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Valkyrie Funds is the latest firm with a proposed spot bitcoin ETF that plans to use a surveillance sharing agreement with crypto exchange Coinbase.

Valkyrie initially proposed the fund last month, with plans to list shares on Nasdaq. A new 19b-4 filing from the exchange dated July 3 and released Wednesday lists Coinbase as a surveillance sharing partner — much like other applications that have been refiled over the past several weeks. 

“Trading of Bitcoin on Coinbase represents a significant portion of US-based Bitcoin trading,” the exchange said in the filing. “According to the Sponsor, the Exchange aims to enter into a surveillance-sharing agreement with Coinbase, the operator of the largest United States-based spot trading platform for Bitcoin representing a majority of global spot BTC trading paired with USD.”

Bitcoin surges as ETF filings stack up

The SEC has not yet approved a spot bitcoin ETF, but the race has heated up after filings for large asset managers such as BlackRock and Fidelity included Coinbase in surveillance sharing agreements.

The price of bitcoin has surged more than 13% over the past month amid the excitement surrounding the filings. It’s currently trading around $30,344, according to CoinGecko. 

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Earnings from NFT royalties hit their lowest volume since 2021, according to crypto data firm Nansen.

“OpenSea had been the dominant platform for distributing royalties to NFT projects until February 2023,” Nansen stated in a new report on NFT royalties. It added that the landshape shifted when Blur introduced requirements for royalties and OpenSea adapted its policies.

“Currently, OpenSea and Blur are on par with each other when it comes to the royalties paid through their respective marketplaces, with more royalties paid on Blur when the trading volume surges,” it noted.

While NFT earnings have declined, some top projects have still earned a lot from them. Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) has seen a total of 22,288 ETH ($42.2 million) in all-time royalties, per Nansen data. Azuki, which has been under a lot of controversy recently, has recorded 17,362 ETH ($33 million) in all-time royalties.

BAYC NFTs reached its lowest floor price in over a year this week. The minimum cost of this blue-chip NFT hit a low of 27.03 ETH (around $51,500) before rising to 29 ETH as of publication, The Block’s data shows. The price of other popular NFT projects fell as well, with CryptoPunks hitting a 41 ETH ($78,000) minimum cost and Azuki plummeting to a 8 ETH ($15,000) floor price.

In 2022, NFT creators earned $1.8 billion in royalties, with the top 10 projects netting $489 million in residual earnings.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Valkyrie Digital Assets refiled its application for a spot bitcoin exchange traded fund (ETF) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, joining asset managers including BlackRock and Fidelity in taking another stab at the process.

In the face of recent scrutiny over its governance unit protocol DAO (pDAO), Rocket Pool, a prominent liquid staking project, has pledged to move towards full decentralization. This unfolded after Dmitry Gusakov from competitor project Lido Finance flagged issues within pDAO.

Rocket Pool operates under the governance of two primary units: the Oracle DAO (oDAO) and the Protocol DAO (pDAO). The oDAO comprises a permissionless group of Rocket Pool nodes that focus on operational tasks. On the other hand, the pDAO wields control over the smart contracts, thereby determining the operational parameters.

Dmitry Gusakov, community staking lead from Lido Finance, a competitor project, recently voiced concerns regarding the governance of Rocket Pool’s contracts under pDAO. Gusakov pointed out that these contracts, managed under the Protocol DAO (pDAO) unit, are currently overseen by a single Externally Owned Account (EOA).

An EOA is just a straightforward crypto wallet typically under the control of a single person — as opposed to a multi-sig, where multiple people are required to approve a transaction. This, according to Gusakov, is a centralized approach that falls short from the desired fully decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) model in a project like Rocket Pool.

Gusakov expressed particular unease over the centralized control of the “guardian” parameter in Rocket Pool’s smart contracts. This parameter provides the EOA with the power to alter other critical variables such as the “RPL token InflationIntervalRate” and “ETH DepositFee” without the need for a governance vote, posing potential risks associated with centralization.

The criticisms extended to the ‘bootstrapMode’ in Rocket Pool’s operations, a typical setting in the early stages of a protocol’s lifecycle that offers more centralized control over certain parameters and functions. This mode presently enabled by Rocket Pool’s pDAO underscores the EOA’s significant influence and potential centralization risk within Rocket Pool’s smart contract infrastructure.

Rocket Pool’s response: moving towards full decentralization

In response, Rocket Pool’s official community advocate Jaspreet Kalsi emphasized the protocol’s commitment to a more decentralized model. He acknowledged the need for on-chain governance development for the pDAO in the the forthcoming Saturn upgrade planned for Q4 2023. This upgrade is expected to resolve the existing decentralization gaps and reduce the EOA’s authority.

Kalsi admitted the initial trade-offs made at its inception but reaffirmed the protocol’s dedication to achieving complete decentralization. He shed light on the ongoing development of a fully decentralized on-chain voting system for the pDAO and added Rocket Pool would soon transition to being “100% decentralized.” This effort, Kalsi revealed, has been the subject of extensive analysis and planning for a long time, indicating the team’s long-term focus on decentralizing pDAO.

Gusakov’s comments also included a comparison between Rocket Pool and Lido, the latter being fully controlled by the Lido DAO through on-chain voting through Aragon. As Rocket Pool continues to mature and its community expands, Gusakov expressed hope that the bootstrapMode will be phased out. 

