McHenry signals support for Grayscale ruling

Patrick McHenry has been a loud voice on crypto, once repeatedly asking Gary Gensler whether ETH was a security or a commodity

article-image

DCStockPhotography/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., weighed in on Grayscale’s court victory against the US Securities and Exchange Commission over its application for a bitcoin ETF.

McHenry is also Chair of the House Financial Services Committee and in that role, he’s introduced legislation to regulate crypto. That includes a stablecoin bill that made it out of committee in July with bipartisan support. 

McHenry name dropped the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act in a Tuesday X post, which if passed, would begin to delineate the responsibilities of the SEC and CFTC when it comes to regulating crypto. That bill has cleared two House committees so far.

Read more: Heated 7-hour markup ends in bipartisan support for stablecoin bill

Referencing the Grayscale case, McHenry wrote that SEC chair Gary Gensler’s “crusade against the digital asset ecosystem is falling apart under scrutiny from the courts.”

Loading Tweet..

Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, was a bit more forceful in his rebuke of the SEC, reiterating his call to fire Gensler.

Loading Tweet..

Former Senator Pat Toomey, who left office in January 2023, was also chimed in with support for the Grayscale decision. 

The court, he wrote, “upheld the rule of law and properly served American consumers by vacating the ‘arbitrary and capricious’ decision of the SEC denying Grayscale’s application to convert its Bitcoin Trust to an ETF. 

Grayscale sued the SEC in June 2022 for rejecting the crypto asset manager’s proposal to transition its Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into an ETF. As part of that suit, it issued a petition for review, asking the court to look over the SEC’s decision.

A three-judge panel for the DC Circuit Court of Appeals granted Grayscale’s petition for review Tuesday, while also ordering that the SEC’s “order be vacated.” 

This ruling doesn’t mean that Grayscale is guaranteed to convert GBTC into a spot bitcoin ETF. It simply means that the SEC ​​must review Grayscale’s application to do so.

Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal also weighed in on Tuesday’s decision, saying that courts are crypto’s “last, best hope.”

“I’ll say it again — they are not perfect but when it comes to protecting the rule of law, the courts remain our last, best hope,” Grewal wrote.

Loading Tweet..

Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Research Report Templates (8).png

Research

Meta-aggregators like Titan and Kamino Swap improve price execution for users, making the Solana swapping landscape more competitive. Jupiter has incorporated meta-aggregation features into its latest routing engine to keep users on its front end (own the user, own the flow). At large, teams are treating swaps as a commoditized complement, offering incredibly cheap or free swaps to own the end-user and increase demand for high-margin product offerings (multi-product DeFi). On another note, the divergence in the concentration of aggregator volume between DEXs suggests increased specialization at the DEX layer by asset type.

article-image

Onboarding the world to Bitcoin takes a series of firsts

article-image

If we get an altcoin season, it’ll be focused on tokens deemed “ fundamentally valuable enough for traditional public money and capital” to get involved with

article-image

Solana dropped nearly 10% amid mass crypto liquidations triggered by rising geopolitical strife

article-image

Investors moved to safe assets like the US dollar and gold, but bonds faltered

article-image

The Amex offers up to 4% bitcoin back, but the deal is a bit ironic considering crypto’s goals

article-image

Short answer: Subnets are now cheaper to bootstrap than a Celestia rollup