2024-05-20 20:33

Exchanges are being asked to update 19b-4 filings on an accelerated basis by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) asked aspiring ether exchange-traded fund exchanges to update 19b-4 filings ahead of a key deadline this week. The SEC had previously been expected to reject the ether ETF filings, and while there's no guarantee of approval, the move suggests progress is being made. The exchanges that want to list and trade shares of spot ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds are abruptly being asked by regulators to update key filings related to these products. Exchanges are being asked to update 19b-4 filings on an accelerated basis by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, three people familiar with the situation told CoinDesk, suggesting they may be moving to approve these applications ahead of a key deadline this Thursday. That doesn't mean the ETFs will be authorized, though. Would-be issuers also need their S-1 applications approved before the products could begin trading. SEC could take an indefinite amount of time to approve the S-1 documents, one person familiar with the matter said, as it isn't tied to a deadline. One company in talks with the SEC said it feels like it might be on the right track for approval, in a turnaround from feeling some weeks ago that the SEC was dragging its feet, according to a person familiar with the matter. Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analysts Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart raised their odds for the approval of a spot ether ETF to 75% from 25% on Monday after hearing chatter that the SEC could be taking a more favorable stance towards the applications. They later corrected their statement, saying that the odds were related to the 19b-4 approvals. The SEC is expected to make a decision on VanEck spot ether ETF on May 23rd. The SEC has been investigating whether ether, the chief native asset to the Ethereum blockchain, is a security, launching a formal inquiry after the network moved from a proof-of-work consensus mechanism to a proof-of-stake mechanism. If ether is deemed to be a security by the SEC, that may be one reason for the regulator to reject the spot ether ETF applications. One test of the agency's view on whether ETH is a security has newly emerged at Prometheum. The special purpose broker announced Monday it had soft-launched its ether custody service. The company eventually intends to launch custody and trading services for other digital assets – importantly, assets that are treated as securities in the U.S., not commodities. https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/05/20/ether-etfs-filing-process-sees-abrupt-progress-though-approval-not-guaranteed-sources/

2024-05-20 19:34

Markets previously had mostly priced in SEC rejections of the proposed funds beginning this week. Already modestly higher during U.S. trading hours Monday, the price of ether (ETH) jumped more than 10% after two well-followed Bloomberg ETF analysts greatly upped their odds of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approving spot ETH ETFs. "James Seyffart and I are increasing our odds of spot Ether ETF approval to 75% (up from 25%), hearing chatter this afternoon that SEC could be doing a 180 on this (increasingly political issue), so now everyone scrambling (like us everyone else assumed they'd be denied)," tweeted Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas. The SEC this week faces a number of final deadlines on the spot ETF approvals/denials after having delayed decisions on the funds a number of times. Bitcoin (BTC) is adding to gains alongside ETH's advance, now higher by more than 5% and just shy of the $70,000 mark. Also on the move is the Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE), a closed-end fund that Grayscale has proposed converting into a spot ETF. It's recently been trading at more than a 20% discount to net asset value as investors bet against SEC approval, but is now higher by more than 23% on Monday. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/05/20/ether-jumps-10-to-34k-after-bloomberg-ups-odds-of-spot-etf-approval/

2024-05-20 17:42

Inflows into the spot bitcoin ETFs restarted in a big way last week as the price rallied from near the $60K level. A Monday rally during the U.S. trading day put an end to what had been very muted crypto price action over the previous 72 hours, pushing bitcoin (BTC) above $68,000 for the first time in more than five weeks. At press time, the world's largest crypto was changing hands at $68,250. Leading the rally in crypto was Solana's (SOL), which has gained 7% over the past 24 hours, also to more than a five-week high. That outperformed both bitcoin's 2.6% advance and the CoinDesk 20's 2.8% rise. The turnaround in the recent downward price action came last week after the government reported softer-than-forecast April inflation data and quarterly institutional filings showed interesting participation in the spot bitcoin ETFs from the Wisconsin state pension board and a number of heavy-hitting hedge funds. Bitcoin rallied from just above the $60,000 to more than $66,000 by week's end. Alongside that rally came a renewal of big inflows into the spot bitcoin ETFs, which had previously witnessed net outflows over four of the previous seven weeks. All told, the spot funds added 14,389 bitcoin last week, according to HODL Capital, the strongest performance since March. Earlier Friday, Grayscale, the manager of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), announced the exit of CEO Michael Sonnenshein, who will be replaced by Goldman Sachs executive Peter Mintzberg. The move suggests Grayscale may have its eyes on a return to growing assets for GBTC as opposed to the current slow bleed of bitcoin from its holdings. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/05/20/bitcoin-breaks-out-above-68k-as-sols-7-gain-leads-crypto-rally/

