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Bessent Says ‘Tenfold’ Growth in Stablecoins Will Lift Demand for Treasurys
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Tag: virtual currencies
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SEC weighing ‘additional measures’ after hacked post on bitcoin ETF approval
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The Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday said that a social-media post on X falsely stating that it had approved spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds was created after an “unauthorized party” obtained control over the phone number connected with the agency’s account on the platform.
The markets regulator said its staff would “continue to assess whether additional remedial measures are warranted” in the wake of the breach, which occurred Tuesday and raised questions about cybersecurity at both the agency and the social-media platform, formerly known as Twitter.
The agency said it was coordinating with law enforcement on the matter, including with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.
“Commission staff are still assessing the impacts of this incident on the agency, investors, and the marketplace but recognize that those impacts include concerns about the security of the SEC’s social media accounts,” the SEC said in a statement.
The confusion began on Tuesday afternoon, when the hacked post appeared on the SEC’s X account.
“Today the SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on registered national securities exchanges,” the post read. “The approved Bitcoin ETFs will be subject to ongoing surveillance and compliance measures to ensure continued investor protection.”
A second post appeared two minutes later that simply read “$BTC,” the SEC noted in its statement. The unauthorized user soon deleted that second post, but also liked two other posts by non-SEC accounts, according to the agency. The price of bitcoin
BTCUSD,
-0.71%
rose sharply in the wake of the posts, before soon pulling back.In response to the hack, SEC staff posted on the official X account of SEC Chair Gary Gensler announcing that the agency’s main account had been compromised, and that it had not yet approved any spot bitcoin exchange-traded products. Staff then deleted the initial unauthorized post, un-liked the liked posts and used the official SEC account to make a new post clarifying the situation, the agency said Friday.
The SEC also said that it had reached out to X for assistance Tuesday in the wake of the incident, and that agency staff believe the unauthorized access to the SEC’s account was “terminated” later in the day.
“While SEC staff is still assessing the scope of the incident, there is currently no evidence that the unauthorized party gained access to SEC systems, data, devices, or other social media accounts,” the agency said.
The following day, the SEC announced that it had, in fact, approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin ETFs.
Wednesday’s move marked a breakthrough for the crypto industry, which for years has tried to get such ETFs off the ground in hopes of drawing more traditional investors to the digital-asset space.
Bitcoin was down 7.6% over a 24-period as of Friday evening.
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After Bitcoin ETFs, watch for the next most popular crypto to go the same route
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After long-awaited spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds made their debut this week, investors are now weighing the prospects of eventual approval of similar ether ETFs.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday greenlighted 11 spot bitcoin
BTCUSD,
-1.58%
ETFs for the first time. The products, which made its debut trading on Thursday, logged a relatively strong first day.However, bitcoin fell 6.8% on Friday, leaving it with a 3.2% gain over the past seven days, according to CoinDesk data. It underperformed ether
ETHUSD,
+1.82% ,
which rose 17.6% over the past seven days while it declined 1.2% on Friday.The news about bitcoin ETFs was mostly priced in, while investors are now looking past it to a potential approval of ether ETFs, analysts said.
“I see value in having an ETH ETF,” Larry Fink, chief executive at the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock, told CNBC’s Squawk Box on Friday. BlackRock, which just launched its iShares bitcoin Trust
IBIT,
in November filed an application for a spot ether ETF.“It’s hard to know exactly what the U.S. regulators would do” about ether ETF applications, said Alonso de Gortari, chief economist at Mysten Labs, an internet infrastructure company.
However, “I would expect that once you open the door, it becomes easier and I think the industry is very excited about it,” de Gortari said. If bitcoin ETFs see an impressive institutional inflow in the coming months, it could make such products more established and set a good precedent for other crypto ETF applications, he said.
Also see: Why the debut of bitcoin ETFs could be bad news for crypto stocks, futures ETFs
The enormous competition and huge inflows into bitcoin ETFs will only boost investors’ interests in an ether ETF, according to Paul Brody, EY’s global blockchain leader. “There’s no doubt that ETH is the next big market and has immediately become a priority for financial services companies,” Brody said in emailed comments.
Compared with bitcoin, the Ethereum blockchain offers more utility and has unique advantages, noted Fadi Aboualfa, head of research at digital assets custodian Copper.
Sandy Kaul, head of digital asset and industry advisory services at Franklin Templeton, said she eventually expects the arrival of ETFs that track a basket of cryptocurrencies. Such products, instead of those based on single crypto, would dominate the space if they are approved, she said.
“Just like the S&P 500 has 500 stocks in it, right? You don’t have just one stock.” Kaul said in a phone interview. The arrival of a bitcoin ETF, is just a “baby step into really beginning to think about the future market structure of crypto,” Kaul added.
