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On this episode of The Scoop, founder Ari Rubenstein and founder & CEO Ryan Sheftel joined host Frank Chaparro to discuss the launch of their new crypto firm, called Radkl.

Radkl, which was born out of trading firm and New York Stock Exchange market maker GTS, is a new digital asset trading business. GTS currently trades hundreds of thousands of financial instruments algorithmically, which according to GTS accounts for some “five percent of the entire US equity markets by volume.”

Radkl’s focus on crypto today means providing liquidity and eventually getting into decentralized finance protocols like staking, among other services it expects to offer for its clients. 

“Being involved in the liquidity provision, in the AMM protocols, and DeFi is an obvious first start” Said Sheftel. The CEO said that he expects traditional CeFi order books to merge with AMM liquidity, and to have Radkl serve that sector of the market.

Meanwhile, Rubenstein sees the beginnings of crypto firms as a similar kind of disruption and growth potential for traditional businesses to when capital markets went electronic and online.

Rubenstein believes they are early entrants into a growing market, “I think we’re going to see a world very soon, Frank, that we see an explosion in a secondary markets for things that formerly didn’t have secondary markets that now are made by this digitization of of industries that- I don’t mean just financial instruments or digital pictures like entities- I mean lots of other things that could ride the backbone of CeFi and decentralized finance.”

Hedge fund investor and owner of the Mets Steve Cohen also announced he will be backing Radkl. Though as of yet, the exact sum of that investment has not been disclosed.

© 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.

Short-selling research firm Hindenburg Research is to offering a bounty of up to $1 million for information that can uncover details about stablecoin Tether’s backing.

• The firm said it “has doubts” about Tether’s backing and is launching the Hindenburg Tether Bounty Program to encourage a search for previously undisclosed details about it.
• Hindenburg specifically highlighted in an announcement Wednesday Tether’s claims that a significant portion of its reserves are held in commercial paper without disclosing anything about its counterparties.
• The program will enable users to submit information on Tether’s backing and earn rewards “in an amount up to $1 million,” Hindenburg said.
• Regulatory scrutiny around the reserves that lie behind Tether’s stablecoin USDT and other similar instruments is well established. Hindenburg appears to be lending its weight to the work being carried out at the Securities and Exchange Commission and on Capitol Hill.
• In response, Tether labelled the bounty program “cynical” and a “pathetic bid for attention.”
• “This is not the first time Hindenburg Research has orchestrated an apparent scheme in pursuit of profit. Nor will it be the last. Tether abhors and denounces their actions and transparent motives,” the stablecoin issuer said in a statement.
• Hindenburg Research has in recent years garnered a reputation for uncovering information about publicly traded companies that sinks their share price and invites scrutiny from regulatory bodies. A report in June, for example, that suggested sports betting firm DraftKings had potentially enabled black-market betting led to a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Read more: Tether’s First Reserve Breakdown Shows Token 49% Backed by Unspecified Commercial Paper

Bitcoin’s price has been on a tear since the last few trading sessions. It has now reached a new all-time high above $66,000. The cryptocurrency was changing hands at around $66,040 at the time of publication.

Bitcoin’s previous all-time high price was around $64,900, reached in mid-April of this year. The global cryptocurrency market cap is also at its all-time high of $2.7 trillion.

Other cryptocurrencies have also risen at the same time. The price of ether has broken above the $4,000 mark, although not for the first time.

This follows the launch of the first bitcoin ETF in the U.S. The Proshares bitcoin futures-based ETF went live on Tuesday and saw just shy of $1 billion in volumes on its first day.

© 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.

VanEck will join ProShares in launching a bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) next week.

The company revealed it had secured approval to launch its bitcoin-linked ETF in a post-effective filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), indicating the SEC has given the company permission to launch its fund after Oct. 23, a Saturday. Trading will begin “as soon as practicable after the effective date,” which suggests Monday, Oct. 25.

“The Fund is an actively managed exchange-traded fund (’ETF’) that seeks to achieve its investment objective by investing, under normal circumstances, in standardized, cash-settled bitcoin futures contracts (’Bitcoin Futures’) traded on commodity exchanges registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (’CFTC’), such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (the ‘CME’). The Fund does not invest in bitcoin or other digital assets directly,” the filing noted.

The SEC greenlit the first bitcoin futures ETF last week, according to a similar regulatory filing ProShares filed late Friday. The product began trading on Tuesday, immediately becoming one of the largest ETF debuts in U.S. history.

