Grayscale Investments' lawsuit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for canceling the digital asset manager's proposal to form a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund will likely get decided within a year, the company's chief executive officer has said on Thursday.

HIGHLIGHTS
The company list the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust fund on NYSE's Arca
The price of Bitcoin has collapsed since the beginning of the year 
The SEC rejected several requests similar to Grayscale's recently

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The regulator dominated on Wednesday that the proposed fund failed to meet the standards designed for investor protection and lacked sufficient safeguards against fraud and manipulation.

Grayscale needs to convert its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), the world's largest bitcoin fund, into an ETF for listing on Intercontinental Exchange Inc's (ICE.N) NYSE Arca exchange.

The SEC rejected over a dozen spot bitcoin ETF applications within the past year and approved many bitcoin futures-based ETFs. The rejections have centered on applicants' lack of surveillance-sharing agreements with regulated markets that could relate to the spot funds' underlying assets.

'The SEC is arbitrary and capricious by continuing to approve bitcoin futures-based ETFs while continuing to deny spot bitcoin ETFs,' Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein has said in an interview with CNBC.

Grayscale sued the SEC rapidly after its rejection, and since the defendant may be a regulator, the case goes straight to the appellate court, and a decision to be made within nine to twelve months, Sonnenshein said.

The SEC, which conjointly rejected a spot bitcoin ETF proposal by Bitwise on Wednesday, has declined to comment.

Other would-be issuers of spot bitcoin ETFs rejected by the SEC in recent months include Fidelity, SkyBridge, and Valkyrie.

Well, the price of bitcoin fell down the milestone $20,000 level on Thursday, to $18,736, simply off the volatile asset's 18-month low of $17,592 on June 18. Bitcoin hit a record-high worth of $69,000 in November 2021.

The SEC's rejection of Grayscale's application failed to replicate 'an assessment of whether bitcoin or blockchain technology more generally, has utility or value as an innovation or an investment,' the regulator said.