However, not everyone is that optimistic. Will McDonough, founder and chairman of Corestone Capital, said the approval of an Ethereum ETF has “a long way to go.”
SEC chairman Gary Gensler previously said bitcoin was the only cryptocurrency he was prepared to publicly label a commodity, rather than a security.
The agency also went after companies that offered crypto staking, which allows investors to earn yields by locking their coins to secure blockchains such as Ethereum. The SEC shut down crypto exchange Kraken’s staking business in the U.S. last year.
One possibility is that “companies will be able to offer an ETH ETF, but they will not be allowed to stake that ETH and earn yield,” noted EY’s Brody.
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Vanguard Won’t Offer Spot Bitcoin ETFs on Its Platform
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Updated Jan. 11, 2024 3:06 pm ET
Bitcoin’s trip to Main Street just took a detour.
Vanguard said Thursday it won’t offer the new spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds on its brokerage platform.
Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Bitcoin ETFs finally approved after a chaotic, ‘embarrassing’ 24 hours for SEC
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On Wednesday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for the first time greenlighted several exchange-traded funds investing directly in bitcoin.
But the 24 hours leading up to that approval were chaotic, to say the least.
The SEC approved the launch of 11 bitcoin
BTCUSD,
+0.09%
ETFs, according to a filing posted on the regulatory agency’s website. The ETFs are due to start trading on Thursday.On Tuesday, however, the SEC’s official account on X, formerly known as Twitter, published what the agency described as an “unauthorized” post indicating that it had approved the spot bitcoin ETFs. In reality, the regulator had not approved any such ETFs as of Tuesday and its X account had been “compromised,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said on the social-media platform. The SEC subsequently deleted the unauthorized post.
The agency found “there was unauthorized access to and activity on” the its X account by “an unknown party,” an SEC spokesperson said on Tuesday, adding that the “unauthorized access has been terminated” and that the SEC would work with law enforcement to investigate the matter.
Bitcoin’s price briefly shot 2% higher after the unauthorized tweet went out on Tuesday before soon pulling back.
Then on Wednesday, shortly before the U.S. stock market closed for the day, the SEC posted an actual approval order of bitcoin ETFs on its website — but the link was soon broken, leading to an “error 404” page. The same filing was later reposted by the SEC.
It is unclear why the first link was broken. A SEC spokesperson did not respond to an email seeking comment on the matter.
The events of the past 24 hours have proven “a bit embarrassing” for the SEC, especially as the agency has stressed that cryptocurrencies are exceptionally risky and vulnerable to market manipulation, according to Greg Magadini, director of derivatives at Amberdata.
Despite those warnings, Magadini said he doesn’t expect investors to be deterred from investing in the bitcoin ETFs.
Bitcoin has actually seen lower volatility on Tuesday and Wednesday than options traders had priced in, Magadini said. The crypto was up about 0.4% over the past 24 hours to around $46,400 on Wednesday evening, according to CoinDesk data.
Investors have been pricing in $1 to $2 billion of initial flows into the bitcoin ETFs.
Read: Bitcoin in spotlight as SEC approves new ETFs, ether rallies. Here’s why.
Steven Lubka, head of private clients and family offices at Swan Bitcoin, echoed Magadini’s point, noting that the hiccups on the way to SEC approval are unlikely to impact investor interest in the funds.
“Ultimately, the SEC is not the one that launches the ETFs,” Lubka said in a call. “If anything, it shows how much attention is on these ETF products.”
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SEC Approves Bitcoin ETFs for Everyday Investors
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Updated Jan. 10, 2024 5:56 pm ET
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission voted Wednesday to allow mainstream investors to buy and sell bitcoin as easily as stocks and mutual funds, a decision hailed by the industry as a game changer.
The SEC decision clears the way for the first U.S. exchange-traded funds that hold bitcoin to be sold to the public. Expectations of U.S. regulatory approval for such funds drove the price of bitcoin to the highest level in about two years. The digital currency fell to just below $46,000 late Wednesday, up from $17,000 in January 2023.
Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Bitcoin is up 130% this year. Could it extend the rally in December and 2024?
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Bitcoin has extended its rally on Friday, rising to the loftiest level since May 2022, pushing its yearly gain up to over 130%, on pace to be one of the best performing assets this year.
The crypto
BTCUSD,
+1.28%
rose about 2.5% over the past 24 hours to around $38,676 Friday afternoon, as excitement about the potential approval of bitcoin exchange-traded funds continues to build. Bitcoin is still 44% down from its all-time high in 2021.Risk assets in general performed well in November, as concerns eased around several pressure points, including the surge in long-term Treasury yields and inflation, analysts at Grayscale Research wrote in a Friday note.