2024-05-20 13:36

Sonnenshein's replacement will be Peter Mintzberg, currently head of strategy for asset and wealth management at Goldman Sachs. Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein resigned, will be replaced by Goldman Sachs' Peter Mintzberg on Aug. 15. The change replaces the CEO with a TradFi veteran just months after the company's flagship Bitcoin Trust became an exchange-traded fund (ETF). Michael Sonnenshein, CEO of digital asset investment firm Grayscale, has stepped down after 10 years at the company to be replaced by a veteran from the world of traditional finance (TradFi) world just months after the company's flagship Bitcoin Trust became an exchange-traded fund (ETF). Sonnenshein, who became CEO in 2021, will be replaced by Peter Mintzberg, head of strategy for asset and wealth management at Goldman Sachs on Aug. 15, Grayscale said on Monday. Mintzberg has more than 20 years of experience in TradFi, having previously worked at BlackRock, OppenheimerFunds and Invesco. CFO Edward McGee will lead the company on an interim basis until Mintzberg fills the role. "Michael guided the firm through exponential growth & oversaw its pivotal role in bringing spot bitcoin ETFs to market, leading the way for the broader financial industry," Barry Silbert, CEO of Grayscale's parent company Digital Currency Group, wrote on X. In January, Grayscale was one of about a dozen firms to finally have a spot bitcoin ETF approved to list in the U.S. in January. The firm had taken the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to court over the regulator's repeated refusal to allow it to convert its Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), then a closed-end fund, into an ETF. GBTC saw around $15 billion of outflows in the following three months as the firm kept fees higher than its competitors. Read More: Grayscale CEO Says Bitcoin ETF Outflows Are Reaching Equilibrium: Reuters https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/05/20/grayscale-ceo-michael-sonnenshein-steps-down/

