SEC finally cleared the way to Fast-Track Altcoin ETFs but a government stop may hold applications for a ETF is stuck in Limbo until 2026 – and Bettors on the polymemarket underestimates it.
After scrapping 19B-4 archives and approval of “generic listing standards” to Fast-Track Altcoin ETFs, dealers are betting on 90% odds that ADAS ETF approval would arrive at the end of the year 2025.
But with a 36% chance of a month -long government -closure, the 10% “no” page can prove the smarter game, as even “absurdly fast” approvals can’t happen when the lights are out.
According to SECS contingency plan, only approx. 390 of its 4,200 employees left on guard, which is focused solely on emergencies and market surveillance rather than approvals of new product.
ETF issuers can still submit filing through the EDGAR system, says the contingency plan, but no staff are available to review, comment or speed them up. With all IPO reviews that have already stopped, the same Logjam is now threatening to stop the wave of Altcoin ETFs, which was expected to move forward under SEC’s new Fast-Track List that was introduced in September.
A scan of state shutdown-related contracts shows that the polymarket-bettors see federal operations resumed around the end of October or early November, by about 30 October as consensus expectation.
For SEC, this timeline means at least three weeks more without the staff needed to review archives or advance pending crypto -Tfs like Cardano’s, and there are 89 other Crypto ETF applications also on DOCKET, plus the usual range of approvals needed for traditional financing products.
Even if the agency reopens at that time, it will only have about eight work weeks before Christmas moming, with Thanksgiving further cut into this window.
In extended date contracts, polymarket dealers now award about a 31% chance of shutdown extending in November, approaching the 35-day record set in 2018-19.
A lapse of this length would leave SEC with even less time to clear a growing backlog that already includes stopped IPO reviews, delayed enforcement cases and the newly streamlined but still pending crypto ETF archives.
There is definitely a chance that Ada Etf will be approved by the end of the year. It is impossible to say where it is on the list of considerations before the agency staff, but it would be fair to say that it is high on the list.
At the same time, given the washing water, reflected in the polymarket -odds, there is also a chance that this will move on.
So that 11% chance for Ada Etf is not approved in 2025? It may not be 100%, but the odds of a delay are clearly higher than the market suggests.