Despite outperforming many major assets year-to-date, bitcoin underperformed long-term Treasurys and the S&P 500 in November on a volatility-adjusted basis, gaining 9% for the month.
Bloomberg; Grayscale Investments
Sam Callahan, market analyst at Swan Bitcoin, said he expects bitcoin to trade between $36,000 and $40,000 by the end of the year, “provided that the macroeconomic environment doesn’t take a turn for the worse, and barring any significant positive development, such as the approval of a Spot Bitcoin ETF or the adoption of Bitcoin by a major corporation, sovereign-wealth fund, or nation-state.”
Despite bitcoin’s rally so far this year, December has historically been a particularly volatile month for the crypto, since it was created in 2009. It rose seven out of 13 times in December, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
In years when bitcoin gained more than 100% through November, the digital asset saw an average gain of 20% in December, rising four of the six times it occurred, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
To be sure, bitcoin has a relatively short history and was particularly volatile during its early years.
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Why do people keep suing celebrities like Ronaldo and Tom Brady over crypto losses?
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Ever since the collapse of crypto currencies last year, the lawsuits have been flying.
But a series of class-action suits targeting celebrity endorsers of crypto exchanges like FTX and Binance have been piling up in federal court in Miami, all filed by the same group of south Florida lawyers.
The latest suit names global soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo for allegedly promoting “the mass solicitation of investments in unregistered securities” sold by Binance, the crypto exchange that was hit with a $4 billion fine last week after pleading guilty to violating the bank secrecy act.
The suit was filed in federal court in the southern district of Florida this week and centered around Ronaldo’s role in a global marketing campaign launched in 2022 for a series of Binance NFTs — or non-fungible tokens, a form of blockchain-backed art works that were, for a brief time, wildly popular.
A representative for Ronaldo didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
The filing against Ronaldo on Monday came alongside similar class action suits naming Major League Baseball, Formula 1 racing, Mercedes Benz and the advertising giants Dentsu and Wasserman, who created much of FTX’s global promotion campaign.
Messages left with representatives for MLB, Formula 1, Mercedes Benz, Dentsu and Wasserman weren’t immediately returned.
Those suits are the latest in a series of similar class action suits starting last year against celebrity endorsers of failed crypto exchanges such as Voyager and FTX, in which customers lost billions of dollars in deposits.
Over the past 18 months, a group of south Florida lawyers led by Adam Moskowitz have brought the suits on behalf of investors who lost money in last year’s crypto collapse, against paid celebrity endorsers including Shaquille O’Neal, Mark Cuban, Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen, Shohei Ohtani, Larry David, Steph Curry and Naomi Osaka.
“All of these celebrities were paid hundreds of millions of dollars taken directly from customer deposits,” Moskowitz said in a statement. “Some of the most famous and wealthiest groups in the world may now be held responsible for the dramatic $20 billion dollar crypto collapse and biggest financial scandals in U.S. history.”
Moskowitz, who has been joined in the suits by lawyers with the firms Mark Migdal & Hayden and Boies Schiller and Flexner, headed by famed litigator David Boies, is seeking at least $5 billion in damages from those who helped promote the crypto exchanges.
The cases from last year are ongoing and each of the celebrities named have been fighting the suits in court.
Moskowitz, who specializes in class-action lawsuits, says issues revolving around crypto first got his attention more than two years ago, before the entire market crashed, when he came to believe that the special tokens each exchange was minting amounted to an unregistered security.
He first filed a lawsuit against Voyager early last year, before the exchange collapsed and the Securities and Exchange Commission began filing suits against many in the industry accusing them of dealing in unregistered securities.
“Right then what we were doing started to gain traction,” he said.
A series of favorable court rulings have allowed his cases to gain steam, he said, and has allowed to him to take the lead in such actions.
In another class action suit filed earlier this year, Moskowitz and his partners sued a group of YouTube financial influencers for their role in promoting FTX, accusing them of taking cash for uncritically singing the exchange’s praises.
Moskowitz said several of those suits have been settled but that others have continued.
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Crypto bulls eye $40,000 as bitcoin’s next level as the coin refreshes yearly high
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Crypto bulls are eyeing $40,000 as bitcoin’s next level, with the recent rally sending the crypto to a new high for the year, as the market shakes off the news that Binance’s co-founder Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty on Tuesday to criminal charges related to violating U.S. anti-money-laundering laws, and stepped down as head of the company.
The largest crypto BTCUSD on Friday rose to as high as $38,294, the loftiest level since May 2022, according to CoinDesk data. It climbed over 3% over the past 24 hours.
