2024-05-22 10:09

The LSE said in March it would accept applications for bitcoin and ether exchange-traded products in the second quarter after the FCA adjusted its stance on such products. Exchange-traded products from WisdomTree and 21Shares are set to start trading on the London Stock Exchange on May 28. Invesco's product prospectus was also approved by the Financial Conduct Authority. The listings follow the first approvals by FCA since it relaxed its stance on crypto ETPs, having banned them in 2020. The London Stock Exchange (LSE) will list crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs) for the first time later this month after prospectuses from WisdomTree (WT) and 21Shares were approved by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). WisdomTree (WT), based in New York, won approval to list its Physical Bitcoin (BTCW) and Physical Ethereum (ETHW) ETPs, which it expects to start trading on May 28. Zurich-based 21Shares was approved for bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) products and may start trading around the same time. A prospectus from Invesco was also approved, though the firm has made no further comment. Approval in the U.K. comes several months after the January green light for spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the U.S. Similar products have been trading in various European jurisdictions for several years. Both WisdomTree and 21Shares were among the firms to have spot ETFs approved in the U.S. in January. The FCA said in March it would not to object to requests from financial institutions seeking to list ETPs for professional investors. The LSE confirmed it would accept applications for bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) products in the second quarter. Unlike products in Europe and the U.S., however, the FCA is allowing the London ETPs to be available only to professional investors. The FCA introduced a ban on crypto derivatives products including ETPs in January 2020. However, with such products being widely available in Europe for several years and following the U.S. spot ETFs listing approvals, the regulator adjusted its stance. It is keeping the ban in place for retail investors. WisdomTree's products will carry fees of 35 basis points, while 21Shares has not disclosed theirs as yet. Neither Atlanta, Georgia-based Invesco nor the LSE responded to CoinDesk's request for further comment. Read More: DWS, Galaxy Digital List Exchange-Traded Commodities Offering BTC, ETH Exposure in Germany https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/05/22/wisdomtree-gets-green-light-to-list-bitcoin-ether-etps-on-london-stock-exchange/

2024-05-22 09:31

Bitcoin spot ETFs in the U.S. have seen net inflows of over $1.4 billion in the past week after a timid first half of the month. BlackRock’s IBIT product experienced a significant inflow of over $290 million on Tuesday, marking its highest one-day inflow this month and since April. Overall, ETFs saw nearly $300 million in net inflows on Tuesday, with Grayscale’s GBTC showing a five-day streak of inflows. A popular bitcoin (BTC) spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the U.S. is seeing ramped up activity once again after a relatively dim few weeks as bitcoin trades over $70,000 level for the first time in a month. BlackRock’s IBIT product saw over $290 million in inflows on Tuesday, preliminary data published by Farside Investors shows, recording its highest one-day inflow so far this month and the highest since April.5. The figures were nearly thrice of a previous monthly high of $93 million on May 16. IBIT’s total holdings have now swelled to over $19 billion, its product page shows. Tuesday’s figures now stand out as unusually large compared to activity early this month, where IBIT recorded low or even zero inflows before May 15. IBIT also recorded its first-ever day of outflows in April, leading to some bearish sentiment for bitcoin at the time, as reported. However, higher activity this week comes alongside hopes of an ether (ETH) spot ETF getting approved for trading in the U.S., and a positive outlook for cryptocurrencies from Donald Trump ongoing presidential campaign. Meanwhile, Grayscale’s GBTC extended a four-day streak of no net outflows, putting a temporary pause to what has been one of the biggest losers since the products were launched in January. As a whole, ETFs took on nearly $300 million in net inflows on Tuesday. Only Bitwise’s BITB and VanEck’s HODL recorded outflows at $4 million and $5 million, respectively. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/05/22/blackrocks-spot-bitcoin-etf-records-biggest-inflows-since-april-as-btc-hovers-at-70k/

