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SEC seeks comments on Grayscale’s GBTC ETF proposal

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is taking a closer look at Grayscale’s application to convert its Grayscale Bitcoin Fund (GBTC) into a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).

The SEC published a notice on November 2, soliciting comments on the proposed rule change filed by NYSE Arca.

NYSE Arca filed a 19b-4 to list the converted GBTC ETF on October 19, starting the clock for the SEC to come to a decision on the product. A decision from the SEC could be in as early as December 24. However, the agency has a history of extensions on bitcoin spot product applications.

The SEC’s new notice is soliciting feedback on the proposal. The agency has taken this approach in the past, most recently with VanEck’s application. The Commission has continued to extend on VanEck, including a notice soliciting comments in June of this year. Still, VanEck is the furthest proposal in the application cycle, and the agency will have to come to a final decision on November 14.

Grayscale has had plans to convert its flagship fund for some time now, announcing in February of this year that it would convert GBTC. The firm has also said it intends to convert all of its products over time.

Since then, it has installed David LaValle as global head of ETFs, the previous CEO of index provider at Alerian and once head of ETF capital markets at State Street, and outsourced some fund administration work for GBTC to BNY Mellon in preparation for the planned conversion.

 

© 2021 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.

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Author: Aislinn Keely

Binance Is Investigating Squid Game Token, Considers It a Scam

Crypto exchange Binance is investigating the SQUID token crash and considers it a scam, a company spokesperson confirmed to CoinDesk.

  • Binance is exploring options to help those harmed, including “blacklisting addresses affiliated with the developers and deploying blockchain analytics to identify the bad actors,” the spokesperson said.
  • Binance will also provide their findings to law enforcement officials in the appropriate jurisdiction.
  • The play-to-earn SQUID protocol is built on Binance Smart Chain (BSC), but Binance emphasized that BSC is an open-source ecosystem and so the company does not have oversight over projects built on the network.
  • “These types of scam projects have become all too common in the DeFi space as speculative crypto investors seeking the next ‘moon shot’ are quick to invest in projects without doing the appropriate due diligence,” the spokesperson said.
  • As reported earlier this week by CoinDesk, the price of the SQUID token has crashed to nearly zero and its developers have said they’ve left the project.
  • Barron’s first reported on the investigation. The token’s developers appear to be using Tornado Cash to cover their tracks, Binance told Barron’s.

Read more: Play-to-Earn Squid Token Rockets 35,000% in 3 Days; Some Users Unable to Sell It

UPDATE (Nov. 3, 21:39 UTC): Updated to include confirmation and statements from Binance.

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Author: Nelson Wang

Acting US comptroller says both OCC crypto review and interagency ‘crypto sprint’ have concluded

At the start of his tenure, Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu initiated a review into crypto-specific actions taken ahead of his installation. Hsu shared Wednesday that the review has concluded and the federal bank regulator will communicate determinations and feedback to bank charter applicants.

Hsu’s remarks came at the American Fintech Council’s Fintech Policy Summit, where he focused heavily on the lack of consolidated regulatory oversight for crypto firms.

In the past, Hsu has also harped on the issue of a lack of coordinated effort across agencies to clarify rules of the road and regulate crypto firms. To that end, he set up a “crypto sprint” between the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

That joint effort has concluded as well, Hsu said Wednesday, and he added that the results will be communicated “shortly” in a variety of forms.

“The content of these communications — on the chartering decisions, interpretive letters, and the crypto sprint — will be broadly aligned with the vision for the bank regulatory perimeter laid out here today,” he said.

These will clarify what Hsu calls the “regulatory perimeter” focusing on what regulators consider the most salient questions. Hsu included a few of these questions in his remarks:

“How should “synthetic banking” be defined? What constitutes ‘universal’ activity for a crypto firm? (Should certain crypto activities even be allowed to mix?) What adjustments to bank prudential standards and supervisory approaches are needed to ensure that such firms operate safely, soundly, and fairly? To answer these and other critical questions meaningfully, federal and state regulators will need to engage technology and crypto firms, academics, community groups, banks, trade associations, and other stakeholders.”

