The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has delayed its decision on 21Shares’ bid to launch a spot Sui exchange-traded fund, extending the final deadline to late December 2025.

In its latest filing published on Thursday, the SEC said it is “instituting proceedings” to determine whether the proposed rule change to list and trade the 21Shares SUI ETF on Nasdaq should ultimately be approved or disapproved. 

During the extended review period, market participants have been urged to provide comments on the proposed rule change.

“Institution of proceedings does not indicate that the Commission has reached any conclusions with respect to any of the issues involved. Rather, the Commission seeks and encourages interested persons to provide comments on the proposed rule change,” the Commission said.

SEC delays SUI ETF to December

21Shares filed to list a spot SUI ETF on May 23, after an S-1 registration that was completed on April 30. The fund, if approved, would track the price of SUI, which is the native cryptocurrency for the Sui blockchain, using a daily pricing benchmark developed by CF Benchmarks, with BitGo and Coinbase Custody as the custodians.

By July 22, the SEC had already taken the first step to extend its review window, opting for a longer deliberation period under Section 19(b)(2). Now, with formal proceedings underway and no public objections filed during the initial comment window, the calendar quietly pushes the final deadline closer to the holiday season.

With the initial filing published for comment in the Federal Register on June 10, 2025, the SEC can take a maximum of 240 days to reach a final decision, which puts the deadline somewhere around December 21, 2025.

However, the agency may also choose to issue a decision in October, alongside a slate of other crypto ETF applications that have already faced delays and now have final deadlines scattered throughout the month. These funds include the Canary Spot PENGU ETF, Grayscale’s Spot Cardano Trust, the Truth Social Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, and Solana-focused proposals from Bitwise, 21Shares, and Canary.

The delay, while seemingly a setback, had little impact on the price of Sui (SUI), which was up 2.0% at press time.

SEC is working on clearer crypto rules

Under President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto administration, the SEC has prioritized regulatory clarity and moved to overhaul its widely criticized “regulation by enforcement” approach. This may be why the agency is taking extra time to align these altcoin ETF decisions with its forthcoming rule changes.

A day prior, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins unfurled the commission’s Spring 2025 regulatory agenda, which would put crypto into the same regulatory fabric as traditional markets. According to its new agenda, the SEC wants to formulate regulations that would allow crypto assets to be traded on national securities exchanges and alternative trading systems.