Bitcoin…
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SEC charges crypto platform Kraken with operating as an unregistered exchange
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The Securities and Exchange Commission charged cryptocurrency trading platform Kraken with operating as an unregistered securities exchange.
The charges are the latest effort by regulators to crack down on crypto companies, some of which the SEC views as illegally selling securities without registering with the commission.
Kraken didn’t immediately…
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Here’s why you might not have to pay a 6% commission next time you sell a home
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Going back decades, if you wanted to buy or sell a stock on the open market, you had to pay a 2% commission to buy and a 2% commission to sell. Then the advent of discount brokerage, led by Charles Schwab Corp.
SCHW,
+1.64% ,
made lower commissions available until eventually, with improved technology and efficiency, the entire industry changed to enable the average investor to avoid commissions completely.But the internet hasn’t done much to reduce the cost of selling a home in the U.S. Sellers typically pay a 6% commission to a real-estate agent to list and sell a home, with the seller’s agent splitting that commission with the buyer’s agent. But all of that may change because of a verdict this week in a class-action lawsuit in federal court against the National Association of Realtors.
Aarthi Swaminathan covers the case, what may happen next and the implications for home sellers and buyers:
Real-estate advice from the Moneyist
MarketWatch illustration
Quentin Fottrell — the Moneyist — works with three readers to answer tricky real-estate questions:
Economic outlook
On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell may have bolstered the case that the central bank is finished raising interest rates for this economic cycle. The federal-funds rate was left in its target range of 5.25% to 5.50%.
Jon Gray, the president of Blackstone Group, spoke with MarketWatch Editor in Chief Mark DeCambre and said he expected the Fed to succeed in bringing down inflation without pushing the U.S. economy into a deep recession.
Friday employment numbers: Jobs report shows 150,000 new jobs in October as U.S. labor market cools
Bond-market trend switches again
The U.S. Treasury yield curve has been inverted for nearly a year.
FactSet
Normally, longer-term bonds have higher yields than those with short maturities. But the yield curve has been inverted for nearly a year, with 3-month U.S. Treasury bills
BX:TMUBMUSD03M
having higher yields than 10-year Treasury notes
BX:TMUBMUSD10Y.There has been elevated demand for long-term bonds, as investors have anticipated a recession and a reversal in Federal Reserve interest-rate policy. When interest rates decline, bond prices rise and vice versa.
As you can see on the chart above, the yield curve was narrowing until mid-October. Yields on 10-year Treasury notes were close to 5% on Oct. 19, but they have been falling the past several days as the three-month yield has remained close to 5.5%.
In this week’s ETF Wrap, Christine Idzelis reports on where all the money is flowing in the bond market.
In the Bond Report, Vivien Lou Chen summarizes the action as investors react to the Federal Reserve’s decision not to change its federal-funds-rate target range this week and to other economic news.
For income-seekers looking to avoid income taxes, here’s a deep dive into municipal bonds, with taxable-equivalent yields and a deeper look at those within four high-tax states.
Ford’s good news — in the bond market
Ford Motor Co.’s debt rating has been lifted by S&P to investment-grade.
Getty Images
Ford Motor Co.’s
F,
+4.14%
credit rating was upgraded to an investment-grade rating by Standard & Poor’s on Monday. This takes about $67 billion in bonds out of the high-yield, or “junk,” market, as Ciara Linnane reports.A stock-market warning based on history
The original Magnificent Seven.
Courtesy Everett Collection
By now you have probably heard the term “Magnificent Seven” used to describe stocks of the tremendous tech-oriented companies that have led this year’s rally for the S&P 500
SPX
: Apple Inc.
AAPL,
-0.52% ,
Microsoft Corp.
MSFT,
+1.29% ,
Amazon.com Inc.
AMZN,
+0.38% ,
Nvidia Corp.
NVDA,
+3.45% ,
Alphabet Inc.
GOOGL,
+1.26% GOOG,
+1.39% ,
Meta Platforms Inc.
META,
+1.20%
and Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
+0.66% .
With Tesla’s recent decline, that company is now the ninth-largest holding in the portfolio of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust
SPY,
which tracks the benchmark index. Here are the top 10 companies held by SPY (11 stocks, including two common-share classes for Alphabet), with total returns through Thursday:Company Ticker % of SPY portfolio 2023 total return 2022 total return Total return since end of 2021 Apple Inc. AAPL,
-0.52% 7.2% 37% -26% 1% Microsoft Corp. MSFT,
+1.29% 7.1% 46% -28% 5% Amazon.com Inc. AMZN,
+0.38% 3.5% 64% -50% -17% Nvidia Corp. NVDA,
+3.45% 3.0% 198% -50% 48% Alphabet Inc. Class A GOOGL,
+1.26% 2.1% 44% -39% -12% Meta Platforms Inc. Class A META,
+1.20% 1.9% 158% -64% -8% Alphabet Inc. Class C GOOG,
+1.39% 1.8% 45% -39% -11% Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Class B BRK.B,
+0.80% 1.8% 13% 3% 17% Tesla Inc. TSLA,
+0.66% 1.7% 77% -65% -38% UnitedHealth Group Inc. UNH,
-0.98% 1.4% 2% 7% 9% Eli Lilly and Company LLY,
-2.15% 1.3% 60% 34% 115% Sources: FactSet, State Street (for SPY holdings) Five of these stocks (including the two Alphabet share classes) are still down from the end of 2021. SPY itself has returned 14% this year, following an 18% decline in 2022. It is still down 7% from the end of 2021.