The process conclusions come as the OCC moves closer to a change of leadership. The Biden administration has announced its nomination for head of the OCC, formally tapping Saule Omarova, a professor at Cornell’s Law School. Omarova faces resistance from Republicans, who have accused her of being decidedly “anti-bank.”

© 2021 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.

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Author: Aislinn Keely

CoinDesk Names Kevin Reynolds Editor-in-Chief

No matter what views people hold about cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, there’s no denying the general public has an insatiable appetite for news and information about this field.

That’s why CoinDesk is building the leading global media platform for a rapidly growing digital asset industry, one that will be a vital information resource for all those engaged in the transformation of the global financial system that it portends.

To take that mission to the next level, we’re promoting Kevin Reynolds to the newly reconstituted role of Editor-in-Chief, where he’ll oversee our news, long-form and professional editorial content. A journalist with decades of experience building and running global news teams in fast-moving, high-stress environments and with an entrepreneurial instinct for finding and addressing new markets and audiences, Kevin is the ideal person to lead CoinDesk’s editorial coverage of this important story. Prior to this promotion, Kevin was CoinDesk’s Global News Editor.

Before joining CoinDesk last year, Kevin was at Bloomberg News for over 23 years, where he started, scaled and ran First Word, a 250-person global news/analysis service for professional clients. By the time Reynolds left Bloomberg, First Word had grown to be the most successful news product in company history, getting more client views than the much-larger Bloomberg News and winning two CEO awards.

Kevin also started Bloomberg’s Speed Desk, which Joe Weisenthal cited in Business Insider as a “mindblowing operation” that sends flash headlines on breaking news from press releases, Securities and Exchange Commission filings, websites and other media, as well as Bloomberg’s assignment desk. He turned around two other operations and started numerous others, including the training program that all Bloomberg News hires worldwide are required to take. He shares a patent for a CMS he helped design and is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps.

Kevin enjoys the continued support of Executive Editor Marc Hochstein and Deputy Global News Editor Zack Seward, leading a two-pronged editorial mission.

As Executive Editor, Marc is leading the development of CoinDesk’s soon-to-be named online magazine of ideas, which will focus on long-form stories, investigative pieces, people profiles, Op-Eds and research, providing a resource for those looking for deeper dives into the many contentious issues facing this industry. Under Marc’s leadership, the new magazine will set the agenda for how this highly disruptive technology is incorporated into society, addressing the many challenges it poses to regulators, engineers, business leaders and the general public.

A former Editor-in-Chief at American Banker with more than 25 years in journalism, and now a four-year CoinDesk veteran, Marc will also continue to exercise autonomous authority as Executive Editor for ethics and standards. Journalists covering this field have an obligation to do so in as fair and impartial manner as possible and to seek to hold business leaders and policymakers to account over their commitment to principles of open access and the common interest in a technology that should be considered a “public good.” We are blessed to have a journalist of Marc’s experience and integrity overseeing CoinDesk’s commitment to this.

Zack will take responsibility for managing the global news staff, leading CoinDesk’s daily news meeting and helping to shape our daily, around-the-clock coverage of news in the crypto and related industries. He joined CoinDesk three years ago from Technical.ly, where he was Editor-in-Chief.

These changes within the editorial department give me an opportunity, as well, to call out the talented, experienced leaders heading CoinDesk’s other content departments.

Joanne Po is CoinDesk’s Head of Multimedia and Executive Producer. Her career includes senior leadership roles at Fox Digital, The Wall Street Journal and CNBC.

Emily Parker, who leads CoinDesk’s international expansion, is a former editor at The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times and a former member of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department. She is the author of “Now I Know Who My Comrades Are” and a co-founder of the Asia-based crypto startup LongHash.

Pete Pachal, a former technology editor from Mashable who has been CoinDesk’s Executive Editor for Operations and Strategy will now take on a cross-content department role as Chief of Staff.

With token prices at all-time highs amid an explosion of innovation in decentralized finance (DeFi) that’s challenging the incumbent financial system, and with the non-fungible token (NFT) zeitgeist pointing to a new digital economic model, we are at what might be described as as “crypto moment.” I’m proud to have brought together this A-list team of media professionals so that CoinDesk can capture and explain all of its exciting elements.