ProShares and VanEck’s approvals mark the first time U.S. investors can buy and trade shares of an ETF directly linked to bitcoin. The U.S. follows in the footsteps of Canada and certain European nations, which have allowed bitcoin ETFs and other exchange-traded products to go live already.

Canada allowed physically backed bitcoin ETFs to launch earlier this year, however, while the U.S. is still only allowing futures-linked ETFs to go live. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, who opened the door for these products in August, has said in multiple public statements that he believes ETFs filed under the Investment Company Act of 1940, which govern the futures ETFs, provide stronger investment protections than the Securities Act of 1933, which governs physical ETFs.

Bitcoin’s price has risen in anticipation of the launch of bitcoin futures ETFs, as well as following the successful debut of the ProShares product on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the price of bitcoin hit a new all-time high above $65,000.

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has hit a new all-time high above $65,000.

The crypto broke above its previous high of $64,889 reached in April.

Bitcoin is currently changing hands for around $65,607, up 4.2% over the past 24 hours. The latest rally pushed bitcoin’s year-to-date terms to 122%, according to CoinDesk data.

The largest cryptocurrency appears to have gotten a push on Tuesday from the launch of the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, the first exchange-traded fund approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to invest in bitcoin futures.

Indeed, the new fund, traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker $BITO, garnered a first-day trading volume of more than $1 billion, ranking it among the most successful launches of all time.

In the coming weeks, several more bitcoin futures-based ETFs may debut in the U.S., opening up the potential for savvy U.S. crypto investors to partake in what is known as a “cash and carry” arbitrage strategy.

These ETFs would buy bitcoin futures contracts, on regulated venues such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), in an attempt to replicate the cryptocurrency’s price performance instead of purchasing actual bitcoin.

Read more: First Bitcoin Futures ETF ‘BITO’ Tops $1B Trading Volume on First Day

Cryptocurrency index fund manager Bitwise Asset Management formed a Polygon fund to give investors exposure to the layer 2′s native MATIC token. The fund will test the thesis of whether the popular Ethereum scaling solution has staying power.

Polygon allows developers to build applications that integrate with the Ethereum mainnet, Bitwise highlighted in a statement Wednesday.

“For years, the excitement around crypto’s most promising use cases, including DeFi [decentralized finance] and NFTs [non-fungible tokens], has been muted by the fact that Ethereum simply isn’t built to handle it all yet,” Matt Hougan, Bitwise’s chief investment officer, said in a statement. Hougan sees Polygon as a platform to improve these issues.

Bitwise is the world’s largest crypto index fund manager, with over $1.2 billion in assets under management as of March 31, according to its website.

“We’re thrilled that a broader range of accredited and institutional investors will now be able to gain exposure to the MATIC token and help encourage greater development of the Polygon ecosystem,” Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal said in a statement.

Digital Currency Group (CoinDesk’s parent company) is planning to hoover up to a billion dollars worth of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC).

• With subsidiary Grayscale’s flagship product facing sudden competition for brokerage accounts’ bitcoin dollars, the crypto conglomerate increased its GBTC buy range by $250 million, DCG announced Wednesday. It said it has bought $388 million shares of GBTC so far.
• The authorization comes as bitcoin-curious mainstream investors look beyond Grayscale for crypto exposure. On Tuesday, ProShares, a Wall Street fund shop, launched the first bitcoin futures-linked exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the U.S. The ETF (NYSE: BITO) closed the day with $570 million in assets.
• GBTC, meanwhile, ended Tuesday at a 16.55% discount relative to the price of bitcoin after that figure hit a five-month low of 20.5% on Monday. The trust has its own plans to become an ETF, a conversion unlikely to happen any time soon.

Digital assets firm Securitize has announced that Brett Redfearn, former director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s trading and markets division, has joined the company as a senior strategic advisor and chair of the advisory board.

Redfearn, who left the SEC in January 2021, spent five months as Coinbase’s head of capital markets earlier this year before abruptly leaving the crypto exchange in August.

At Securitize, Redfearn will advise CEO Carlos Domingo.

“Blockchain holds incredible promise in addressing limitations inherent in today’s capital markets, including broader access to capital and investment opportunities, a fairer and more level playing field, fractional ownership, nearly instantaneous clearing and settlement, transparent record-keeping, and entirely new kinds of products,” said Redfearn in a statement.