Mark Hulbert makes the case that a decade from now, the Magnificent Seven are unlikely to be among the largest companies in the stock market.
More from Hulbert: These dividend stocks and ETFs have healthy yields that can lift your portfolio
A different market opportunity: India is seeing a multidecade growth surge. Here’s how you can invest in it.
The MarketWatch 50
MarketWatch
The MarketWatch 50 series is back, with articles and video interviews starting this week, including:
PayPal soars after earnings report
PayPal CEO Alex Chriss.
MarketWatch/PayPal
After the market close on Wednesday, PayPal Holdings Inc.
PYPL,
+1.89%
announced quarterly results that came in ahead of analysts’ expectations, and the stock soared 7% on Thursday even though the company lowered its target for improving its operating margin.In the Ratings Game column, Emily Bary reports on the positive reaction to PayPal’s new CEO, Alex Chriss.
A less enthusiastic earnings reaction: EV-products maker BorgWarner’s stock suffers biggest drop in 15 years after downbeat sales outlook
Consumers drive mixed reactions to earnings results
Apple Inc. reported mixed quarterly results.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Here’s more of the latest corporate financial results and reactions. First the good news:
And now the news that may not be so good:
Harsh verdict for SBF
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
AP
It might seem that some legal battles never end, but it took only a year from the collapse of FTX for the cryptocurrency exchange’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, to be convicted on all seven federal fraud and money-laundering charges brought against him. The charges were connected to the disappearance of $8 billion from FTX customer accounts.
Here’s more reaction and coverage of the virtual-currency industry:
Want more from MarketWatch? Sign up for this and other newsletters to get the latest news and advice on personal finance and investing.
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Prosecutors hammer at Sam Bankman-Fried’s credibility in FTX criminal fraud trial
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Federal prosecutors on Monday sought to chip away at FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s credibility, pointing to discrepancies between his public comments and actions taken behind the scenes as the company collapsed.
In a steady drumbeat of questions, Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon tried to paint Bankman-Fried, the 31-year-old former wunderkind of the crypto world, as someone who lied to his customers about the safety of their investments, while secretly raiding their accounts to fund his own risky investments, luxury real estate purchases, costly celebrity endorsements and political contributions.
In his second day of testimony before a jury in his criminal fraud trial in Manhattan’s federal court, Bankman-Fried repeatedly said he couldn’t remember exactly what he had said in numerous media interviews in the days and weeks after FTX had declared bankruptcy and $8 billion in customer deposits had vanished.
He also sought to distance himself from decision-making at FTX’s sister investment firm, Alameda Research, whose risky bets helped bring the crypto trading platform down.
Sassoon pointed to multiple public comments by Bankman-Fried in which he claimed FTX’s risk management protocols made it safer than other crypto currency trading platforms, while the company allowed its own investment arm, Alameda Research to make risky bets without limit.
FTX ultimately collapsed largely as a result of the billions in loans it had extended to Alameda, which prosecutors allege was done using customer money.
Federal prosecutors have alleged that Alameda was effectively granted carte blanche to use FTX customer money to make risky bets. One key element was that certain risk-management systems that FTX used to to liquidate customer accounts that had entered into negative territory were disabled for Alameda, allowing it unfettered ability to make high-risk moves.
Throughout his testimony, Bankman-Fried claimed he had limited visibility as to what was happening at Alameda, which he founded and mostly owned, but which had ceased running day-to-day in 2021, when his ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison took over as CEO.
He said he only became aware of how bad a liquidity issue Alameda faced well after a financial crisis began sweeping through the crypto industry in the summer of 2022. Bankman-Fried said he had told Ellison, who had pleaded guilty and testified against him, that she should have taken hedge positions earlier to lessen the company’s risk.
But he said he continued to believe up until just days before the companies collapsed, that both Alameda and FTX were on firmer financial footing.
“I viewed Alameda as solvent and FTX as solvent and decently liquid,” he testified. “Had that analysis come up any other way, I would have been in full on crisis mode. But in my view at the time that wasn’t the case.”
