Nasdaq submits key 19b-4 filing for Grayscale's Hedera ETF

The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC filed a 19b-4 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday to list and trade Grayscale's spot Hedera (HBAR) exchange-traded fund. 

A 19b-4 filing is the second part of a two-step process for proposing a crypto ETF to the SEC. Once acknowledged by the SEC, the filing will be published in the Federal Register, initiating the agency's approval process.

The filing on behalf of Grayscale comes a week after the Nasdaq submitted a 19b-4 for Canary Capital's spot HBAR ETF. Last week, Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas said that Hedera and Litecoin have the "best odds and the pole position" among altcoin ETF filings, given the level of progress they have had with the SEC.

Hedera is a decentralized public network that uses the Hashgraph consensus algorithm to facilitate transactions. The Hedera token is governed by a council composed of prominent companies and organizations such as Google and IBM, responsible for decision-making and token distribution.

Hedera traded down 14.5% over the past 24 hours at $0.22, according to The Block's HBAR price page.

Since the reelection of Donald Trump, the U.S. has seen a flurry of new crypto ETF filings based on tokens beyond bitcoin and ether. With hopes that the now crypto-positive SEC would hand out approvals, U.S. issuers have filed spot ETF applications for Solana, XRP, Cardano, Litecoin and Dogecoin.

Earlier today, the New York Stock Exchange filed a 19b-4 on behalf of Bitwise's Dogecoin ETF. Bloomberg analysts predicted last month that Dogecoin ETFs have a 75% chance of approval from the SEC.