retail business by adding additional cryptocurrencies. They also plan to double their worldwide staff, which constitutes 150 people, by year-end. One of their newly-joined employees is Robert Cornish, who used to be chief information officer of the New York Stock Exchange. He now works as the first chief technology officer at Gemini.
The brothers are certainly committed to the crypto cause. Thus, their ETF application attempt is not a sole one, and back in March they submitted a proposal to create the Virtual Commodity Association, which would act like a watchdog and prevent possible fraud together with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Given that the CFTC Commissioner, Rostin Behnam, has a positive outlook on the future use cases of virtual currencies, the possibility of comprehensive crypto adoption by all Wall Street players looks distinct.