Bankman-Fried did admit that he consulted frequently with Ellison about moves that Alameda made and even signed off on several billion-dollar investments.
“I think a few billion of them were my decision,” he said when asked about several large investments made by Alameda in 2021 and 2022.
Bankman-Fried is expected back in court for further cross examination on Tuesday. The judge in the case said he expected the case may go to the jury as early as Friday.
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Bitcoin rallies to almost 18-month high on ETF optimism
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Bitcoin surged over 10% on Monday, briefly surpassing $34,500, on continued optimism that an exchange-traded fund investing directly in the cryptocurrency will soon be approved in the U.S.
The largest cryptocurrency
BTCUSD,
+6.59%
by market cap on Monday reached as high as $34,616, the loftiest level since May 2022, according to CoinDesk data, before falling to around $33,021 by Monday evening. Other major cryptocurrencies also rose, with ether up 5.8% over the past 24 hours to $1,763.The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has repeatedly rejected bitcoin ETF applications in the past, citing risks of market manipulation. But crypto-industry participants are expecting that to change soon.
Read more: Bitcoin climbs above $30,000 for first time since August as hopes for ETF approval intensify
A U.S. Appeals court on Monday issued a mandate, putting into effect its ruling in August, which overturned the SEC’s rejection of Grayscale Investments’ application to convert its Bitcoin Trust product
GBTC
into an ETF. The final ruling on Monday confirmed Grayscale’s win in court.Meanwhile, BlackRock’s proposed bitcoin ETF has been listed on the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation. While it doesn’t mean that the ETF is guaranteed to be approved, it shows another step closer for BlackRock to bring the fund to the market.
If bitcoin ETFs are approved, the crypto may see “historical price increases,” with a crypto bull market coming, according to Alex Adelman, chief executive and co-founder of Lolli. “Bitcoin ETFs will give institutional and retail investors new ways to gain exposure to bitcoin within established regulations,” Adelman said.
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Founder of failed crypto exchange FTX, Bankman-Fried, jailed in New York
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FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sent to jail Friday to await trial after a bail hearing for the fallen cryptocurrency wiz left a judge convinced that he had repeatedly tried to influence witnesses against him.
U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered Bankman-Fried’s bail revoked after prosecutors said he’d tried to harass a key witness in his fraud case last month when he showed a journalist her private writings and in January when he reached out to the general counsel for FTX with an encrypted communication.
His lawyers insisted he shouldn’t be jailed for trying to protect his reputation against a barrage of unfavorable news stories.
Kaplan said he had concluded there was probable cause to believe Bankman-Fried had tried to “tamper with witnesses at least twice” since his December arrest.
A defense lawyer said an appeal of the incarceration order would be filed and asked for an immediate stay of the order.
The 31-year-old has been under house arrest at his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California, since his December extradition from the Bahamas on charges that he defrauded investors in his businesses and illegally diverted millions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency from customers using his FTX exchange.
Bankman-Fried’s $250 million bail package severely restricts his internet and phone usage.
Two weeks ago, prosecutors surprised Bankman-Fried’s attorneys by demanding his incarceration, saying he violated those rules by giving The New York Times the private writings of Caroline Ellison, his former girlfriend and the ex-CEO of Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency trading hedge fund that was one of his businesses.
Prosecutors maintained he was trying to sully her reputation and influence prospective jurors who might be summoned for his October trial.
Ellison pleaded guilty in December to criminal charges carrying a potential penalty of 110 years in prison. She has agreed to testify against Bankman-Fried as part of a deal that could lead to a more lenient sentence.
Bankman-Fried’s lawyers argued he probably failed in a quest to defend his reputation because the article cast Ellison in a sympathetic light. They also said prosecutors exaggerated the role Bankman-Fried had in the article.
They said prosecutors were trying to get their client locked up by offering evidence consisting of “innuendo, speculation, and scant facts.”
Since prosecutors made their detention request, Kaplan has imposed a gag order barring public comments by people participating in the trial, including Bankman-Fried.
David McCraw, a lawyer for the Times, had written to the judge, noting the First Amendment implications of any blanket gag order, as well as public interest in Ellison and her cryptocurrency trading firm.
Ellison confessed to a central role in a scheme defrauding investors of billions of dollars that went undetected, McGraw said.
“It is not surprising that the public wants to know more about who she is and what she did and that news organizations would seek to provide to the public timely, pertinent, and fairly reported information about her, as The Times did in its story,” McGraw said.
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Cathie Wood’s ARK funds dump $26 million more in Coinbase stock, shed $13 million more of Tesla shares
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Funds associated with Cathie Wood’s ARK Investment continued to cull shares of Coinbase Global Inc. and Tesla Inc. on Monday, according to recent trade disclosures.
