Cathie Wood's ARK Investment Management and digital-asset manager 21Shares amended their application for a U.S. spot-Bitcoin exchange-traded fund to add a surveillance-sharing agreement.
The CBOE options exchange expects to enter into such an agreement with "an operator of a United States-based trading platform for Bitcoin," according to Wednesday's updated filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The language mimics a clause in BlackRock Inc.'s spot Bitcoin ETF filing, which landed roughly two weeks ago.
"These agreements would provide more transparency to the market and make crypto markets more consistently integrated with the way in which markets are surveilled in the United States," said Ophelia Snyder, co-founder and president of 21Shares.
The tweaked filing comes two days after ARK analyst Yassine Elmandjra wrote that other applicants should be able to add surveillance-sharing agreement to existing filings "at little cost."
The move theoretically places ARK and 21Shares ahead of BlackRock in the race to launch the first U.S. spot-Bitcoin ETF, given that they filed in April, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
