VanEck Submits Proposal to Launch First BNB ETF in the U.S.

VanEck has filed paperwork to sell shares in an exchange-traded fund (ETF) tracking crypto exchange Binance’s blockchain.

The asset manager submitted an S-1 document with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday for a BNB ETF, becoming the first prospective issuer to file for such a fund in the U.S. BNB is the native token for the BNB Chain, launched in 2017 by Binance.

Investors in the fund — if approved — would also be able to earn staking rewards and additional tokens as well as other income, according to the filing. The SEC under former chair Gary Gensler had a strong opposing stance towards staking, which is why several spot ethereum (ETH) ETFs don’t include the feature.

There is, however, hope that new chair Paul Atkins will be more inclined to approve the feature for future products. Grayscale, last month, filed an amended document with the SEC to allow staking in its Ethereum ETFs and hedge fund Canary Capital recently filed a proposal to launch a Tron ETF with staking capabilities.

No decision has been made yet by the SEC on these applications, which has delayed several deadlines for crypto ETFs in recent weeks.

VanEck will be expected to follow its initial filing with a 19b-4 document to make its intentions official and tie the regulator to a deadline.

BNB has a market capitalization of $83.9 billion and was trading at $596 at time of publication, up about 0.27% over the past 24 hours. It is the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.