The ARK Fintech Innovation ETF
ARKF,
+1.58%
dumped 76,788 Coinbase shares
COIN,
+0.23%
on the day, while the ARK Innovation ETF
ARKK,
+2.29%
sold 127,266 and the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF
ARKW,
+2.23%
sold 44,784 shares.Those were worth $26.3 million based on Coinbase’s Monday closing price of $105.55, and the sales follow ARK’s move to dump about $50 million in Coinbase’s stock Friday.
Coinbase represents 0.78% of the Fintech Innovation ETF, along with 0.15% of the Innovation ETF and 0.30% of the Next Generation Internet ETF. ARK disclosed the transactions and weightings in the daily trade notifications it posts to its website.
Read: Coinbase’s spectacular stock surge after Ripple ruling sparks fierce debate
Meanwhile, the ARK Innovation ETF shed 38,329 Tesla shares
TSLA,
+3.20%
on Monday, while the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF sold 6,855. Those shares were worth $13.1 million based on Tesla’s Monday closing level of $290.38. Tesla represents about 0.12% of both funds as they continue to unload shares.Don’t miss: Tesla is looking at its best sales quarter ever
ARK scooped up 455 shares of Meta Platforms Inc.
META,
+0.57%
within its Next Generation Internet ETF and bought up 3,729 shares within the ARK Innovation ETF. That amounted to $1.3 million worth of stock based on Meta’s $310.62 Monday close.Two ARK funds bought a combined $790 million in Robinhood Markets Inc.’s stock
HOOD,
+0.89% ,
with the fintech fund scooping up 25,641 shares and the Next Generation Internet ETF buying 37,630 shares. ARK added 4,608 shares of SoFi Technologies Inc.
SOFI,
+4.41%
to the fintech fund, worth $43,683 based on Monday’s close.See also: SoFi’s stock catches another downgrade as analyst says it ‘needs to be valued more like a bank’
ARK was also active in shares of Twilio Inc.
TWLO,
-0.63% ,
buying 15,702 within the Fintech Innovation ETF, 133,499 within the Innovation ETF and 22,748 within the Next Generation Internet ETF. That amounted to $11.4 million in Twilio’s stock based on Monday’s $66.47 closing price.[ad_2]
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BlackRock is applying for a spot bitcoin ETF. Here’s why it matters to the crypto industry.
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BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has filed an application for a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund.
There are currently no such products in the U.S. The SEC approved several bitcoin BTCUSD futures-based ETFs in the past, but has yet to greenlight anything that is backed by bitcoin itself.
BlackRock BLK will tap Coinbase Global…
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SEC requests court order to temporarily freeze assets of Binance’s U.S. affiliate
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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday asked a judge to grant a temporary restraining order to freeze assets tied to Binance.US. The agency on Monday charged Binance Holdings Inc. and its founder Changpeng Zhao with 13 securities law violations. The suit alleged that Binance created U.S.-only trading arms, BAM Trading and BAM Management US Holdings Inc., to avoid having its main exchanges, which were outside the U.S., fall under U.S. regulatory scrutiny. Representatives at Binance.US didn’t immediately return requests for comments.
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Could bitcoin and gold be haven buys as debt-ceiling fears mount? Here’s what recent trading patterns suggest.
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Welcome back to Distributed Ledger. This is Frances Yue, reporter at MarketWatch.
Fears are brewing in financial markets that the U.S. lawmakers won’t be able to reach an agreement to raise the country’s debt limit by X date, or the date that the U.S. government is unable to meet its debt obligations.
Analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
JPM,
+0.94%
on Wednesday said they see the odds of debt ceiling negotiators failing to reach a deal by early June at “around 25% and rising.”Concerns around a technical default of U.S. government debt have contributed to volatility across financial markets, sending Treasury bills maturing in the first eight days of June above 6%. Yields on such bills briefly topped 7% on Thursday.
As investors search for havens from such tumult, gold and bitcoin are often cited as potential refuges.
Still, gold futures have been retreating since the most-active contract reached its second-highest settlement on record on May 4.
Bitcoin, which rallied almost 60% so far this year, have also posted lackluster performance for the past few weeks, down 5.8% over the past month.
Are gold and bitcoin effective hedges against a technical default of U.S. government debt? Why are we not seeing a rally as the X date approaches? I caught up with several analysts to ask their views.
Find me on Twitter at @FrancesYue_ to share any thoughts on crypto, gold, or this newsletter.
Is gold the haven?
