Firms that gained the Securities and Exchange Commission's approval for a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund are not feeling very confident that the agency will greenlight proposals for an ether product, according to reporting from CNBC.

VanEck CEO Jan van Eck told CNBC in an interview posted on Tuesday that he expected the VanEck Ethereum ETF to be rejected in May – the first deadline approaching for when the SEC will decide whether to allow those products to pass.

“The way the legal process goes is the regulators will give you comments on your application, and that happened for weeks and weeks before the bitcoin ETFs — and right now, pins are dropping as far as ethereum is concerned,” van Eck told CNBC.

Big-name firms, including Fidelity and BlackRock, have applied for a spot ether …