2024-05-22 09:00

SEC Chair Gary Gensler pushed back against the FIT21 bill hours ahead of a planned vote. The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act would hurt investors and hamper the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's work, SEC Chair Gary Gensler said Wednesday. "The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act ('FIT 21') would create new regulatory gaps and undermine decades of precedent regarding the oversight of investment contracts, putting investors and capital markets at immeasurable risk," he said. FIT21 is a joint bill produced by the House Agriculture Committee and the House Financial Services Committee, and is intended to clarify how the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) oversee crypto. It creates a "digital commodity" term for digital assets that do not meet the bill's definition of a security, placing those assets under the CFTC's purview. According to Gensler, FIT21 ignores long-standing precedent for how investment contracts are regulated, puts the agency into a tough position for certifying self-proclaimed digital commodity issuers, ignores Supreme Court precedent in the Howey Test, removes investor protections and potentially allows investors to take on excessive risk without appropriate disclosures. U.S. securities laws were developed after the Great Depression to protect consumers by forcing disclosures and giving both the regulator and investors tools to safeguard customers, Gensler said. Crypto industry participants have not been willing to comply with these regulations, he said. "The bill would remove investment contracts that are recorded on a blockchain from the statutory definition of securities and the time-tested protections of much of the federal securities laws," he said. "By removing this set of investment contracts from the statutory list of securities, the bill implies what courts have repeatedly ruled – but what crypto market participants have attempted to deny – that many crypto assets are being offered and sold as securities under existing law." While the bill includes a provision for companies to self-certify that they're issuing "digital commodities," it gives the SEC 60 days to assess whether those assets meet the bill's definition of a digital commodity. That is not enough time given just how many digital assets are circulating, he said. Gensler also took aim at how the bill defined a digital commodity, saying it ignored the Howey Test precedent and the economic realities of assets. Between that, the investor protection framework the bill sets in place for crypto investors and the exclusion of exchanges, the bill may "increase risk to the American public," he said. FIT21 might also harm the U.S.'s broader capital markets, Gensler said, by letting companies try to avoid SEC oversight by using some sort of decentralized network. The House of Representatives is expected to vote on the bill later on Wednesday, though it does not currently have a clear road through the Senate and is unlikely to become a law this year. https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/05/22/secs-gensler-says-house-bill-would-undermine-regulators-crypto-capital-markets-oversight/

2024-05-22 07:54

SOL is often cited as a contender to replace ETH eventually. This week's market action shows how Herculean the task would be. Ether's market value rose by over $70 billion Monday, nearly matching SOL's total market value of around $80 billion. Analysts expect the gap between ETH and its rivals like SOL to widen further in the coming months. The market capitalization of programmable blockchain Solana's sol (SOL) token could exceed that of rival Ethereum's ether (ETH) during the next bullish cycle, one crypto observer said in December. This week, the market has shown how Herculean the task would be: The ether price surged more than 19% on Monday, adding $70 billion to its market cap for a total of $439 billion, according to data source TradingView. That's a gain equivalent to almost 90% of SOL's market value in just one day. The surge followed renewed hopes that a spot ether exchange-traded fund (ETF) will be approved in the U.S. Analysts say the gap between ether and its rivals like SOL will widen in the coming months as a potential spot ETF launch open the token to mainstream institutional adoption. So far, only bitcoin has had that privilege. At press time, ether was the world's second-largest digital asset, boasting a market cap of $453 billion, exceeded only by bitcoin's (BTC) $1.38 trillion. Sol, meanwhile, ranked fifth with a market value of $82 billion. "Near-term ETH outlook is incredibly bullish. Let's not overcomplicate it," Ilan Solot, co-head of digital assets at Marex Solutions, said in an email. "The ETF announcement is a near black swan even to (most) investors, markets dramatically short-to-underweight ETH, much of ETH liquidity is locked in staking, and the macro backdrop is favourable," Since its inception in 2015, Ethereum has been the world's leading smart contract blockchain, powering over 4,000 decentralized applications. It's home to some of the most critical decentralized finance protocols like Uniswap, AAVE and tokenization initiatives like BlackRock's BUIDL. Moreover, Ethereum has never experienced a Solana-like outage. Still, there have been instances, particularly during bull runs, when traders shifted to Solana to bypass Ethereum's network congestion and higher transactions costs. For instance, Solana's share in global trading volume on decentralized exchanges rose early this year thanks to the meme coin frenzy. That spurred talks of SOL eventually overtaking ETH. If the ETH ETF speculation and recent price action is anything to go by, such talks appear premature. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/05/22/ether-market-cap-adds-close-to-an-entire-solana-blockchain-in-a-single-day/