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Author: Michael J. Casey

Mayor-elect Eric Adams commits to make New York City more crypto-friendly

Mayor-elect Eric Adams says he wants to make New York City “crypto-friendly,” and he’s taking note of the recent success of Miami’s CityCoins project.

Adams defeated Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa in Tuesday’s general election. His campaign focused on fighting crime — Adams’ background is in the NYPD, serving as an officer for 22 years before taking a seat in the state senate and serving as Brooklyn Borough President.

But now as Mayor-elect, he’s looking to crypto as one avenue to stimulate financial growth in the city.

In an interview with Bloomberg, the NYC Mayor-Elect said he’s committed to looking into “what’s preventing the growth of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency” in New York. That’s part of a larger push to become a “business-friendly” city.

“We’re too bureaucratic, too expensive and too difficult to do business,” he said. “Our agencies, they go into businesses looking for ways to penalize or fine them. We’re changing that atmosphere altogether, we’re going to become a business-friendly city.”

The city has notoriously high barriers to entry for licensure for crypto firms. It is the home of the BitLicense, which is the gold standard of licensure but entails an expensive and time-consuming process.

Adams also told Bloomberg he’s specifically looking at the recent success of Miami’s crypto efforts and wants a “friendly competition” with the city in the realm of its crypto efforts. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez recently announced that the city had made $7.1 million from a partnership with the CityCoins protocol in a little over a month. Adams said he’s “going to look in the direction to carry that out,” as well.

CityCoins allows users to hold and trade a city’s token on the protocol, representing a stake in a municipality. Running the software earns the user a percentage of the coins they mint. In the case of Miami, users got 70% while the remaining 30% returns to the municipality. Suarez is particularly bullish on the project, estimating MiamiCoin could generate $60 million for the city over the course of the year. 

© 2021 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.

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Author: Aislinn Keely

Market Wrap: Bitcoin Holds Above $60K After Fed Taper Announcement

Bitcoin traded in a choppy price range on Wednesday as traders reacted to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s plans to taper its $120-billion-a-month in bond purchases.

The unprecedented amount of buying by the Fed as part of its monetary stimulus plan known as quantitative easing (QE) provided a tailwind for financial assets, such as cryptocurrencies, deemed by the market to be risky. But lower liquidity as a result of the tapering could encourage investors to reduce their exposure to crypto and other risks.

Bitcoin’s price fell by about 5% during the announcement by the Fed’s policymaking Federal Open Market Committee in its post-meeting statement, but buyers were quick to step in around the $60,000 support level.

Analysts remain bullish on cryptocurrencies, but some have pointed to declining trading volume as a sign of slowing upside momentum in prices.

“We haven’t even seen an episode of FOMO (fear of missing out) yet, so the sharpest bull-run part of the rally is yet to come,” Alex Kuptsikevich, an analyst at FxPro, wrote in an email to CoinDesk. “Despite BTC’s very sluggish performance in recent days, what still draws attention is the apparent support on dips,” Kuptsikevich wrote.

Latest Prices

  • Bitcoin (BTC): $62,997.19, -0.64%
  • Ether (ETH): 4,630.40, +2.78%
  • S&P 500: 4,660.57, +0.65%
  • Gold: 1,772.56, -0.83%
  • 10-year Treasury yield closed at 1.596%

Bitcoin rally on low trading volume

Trading volume in the bitcoin spot market continued to decline despite bitcoin’s price rally over the past month. The chart below shows the seven-day average BTC trading volume, which is down almost $1 billion from the previous week, according to data compiled by Arcane Research.

But some analysts expect higher trading activity if BTC rallies through the end of the year.

“The trading volume has decreased substantially since bitcoin hit an all-time high on October 20, and it should increase considerably if bitcoin is to challenge its all-time high again soon,” Arcane wrote in a Wednesday report.

Trading has also been relatively quiet on the Coinbase crypto exchange over the past week, with BTC accounting for 21% of total volume. However, the company noted that trading activity is starting to increase in alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) as bitcoin’s price stalls.

“Ether (ETH) volumes have also seen an increase to 18.51%, relegating SHIB to the third spot,” Coinbase wrote in a newsletter to institutional clients, referring to the shiba inu coin. “It is possible to envisage a scenario where ETH will again overtake BTC in terms of volumes as we head into year-end if this narrative gains steam.”