Securitize’s business revolves around a platform that helps institutions issue and manage digital assets securities, often referred to as ‘tokenized’ securities. More than 200 businesses and 400,000 investors are connected to the platform today, with some $500 million in assets trading on the platform.

Redfearn will now chair an advisory board that also features former SEC commissioner Paul Atkins and a host of other Silicon Valley and Wall Street big hitters, including Dick Costolo, former CEO of Twitter.

© 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.

Cboe Global Markets announced Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire ErisX, a crypto spot and derivatives exchange.

The news marks the return of Cboe in the crypto space. In December 2017, Cboe was the first U.S. regulated exchange to launch bitcoin futures, but in June 2019, it shut the product down. At the time, Cboe said it was assessing its approach for how it plans to continue the crypto business.

The ErisX acquisition news comes just a day after the first bitcoin futures ETF started trading in the U.S. from ProShares. The ETF saw a historic nearly $1 billion in volume on its first trading day on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Arca.

“Now is the right time to fully embrace and help define this emerging asset class,” said Chris Isaacson, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Cboe. “With ErisX, in a single step, Cboe is able to enter the digital asset spot, data, derivatives, and clearing ecosystem.”

ErisX was founded in 2018 and operates a U.S.-based crypto spot marketplace, a futures exchange, and a clearinghouse. The futures exchange and the clearinghouse are regulated by the CFTC, and the clearinghouse is registered with FinCEN and licensed in several U.S. states and territories.

Cboe plans to operate the crypto business as Cboe Digital. The company will also form a Digital Advisory Committee with high-profile firms to plan the ongoing development of ErisX. These firms include DRW, Fidelity Digital Assets, Galaxy Digital, Interactive Brokers, NYDIG, Paxos, and Robinhood. Some of these firms also intend to acquire minority ownership interests in Cboe Digital and serve as partners in the growth of the business.

The terms of the acquisition haven’t been disclosed, but Cboe said the purchase price “is not material from a financial perspective.” It plans to fund the deal with a combination of cash on hand and increased debt.

The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2022, subject to regulatory approvals.

© 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.

Portfolio management in decentralized finance (DeFi) remains a highly manual and, at times, costly process, especially on platforms like Uniswap v3 where “concentrated liquidity” means that a user might have their position liquidated entirely to one side of a pair.

However, Sommelier is working to change that. The Ethereum-based and soon-to-be Cosmos-managed project has raised $23 million in a round led by Polychain Capital, the team announced on Wednesday.

The round included participation from Byzantine Ventures, Tendermint Ventures, Secure Ventures, D1 Ventures, Ferngrove Ventures and Alameda Research.

Sommelier might roughly be thought of as a yield vault similar to Yearn.Finance: users deposit liquidity, and the platform uses the funds in automatically rebalancing Uniswap v3 positions, routing Uniswap trading fees to the depositor.

According to the release, in the first six months since the launch of its “Pairings” product, “Sommelier has helped LPs place over $10 million in liquidity on Uniswap V3, which successfully generated over $2 million in fees for portfolio owners.”

Read more: Zaki Manian’s Sommelier Finance Raises $3.5M to Help DeFi Investors Avoid Impermanent Loss

Sommelier co-founder Zaki Manian, who refers to the platform as “Somm,” says the funds from the raise will be used to continue development on the “Cellars” product, which is currently in prototyping. These upgradable products use a network of Cosmos-based validators to manage positions.

“Cellars gather data from people analyzing the Uniswap v3 pool to determine which strategies will be optimal,” Manian said. “The decision-making is diffused across a number of validators.”

The team expects validators will provide superior analysis and data feeds for positions via an incentivized network, and users can choose which validators get to manage the portfolio via a forthcoming governance token. Cellars will eventually expand to other DeFi platforms for strategies as well.

The multi-chain architecture is somewhat unusual, but Manian says it’s a natural development given the work that’s been done in the Cosmos ecosystem over the years.

“I’ve been working for the past five years in multi0chain system. Most people in Cosmos, they were working on token bridging in 2016. That’s done, that’s not exciting anymore – what we’re working on now is composability. ‘How do you take the strengths of different chains?’” he said.

Sommelier is currently discussing internally its token launch, Manian said, noting that a liquidity mining program could be in the works shortly after.

“30% of the token is in the community treasury. Expect to see governance proposals on which Cellars launch first, and a likely liquidity mining program,” he said.