The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rejected VanEck's proposal for a new exchange-traded fund that would track the spot price of Bitcoin (BTC).

The markets regulator explained its decision by saying VanEck did not demonstrate its proposal is consistent with "the requirement that the rules of a national securities exchange be designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices and to protect investors and the public interest."

The crypto industry expected the rejection, as SEC Chair Gary Gensler has repeatedly signaled his preference for a Bitcoin futures ETF over an ETF that holds physical Bitcoin. On the bright side, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE  ) wrote on its website that the new VanEck Bitcoin Strategy Fund will start trading Tuesday under the ticker symbol "XBTF." The VanEck Bitcoin futures ETF obtained SEC approval in late October and will become the third Bitcoin futures ETF in the U.S., after the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO  ) and the Valkyrie Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BTF  ).

Here is the rest of the week in review:

Taproot activated on the Bitcoin blockchain Sunday, enabling new features that will improve privacy, scalability, and security on the network. Taproot is an upgrade consisting of several technical innovations in one software version. First proposed by Greg Maxwell in 2018, the root of the upgrade is Schnorr signatures, which will replace Bitcoin's current cryptographic scheme ECDSA for its digital signatures where users sign and approve transactions with their private key. Transactions using Taproot will now use the new Schnorr digital signature scheme, adding enhanced privacy, security, and scale. Schnoor is smaller and faster that ECDSA, and it also boasts the benefit of being "linear," a combination that will boost Bitcoin's transaction privacy and allow easier multisignature transactions and more lightweight and sophisticated "smart contracts." Although the Taproot upgrade was activated successfully, Bitcoin's decentralized nature means it could take months to years for the majority of wallets to adopt the newer software.

Ripple Labs said Tuesday it is launching Liquidity Hub, a new product that lets financial services firms offer their customers the ability to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. San Francisco-based Ripple Labs noted the product will give its enterprise clients access to digital assets from a range of sources including market makers, exchanges, and over-the-counter trading desks. Ripple's clients will be able to offer trading in coins like Bitcoin, Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and its XRP token. Ripple noted it hopes to offer support for other digital assets like non-fungible tokens later, potentially in 2022. The product launch comes as Ripple remains in hot water with the SEC over the major XRP lawsuit. The regulator is suing the firm and executives Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen for allegedly raising over $1.3 billion via an unregistered securities offering. But Ripple is still fighting the charge, arguing that XRP should not be considered a security under federal law.

Crypto prices edged up to $2.798 trillion this week. For the majors, Polkadot (DOT) and Solana (SOL) fell, while the rest were little changed. In the top 100, the biggest decliners were OMG Network (OMG), down 29%, Secret (SCRT), down 18%, and Theta Fuel (TFUEL), down 14%. The biggest gainers were Loopring (LRC), up 134%, IoTeX (IOTX), up 114%, and Livepeer (LPT), up 75%. Next week traders will watch if Bitcoin and Ether reach new highs.

The author owns a small amount of BTC.