Altcoin roundup

  • Layer 2 coins are thriving as Ethereum costs are rising: The average fee on Ethereum has given rise by 2,300% since late June and is now at $56. This appears to be driving investors to coins associated with layer 2 products that facilitate faster and cheaper transactions, and those of rival programmable blockchains, CoinDesk’s Omkar Godbole reported. This allowed Solana’s SOL token, which surged in price by 13% in the past 24 hours to $234, to pass Cardano’s ADA as the fifth-largest cryptocurrency, according to CoinGeckio. At the same time, smart-contract blockchain Polkadot’s DOT token also rallied to an all-time high of $53.37 early Wednesday.
  • EOS Foundation CEO says, “EOS, as it stands, is a failure:” At a virtual event on Wednesday, Yves La Rose, CEO of the EOS Foundation, claimed the EOS blockchain protocol’s native currency, EOS, has been “a terrible investment,” CoinDesk’s Andrew Thurman reported. La Rose’s speech places much of the blame on backer and former developer Block.one, which the project will no longer be relying on for guidance. He also said that EOS was “a victim of its own success,” and that it was put in a position of “having to meet extreme expectations as it raised extreme sums.”
  • Kraken fails to list SHIB: Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has failed to list popular meme token SHIB on its exchange after it promised to do so on Twitter, CoinDesk’s Muyao Shen reported. In a tweet on Monday, the exchange said that if they got 2,000 “likes,” it would list shiba inu on Tuesday. However, at press time on Wednesday, SHIB is still not available to buy and sell on Kraken despite the tweet having over 77,000 likes. The lack of action by Kraken has triggered anger on social media, with one user tweeting, “[Y]ou have lost me as lifetime customer now.”

Relevant news

Other markets

Most digital assets in the CoinDesk 20 ended the day higher.

Notable winners as of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):

  • Polygon (MATIC): +5.51%
  • XRP (XRP): +5.19%
  • Polkadot (DOT): +4.84%

Notable losers:

  • Dogecoin (DOGE): -2.34%
  • The Graph (GRT): -1.64%
  • EOS (EOS: -1.42%
  • Chainlink (LINK): -1.4%

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Author: Damanick Dantes, Helene Braun

Company behind FTX.US pens NIL deal with University of Kentucky men’s basketball team

The firm behind the U.S.-based crypto exchange FTX.US, West Realm Shires Services Inc, announced Wednesday a new sponsorship deal with the University of Kentucky men’s basketball team, according to a Wednesday release. 

Through the deal, FTX.US will pay the UKY basketball players in USD and allow them to create and profit off their own non-fungible tokens (NFTs) sold on the FTX NFT marketplace. In addition, FTX.US will donate funds to a charity of the UKY basketball players’ choosing. 

“We’re thrilled to work with players from one of the most successful collegiate basketball programs in the country,” said Avi Dabir, FTX Vice President of Business Development, in a release. “Outside of the well-deserved financial compensation, we will be assisting in the student athletes’ education of digital assets so that they can make informed investment decisions as they look to enter the space.”

FTX.US’s sponsorship of the players comes three months after the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) allowed student athletes to profit off their names, image and likeness (NIL) — which the NCAA had banned before reversing the decision in July of this year. 

In addition, FTX.US move comes two months after the firm launched a sports- and entertainment-focused NFT marketplace with Dolphin Entertainment, a media company, on August 2.

© 2021 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.

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Author: MK Manoylov

Binance Funds $116M Initiative to Grow French Crypto Ecosystem

Crypto exchange Binance and French Fintech, a nonprofit focused on promoting financial technology in France, have launched an initiative to support the development of the French and European blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystem.

  • As part of the initiative, called “Objective Moon,” Binance will provide €100 million ($116 million) to establish a research and development hub in France that will recruit talent from across Europe.
  • The money will also create a decentralized ledger technology (DLT) accelerator to help fuel startup growth and build out the ecosystem in France and Europe.
  • Lastly, an online education program aims to develop crypto and blockchain talent in the region. French Fintech and Binance have teamed with crypto security and infrastructure company Ledger on the program.
  • “At Binance, we recognize the quality of French and European tech, crypto and blockchain talent, and we are convinced that with the launch of Binance’s major operations and investment in France, we can significantly contribute toward making France and Europe the leading global player in blockchain and crypto industry,” said Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, founder and CEO of Binance, in the press release.

