The ball's in your court, Gary Gensler tells Ethereum ETF applicants

SEC chief Gary Gensler has urged Ethereum exchange-traded funds applicants to be responsive to questions, if they want to be swift and successful with their plans.

The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission surprised the crypto industry last month with a slew of approvals for Nasdaq, NYSE and CBOE to list spot Ether ETFs.

But Gensler has now stressed the speed of approval for registration statements lies with the applicants and how they respond to the regulator's questions.

"These registrants are self-motivated to be responsive to the comments they get, but it's really up to them how responsive they are," he told CNBC.

"In January we approved an exchange-traded product for Bitcoin, and about a week-and-a-half ago, similar filings to list on the New York Stock Exchange, list on Nasdaq and the like, exchange-traded products for Ethereum.

"Ethereum had been traded on Chicago Mercantile Exchange for futures for three plus years and the staff looked at that closely and that was approved.

"Now the underlying exchange-traded products need to go through a process to have the disclosure about that. That will take some time, but they're working on that right now."