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Prometheum, once a member of the President’s Circle of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, left the blockchain advocacy group earlier this year.

“Prometheum made the decision to leave the Chamber of Digital Commerce in early 2023. We thank and respect the Chamber for its efforts but no longer need the affiliation,” a spokesperson told The Block. 

The advocacy group confirmed the departure, noting in a statement that it continues “to be a committed advocate for the ecosystem for regulatory clarity to support the development of blockchain technology and the use of digital assets.”

Prometheum is an SEC-registered broker dealer that wants to offer trading of cryptocurrencies that are securities. 

The company originally claimed that new regulation was needed for the sector. In 2021, Prometheum said that clarity was needed for broker dealers and other entities to understand the regulatory framework that they must comply with, and it asked for clarification on the definition of digital asset securities. 

This is a view that is still shared by many market participants including major exchanges like Coinbase, regulatory bodies like the Chamber of Digital Commerce and even some U.S. lawmakers. In April, for instance, Republican Patrick McHenry raised the question of whether ether is a security to Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, in an attempt to get such clarity although none was provided.

A different view

Yet in front of Congress in June, Prometheum CEO Aaron Kaplan set out a contrary view, claiming the SEC has actually laid out a path for crypto firms to be compliant with securities laws. The view appears to be in contradiction with the Chamber of Digital Commerce, which argues that regulatory clarity is not yet there.

The company had initially appeared to show some progress that supported its view. In October 2022, the company said it had launched its alternative trading system, claiming that the company “provides institutional traders and investors the ability to trade digital asset securities with pricing transparency and protections.” It named five tokens supported at launch.

Yet in emailed comments to The Block, Prometheum said that right now there are no such tokens traded on the platform. The company added that it still hasn’t launched yet.

It’s also still unclear how Prometheum expects to offer trading of most crypto tokens, since the SEC deems them as unregistered securities — something that has pushed even regulated exchanges like Robinhood to delist such tokens. This includes two of the tokens that Prometheum initially named in its launch announcement. 

For such tokens to be compliant, they would need to register with the SEC and provide a whole host of information on a regular basis. According to a recent podcast interview, Prometheum’s solution to the lack of such information when writing disclaimers has been to write “N/A.” It’s an approach that has left other crypto lawyers somewhat bemused.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The FCA’s regulations provide greater legal clarity for developers but place additional compliance burdens on companies marketing cryptocurrencies, says Preston Byrne, a partner at Brown Rudnick.

Binance Academy, the educational arm of the world’s largest crypto exchange Binance, has partnered with the online learning platform Coursera, tapping into its user base of over 124 million registered learners globally to offer a variety of crypto education programs.

The courses will cover various aspects of blockchain, web3 and cryptocurrency technologies, catering to both beginners and aspiring professionals in the space, according to a statement.

Binance said learners will receive a digital certificate upon completion of each course to help demonstrate their industry knowledge and open up career prospects, citing a PwC report on blockchain technology’s global GDP boost — enhancing more than 40 million jobs by 2030.

“Education is the cornerstone of progress and innovation,” Binance co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer Yi He said in the statement. “We’re combining the strengths of two industry leaders with a shared vision — to provide best-in-class education that will drive adoption and build the foundations for web3.”

According to a DevSkiller report in January, compiling over 200,000 skills assessments, the demand for blockchain developers rose by 552% in 2022.

“Learning skills in blockchain, web3 and cryptocurrency is more important than ever as a variety of new and exciting job roles emerge in these fields,” said Coursera Chief Content Officer Marni Baker Stein. “With fully online and self-paced content taught by experts from Binance Academy, learners everywhere will be able to equip themselves with crucial skills to thrive in the dynamic blockchain industry.”

The courses will include video lectures, readings, practice projects and graded assessments, with the first programs set to launch over the next few months, Binance said.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The BofE said in February that a digital pound was likely needed, but that it will not make a decision on issuing one until at least 2025.

“We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg with bitcoin DeFi today,” said Interlay CEO and Co-founder Alexei Zamyatin in an exclusive interview with CoinDesk.

Denmark’s Saxo Bank, which was designated as a systemically important financial institution last month, has been ordered to dispose of its own crypto holdings by the country’s financial regulator.

The order comes because proprietary trading of crypto by banks isn’t currently legal, the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority said Wednesday. “Saxo Bank’s trading with crypto assets for its own account has been done to hedge risks associated with the offering of other financial products. However, this does not change the fact that the activity itself is not allowed for Danish financial institutions…,” the regulator said.

It went on to say that European Union’s crypto regulation, known as markets for cryptoassets regulation (MiCA), only comes into effect from Dec. 30, 2024, and therefore Saxo Bank’s proprietary trading is unregulated for the time being.

The exact value of crypto assets held by Saxo Bank in its proprietary trading account is unclear. The bank did not immediately respond to The Block’s request for comment.

Saxo Bank also offers crypto trading to clients and provides them access to crypto exchange-traded products. Its crypto trading service is offered via fiat pairs, including the U.S. dollar, euro and Japanese yen. Saxo does not allow funding or withdrawal in cryptocurrencies, according to its website.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.