2024-05-22 07:15

Analysis by Nansen shows that early TRUMP holders made an ROI of over 1,600% from the PoliFi token. The surge of the TRUMP token, which is not directly linked to Donald Trump, has created a new class of millionaires in the PoliFi crypto sector. The Trump campaign announced it would begin to accept crypto donations, including bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), and meme coins dogecoin (DOGE) and shiba inu (SHIB). The young PoliFi crypto sector, a frontier where politics, finance, and cryptocurrency converge, has minted a new class of millionaires as a token themed after Donald Trump surged in the past few weeks, analysis by on-chain data provider Nansen shows. While the issuance of the TRUMP token has nothing to do with the former U.S. President Donald Trump directly, traders are using the tokens as a speculative bet on his ongoing presidential campaign. In the past two weeks, the Trump MAGA (TRUMP) token is up nearly 75%, according to CoinGecko data. It surged 14% on Tuesday as the Trump campaign said it would begin to accept crypto donations, including bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), and meme coins dogecoin (DOGE) and shiba inu (SHIB). From all this, some holders of the MAGA meme coin – the first experiment in a new category of tokens called PoliFi, which has a collective market cap of $749 million – have seen returns of over 1,600%. One such address is sitting on over $5.5 million worth of the token. Several addresses purchased low six-figures in TRUMP tokens and are now sitting on unrealized gains of over $1 million. They are gradually trimming their holdings but not selling in a manner that could cause a sudden price dump. As such, these sales were made before Tuesday’s campaign donation announcement. However, recent buyers of the TRUMP token are posting a poor return on investment and have a low overall win rate, the data showed. Meanwhile, the value of TRUMP holdings sent to a wallet linked to the actual Donald Trump has risen to nearly $5 million. A wallet supposedly linked to Trump received $7,100 of TRUMP from the meme coin’s developers between August and October 2023. Sending tokens to a wallet linked to popular entities is sometimes used as a marketing strategy by meme coin makers, as they can attract eyeballs – and galvanize investor interest. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/05/22/donald-trump-themed-meme-coins-breed-crypto-millionaires-as-maga-token-surged/

2024-05-21 20:02

The likely GOP flag bearer in the upcoming U.S. presidential election signaled his friendliness to crypto at a Mar-a-Lago event earlier this month. Donald J. Trump's presidential campaign on Tuesday began accepting crypto donations, making good on the presumptive Republican nominee's pledge to become the first major party candidate to embrace bitcoin, ether and other digital currencies. The move comes weeks after the former president declared himself crypto’s candidate at a Mar-a-Lago gala that thrust crypto into the 2024 campaign. Trump's campaign said in a statement it "will build a crypto army" to combat the infamous "anti-crypto army" that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has campaigned on. While Trump has yet to propose any concrete crypto policies, supporters of his positioning are accepting the positive noises as enough. That's largely because Joe Biden's administration has taken a sharply anti-crypto stance in the past. Crypto's emergence as a bona-fide campaign issue may be changing Democrats' calculation, as evidenced in the House Democratic leadership's decision in the last 24 hours not to push its members against an upcoming bill on crypto policy. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/05/21/trump-becomes-first-major-party-candidate-to-accept-crypto-donations/