While the relatively speedy approval of Ethereum ETH -1.33% ETFs this week caught some by surprise, investment bank TD Cowen's research group saw the approval as inevitable following the approval of Bitcoin BTC -0.90% ETFs earlier this year. 

"This comes about six months faster than we expected...yet this decision was also inevitable once the SEC approved crypto futures ETFs," Jaret Seiberg from TD Cowen's Washington Research Group wrote in a note on Thursday. Next to come within a year might be an offering with a "basket of crypto tokens," possibly just Bitcoin and ether but possibly more, Seiberg continued. 

However, the approval doesn't signal an overall change to the SEC's overall posture towards crypto, as crypto-critical chair of the Commission Gary Gensler issued a "highly critical" statement against the passage of crypto legislation that could diminish his agency's power. 

"The crypto industry’s record of failures, frauds, and bankruptcies is not because we don't have rules or because the rules are unclear. It’s because many players in the crypto industry don’t play by the rules," Gensler wrote in a statement shortly before the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, or FIT 21. 

Although Gensler;s agency may face a setback, TD Cowen predicts the SEC will keep its Democratic majority through 2026. "...We expect the agency will continue to litigate against crypto trading platforms that trade tokens that the agency believes are unregistered securities," the researcher wrote.