Read More: Binance Temporarily Disables All Crypto Withdrawals, Cites Backlog

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Author: Brandy Betz

Lower Trading Volatility in 2021 Crypto Bull Runs Signals Maturing Market

Bitcoin’s two bull runs in 2021 have differed from those in past years and one key distinction has been decreased volatility expectation.

This metric, which shows the cryptocurrency’s expected price swings, did not spike when bitcoin’s price hit record highs in April and then in October, indicating that bitcoin may be evolving into a more mature investment asset.

Bitcoin three-month implied volatility. Credit: Omkar Godbole at CoinDesk/Skew

Prior to 2021, bitcoin’s three-month implied volatility (IV) – investors’ expectation of how turbulent prices will be over the ensuing three months – spiked during both bull and bear runs, according to data from crypto data firm Skew. But this year, a similar spike only occurred when the market crashed in May.

“IV tends to go up when people are unsure of what’s going to happen in the future,” Patrick Chu, director of institutional sales and trading at institution-focused, over-the-counter desk Paradigm, said. An increase in IV reflects a market attitude “like ‘wow! how high will it go!!’”

The change coincides with a low realized volatility of bitcoin – bitcoin volatility that has already occurred, Chu also noted.

Bitcoin realized volatility. Credit: Skew

“The market feels very complacent,” Chu said. “The recent realized volatility has been grinding lower as bitcoin becomes more mature, so most [our] clients are also not in a rush to buy options (buy implied volatility) to express their trade views at the current time.”

As CoinDesk reported, buying implied volatility is one of the lesser-known uses for options trading, which is a bet on whether price swings will increase or decrease. Traders buy options (call/put) when volatility is relatively cheap and sell when it’s high.

Bitcoin options volume. Credit: Skew

Data from Skew shows that except for a trading volume spike on Oct. 15 due to excitement over the debut of the first U.S. bitcoin futures-based exchange-traded fund (ETF), bitcoin options volume remained relatively low in October – even when bitcoin hit an all-time high on Oct. 20.

“When the market is stuck in a familiar range, traders tend to lose interest,” Chu added.

But some analysts argue that bitcoin is at an earlier stage and remains more volatile than traditional stock and capital markets.

IV “may have stabilized but is still very high compared to the S&P[500], for instance,” Noelle Acheson, head of market insights at Genesis Global Trading, said. (Genesis is owned by Digital Currency Group, which also owns CoinDesk).

Trader and analyst Alex Kruger told CoinDesk that bitcoin is still “far from” a traditional asset, adding that decreased IV could be due to more volatility sellers on the market.

Meanwhile, speculative trading interest appears to have shifted to ether, the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Ether’s three-month implied volatility and its options trading volume have both elevated in recent days, according to Skew, as the cryptocurrency broke to a record high on Tuesday.

ether three-month implied volatility. Credit: Skew

As CoinDesk reported, options traders have turned to long-term bullish bets on ether as some anticipate that an ether-based ETF product will likely follow the launch of the first bitcoin futures-based ETF in the U.S.

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Author: Muyao Shen

US Lawmakers Call for Bitcoin Spot ETF in Letter to SEC Chair Gensler

U.S. Reps. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and Darren Soto (D-Fla.) advocated for the trading of bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in a strongly worded letter to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler on Wednesday.

  • The letter questioned why the SEC is comfortable with allowing a derivatives-based bitcoin ETF but not a bitcoin spot ETF. It referred to the launch of the first bitcoin futures ETF in U.S., which started trading in October.
  • Emmer and Soto wrote that bitcoin spot ETFs are based directly on the asset and offer investors more protection than one based on derivatives.
  • “To be clear, we do not intend to say that one method of exposure is better than the other, but rather that unless there are clear and demonstrable investor protection advantages, investors should have a choice over which product is most suitable for them and their investment objectives,” the lawmakers wrote.
  • Last week, Steven McClurg, chief investment officer of Valkyrie Funds, which proposed its own bitcoin futures ETF, said the market probably won’t see a bitcoin spot ETF until 2022.

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Author: Sandali Handagama


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