Dec. 6, 2024
Gary Gensler, Chair SEC Headquarters 100 F Street, NE Washington, DC 20549 Vanessa A. Countryman Secretary, Securities and Exchange Commission 100 F Street NE Washington, DC 20549-1090 Re: SR-CBOE-2024-036; SR-ISE-2024-35; SR-NYSEAMER-2024-45 Dear Chairman and Secretary: Responding to proposed rule changes filed by national securities exchanges to list and trade options on spot ether exchange-traded products (“ETPs”): The SEC endangered retail investors by approving spot bitcoin ETPs, spot ether ETPs, and options on spot bitcoin ETPs. It must reverse this trend and deny proposed rule changes to list and trade options on spot ether ETPs. Ether is incredibly volatile, and retail investors could suffer immense harm trading options on an ETP whose underlying asset is ether. Approving options trading on an ETP with such a volatile underlying asset is courting disaster. Retail investors already lose billions of dollars trading options. Options on spot ether ETPs would only give sophisticated market participants another way to use options trading to fleece retail investors. Options on spot ether ETPs would also threaten financial stability by further entangling traditional finance with a volatile asset that would be susceptible to runs. That is because ether uses a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) protocol. PoS requires more capital, and because more capital is at stake, there is a higher risk of runs. A run on ether could have all sorts of harmful consequences for investors, especially now that investors are able to more easily invest in ether through the ETPs. The SEC should never have approved spot ether ETPs in the first place. It must not compound that mistake by approving options on spot ether ETPs. Re: Full Better Markets letter: https://bettermarkets.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Better-Markets-Comment-Letter-Spot-Ether-Option-ETPs.pdf Yours sincerely. Robert E. Rutkowski