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

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

Last December, the SEC had also made the decision to delay applications from 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 ETF (BTC proposals. Specifically, it delayed the review of such products until the final date it had to give the verdict, when it issued its approval

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

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

James Seyffart, an analyst at ETF, commented that 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.