Ethereum is still swelling above $3,600 on hopes of approval as an ETF.

Ethereum took a big jump last night and early morning on reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission has asked spot ETF applicants to file amended 19b-4 filings.

19b-4 filings are what companies use to file rule changes with the SEC. In this case, applicants need the regulator to change their rules for trading the exchange for Ethereum spot ETFs.

When this happened to spot Bitcoin ETF applicants in January, the industry was just days away from an 11-point historic approval of Bitcoin ETFs. There is no guarantee that things will be as they were then. But this week, sentiment around the upcoming deadline caused a big swing and sent ripples through the market.

At the time of writing, the price of Ethereum is above $3,600 and volumes have increased by 219% in the last 24 hours, according to Coinglass.

Stablecoin OpenDollar founder Joseph Chiarizzi announced on Twitter last night that Ethereum's market capitalization – now $439 billion – has almost halved that of Ethereum's competitor Solana in 3 minutes.

Fubar, the founder of Proxy Labs and Cluster, said on Twitter that the price increase created the largest day candlestick in history for the ETUSD, from $3,070 to $3,661.

Meanwhile, open interest or open ETH futures contracts rose 26% to $15 billion over the past day. And call options—those entered by bullish traders who think an asset's price is about to rise—outnumber options 2:1, Koinlas noted.

There is now $3 billion worth of open interest on Ethereum options expiring in late May and June.

The potential approval, or at least a step toward it, has analysts wondering how the SEC will allow it to fight court battles over ETH as a security standard.

“If the speculation about the 180 from the SEC on Ethereum ETFs is true, I suspect they will try to inject a needle between ‘ETH' as a security and ‘staked ETH' (or more weakly, ‘holding ETH as a service),” wrote Alex Thorne, head of research at Galaxy Digital on Twitter.

Just over a month ago, Ethereum software giant Consensus filed a lawsuit against the SEC over its attempt to regulate ETH as a security. A few weeks ago, court filings show that an internal memo released from the SEC revealed that the regulator has been considering Ethereum as a security for more than a year.

If the SEC approves the spot Ethereum ETF to start trading, Singaporean trading firm QCP Capital predicts that ETH could quickly close the gap to $4,000 and climb as high as $5,000 before the end of the year.

The company wrote in a blog post, “If not approved, we expect an ugly move back to 3k.” “This uncertainty has resulted in high volatility, but the best trade may be based on futures that are now re-yielding more than 10%.”

(Disclosure: Consensys is one of 22 investors in Decrypt)