FactSet
“Generally speaking, gold thrives when there are periods of uncertainty,” said Rhona O’Connell, analyst at StoneX Group. “But if you take that uncertainty too far, then we get to stages where people are sitting on their hands and not really doing very much and that’s what’s happened here.”
Gold futures for June delivery
GC00,
+0.09%
GCM23,
+0.09%
on Thursday declined by $20.90, or 1.1%, to $1,943.70 per ounce on Comex, with prices for the most-active contract posting their lowest finish since March 21, according to FactSet data.As gold futures price retreat to below $2,000, “I suppose it’s arguable that the bulls might be a bit disappointed,” said O’Connell. But there’s “bound to be a retreat” with gold’s price premium building over the past few weeks, according to O’Connell.
“The fact that gold hasn’t managed to climb any higher given the potential seriousness of the economic consequences should no agreement be reached before the June deadline reflects a prevailing view that ultimately the markets believe some middle ground can be found in time,” Rupert Rowling, analyst at Kinesis Money, wrote in a recent note.
Still, gold’s price stays elevated at levels that were not seen many times in history.
What about bitcoin?
Considering the rally bitcoin had so far this year, it’s “not crazy to see a little bit of pullback, according to Steven Lubka, a managing director at Swan Bitcoin.
Bitcoin gained almost 60% so far this year while still down over 60% from its all-time high in 2021.
Still, if the U.S. ends up defaulting on its debt, and “everyone freaks out, bitcoin could do very well in that scenario,” Lubka said, citing bitcoin’s limited supply, decentralized and non-sovereign properties.
However, not everyone agrees. There is not enough evidence to support the claim that bitcoin could serve as a hedge against the debt ceiling tumult, according to Lapo Guadagnuolo, director at S&P Global Ratings.
“We can’t make that argument because we don’t see that in the data,” Guadagnuolo said.
A rising dollar
The recent strength of the U.S. dollar have also weighed on bitcoin and gold.
On Thursday, the ICE U.S. Dollar Index
DXY,
-0.02% ,
which measures the currency’s strength against a basket of six major rivals, climbed above 104 to its highest level since March 17, according to Dow Jones market data.Although a technical default of U.S. government debt could hurt the dollar’s reputation in the long term, it might have little bearing on the immediate reaction, which would resemble a knee-jerk move higher, as my colleague Joseph Adinolfi elaborated here.
As gold is mostly denominated in U.S. dollar and bitcoin’s main trading pairs are dollar-denominated stablecoins, a strong dollar could weigh on both assets.
Still, the debt ceiling debacle in the long term could strengthen the narrative around bitcoin and gold, as “the governance of the worlds fiat system comes into question,” according to Greg Magadini, director of derivatives at Amberdata.
Crypto in a snap
Bitcoin lost 2.8% in the past week and was trading at around $26,360 on Thursday, according to CoinDesk data. Ether declined 0.9% in the same period to around $1,805
Biggest Gainers Price %7-day return marumaruNFT $0.26 201% Render $2.70 19.5% Kava $1.10 14.3% TRON $0.08 10.6% Huobi $3.12 8.4% Source: CoinGecko Biggest Decliners Price %7-day return GMX $52.68 -14.6% Sui $0.99 -13.3% Fantom $0.33 -10.1% Stacks $0.59 -9.7% Optimism $1.62 -9.7% Source: CoinGecko Must-reads
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Coinbase asks federal court to force SEC to respond to its crypto-regulation petition
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Popular crypto exchange Coinbase
COIN,
-7.27%
late Monday asked a federal court to force the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to respond yes or no to its petition from July 2022 to make formal rules around digital-asset regulation.Coinbase’s petition requested that the “Commission propose and adopt rules to govern the regulation of securities that are offered and traded via digitally native methods, including potential rules to identify which digital assets are securities.”
In March, Coinbase was hit with a Wells notice from the SEC, identifying potential violations of securities laws that might spur it to take legal action. The notice came after nine months of back-and-forth between the SEC and Coinbase, CEO Brian Armstrong said in March.
Coinbase was expected to respond to the notice by the end of April, but Monday’s filing reveals that Coinbase believes the SEC’s approach doesn’t provide enough regulatory guidance for crypto companies in the U.S. to operate.
“The SEC at a minimum must set forth how those inapt and inapposite requirements are to be adapted to digital assets. But the SEC has refused to do even that,” the filing says. “It has not conducted any rulemaking to provide the regulatory clarity and process that companies need to determine which digital asset products and services to register and how to make the registration that the SEC now demands.”
Coinbase shares slid more than 7% on Monday but are up 55% year to date. Still, the stock is down nearly 60% over the past 12 months. In comparison, the S&P 500
SPX,
+0.09%
is up nearly 8% in 2023 and has declined almost 4% over the past year.[ad_2]
