The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it will delay the review of the Ethereum cryptocurrency spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) proposal, ether (ETH), presented by the giant fund issuer Fidelity.

Previously, the SEC had set January 20 as the deadline to give its verdict on this request and now extended the deadline until March 5, as indicated in the regulator's document.

It's important to note that Fidelity's request is not the only one on the table. There are currently seven Ethereum spot ETF proposals under consideration by the SEC, as shown in the table below.

Last December, the SEC had also made the decision to delay the applications of Hashdex, Grayscale, ARK 21 Shares and VanEck. In this way, the regulatory agency demonstrates for the moment that it is adopting the same tactic used with spot bitcoin (BTC) ETF proposals. Specifically, it delayed reviewing such products until its final verdict date, when it issued its approval.

The SEC has until May to decide whether to approve Ethereum spot ETFs

The SEC's final deadline to announce its position on Ethereum spot ETFs is May 23 . There is a possibility that you authorize them all at the same time so as not to benefit from the launch of one before another , as happened with the spot bitcoin ETFs.

However, it should be noted that although the SEC has given the green light to 11 bitcoin spot ETFs, this does not automatically guarantee approval for similar Ethereum-related products.

ETF analyst James Seyffart said the delay in Fidelity's fund review was "completely expected." "The dates that really matter, in my opinion, are the end of May," he emphasized.

The chances of the SEC approving an Ethereum spot ETF hinge on the agency considering ether a commodity (and not security), just as it did with bitcoin.