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.
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How the Hawaii Fires Ensnared the State’s Third-Largest Bank
Wall Street is growing confident the U.S. can avoid a recession. But one key market indicator is still sending seemingly bleak signals.
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First Republic Bank shares have been hit hard over the past week following the failures of two large U.S. regional banks,
Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. On Thursday, shares of the bank and many other financial firms rallied after the biggest banks in the U.S. swooped in to rescue the San Francisco lender. Under the plan, 11 banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co. placed $30 billion in deposits at First Republic, using their own funds, confirming an earlier report by The Wall Street Journal.But Friday, shares of First Republic dropped anew, sinking more than 30% and leaving analysts to wonder whether it has a future as a stand-alone bank.
NASSAU, Bahamas—Sam Bankman-Fried’s $32 billion crypto-trading empire collapsed in an incandescent bankruptcy last week, prompting irate customers, crypto acolytes and Silicon Valley bigwigs to ask how something that seemed so promising could have imploded so fast.
The emerging picture suggests FTX wasn’t simply felled by a rival, or undone by a bad trade or the relentless fall this year in the value of cryptocurrencies. Instead, it had long been a chaotic mess. From its earliest days, the firm was an unruly agglomeration of corporate entities, customer assets and Mr. Bankman-Fried himself, according to court papers, company balance sheets shown to bankers and interviews with employees and investors. No one could say exactly what belonged to whom. Prosecutors are now investigating its collapse.