2024-05-20 13:31

Plus: Which cat-themed memecoin will hit $1 billion first? This week in prediction markets… Will there be a Biden-Trump-Kennedy debate? When will OpenAI's Sora launch? It's gone to the cats Solana vs. Ethereum: Which chain will earn more in fees? A presidential debate that includes independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. alongside President Biden or Republican frontrunner Donald Trump is unlikely to happen, bettors on crypto-based predictions platform Polymarket are signaling. "Yes" shares in the contract are trading at 27 cents, meaning the market sees a 27% chance of it occurring. Each share pays out $1 if the prediction comes true, and zero if not. The machinations of the American political-industrial complex make it difficult for a third party, or independent candidate, to succeed. Ballot access laws favor major parties, creating significant barriers for third-party candidates. Getting on a debate stage has another high threshold of its own. Rules for the first debate, scheduled for June 27 on CNN, say that the candidates must appear on enough state ballots to hypothetically reach 270 electoral votes, and also receive 15% in four polls. A second debate on ABC is scheduled for September, and it also has a 15% polling rule. Currently, RFK Jr. is polling at just under 10% in national polls compiled by 270toWin. Right now his team says they have confirmed ballot access, or are working on it, in enough states to win 201 electoral votes, which is enough to be a spoiler, but not to win the presidency. But independent candidates have participated in the debates in living memory: in 1992, independent candidate H. Ross Perot appeared on stage alongside George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. To be clear, the Polymarket contract says that RFK Jr. must participate in a debate including Trump or Biden. It doesn't say that the debate must be an official one. Trump's campaign wants more debates, according to reports, proposing one per month from June to September, preferring two-hour stand-up debates in larger venues with live audiences. The current train of thought holds that RFK Jr.'s campaign is more of a threat to Biden than Trump's, and polls that include him give Trump a slight edge, up to 5 points in some. It's plausible that the Trump campaign could decide to host a streaming debate with the Kennedy campaign, or hold it on a lesser-known network like OANN. It just needs to be a "publicly broadcast debate" per Polymarket's rules. (Don't forget that Kennedy is coming to CoinDesk's Consensus conference, taking the stage on May 31 at 4:30 PM) When Will OpenAI's Sora Launch? Sora, OpenAI's text-to-video generator, wowed the world when Sam Altman's company demoed the project back in February. Missing is a launch date. Bettors on Kalshi, a U.S.-regulated platform, are predicting that launch will take place sometime between September and the end of 2025, with only a 27% chance it will occur before September. But there's one thing that's getting in the way of a wide release of Sora: the availability of high-end graphics processing units (GPUs). Rendering video from text prompts is going to take a lot of them, more, in fact, than many of the world's largest customers of Nvidia have in their data centers. According to a report by Factorial Funds, OpenAI's Sora faces significant challenges regarding GPU availability, as mainstream adoption of text-to-video generation would require hundreds of thousands of server-grade GPUs at a cost of tens of billions. Factorial estimates that supporting the creator community of platforms like TikTok and YouTube alone would necessitate around 720,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, far exceeding the combined resources of major tech companies like Microsoft, Meta, and Google. But remember, the contract isn't asking if Sora will be widely available. A launch with limited availability and a high monthly cost would still count. It's just asking if it will launch. Pick of the Litter Punters on Polymarket aren’t expecting any of the best-known cat meme coins to become the first such token to reach the $1 billion market cap milestone. A market capitalization bet for cat-themed tokens, which some expect to flip their dog-themed counterparts in the next bull cycle, has racked up $1.2 million in bets since going live in March. As of Monday, popular tokens Popcat (POPCAT) and cat in a dogs world (MEW) have 22% and 7% odds, while shark cat (SC) and toshi (TOSHI) have odds of under 2%. Despite all these memes being valued at over $200 million and occupying massive mindshare in the meme coin community, punters aren’t expecting any of these to become the first billion-dollar cat meme. Instead, the “others/none in 2024” category dominates the odds at 68%. Other cat-themed tokens in the open market but not referenced in the Polymarket contract are mog (MOG), wen (WEN) and maneki (MANEKI), according to CoinGecko. The high odds for two distinct outcomes suggest traders either expect a whole other cat meme to become the biggest or expect no single token in the category to get such a rich valuation. The apparent bearish sentiment is likely not due to the lack of buying pressure, either. Two dog tokens, bonk (BONK), dogwifhat (WIF), and the frog-themed pepe (PEPE), were launched in 2023 and zoomed to over $3 billion each in less than a year, showcasing the demand for such tokens. Among meme coin hunters, the perceived cuteness of a meme drives its virality and, ultimately, price. So which is cuter: a dog with a pink beanie hat or a cat with a mouth that pops? The punters have decided. Pump.Fun Exploit's ripple effect A market betting on Solana fees flipping those of Ethereum has fallen 12 points in the past week, after jumping up to 35% earlier in the month. The “Solana flips ETH in daily fees in May?” market, which has seen over $60,000 in wagers placed, is a market on whether the daily fees of Solana (SOL) will surpass that of Ethereum (ETH) for any day within this market’s time frame from May 10 to May 31. Odds of the flip rose earlier this month due to a revival of meme coin trading as GameStop stock prices surged higher, aiding growth in meme tokens. However, the odds fell following a $2 million exploit on Pump.Fun, a tool that lets anyone deploy a tradeable token on Solana. The brief exploit may have been expected by some to slow the rapid issuance of meme coins on Solana, which would in turn depress daily fees. Despite being extremely cheap compared to Ethereum, the Solana blockchain collects millions of dollars in fees every day thanks to the sheer magnitude of meme coin trading activity on the network. Still, the fee difference isn’t a big one. Blockchain activity on Ethereum netted it over $1.84 million in the past 24 hours, while it was nearly $1.2 million for Solana, DefiLlama data shows. Pump.Fun has since come back online, and is seeing thousands of new memes launched daily as usual. Peruse it at your risk. https://www.coindesk.com/news-analysis/2024/05/20/will-rfk-jr-debate-trump-or-biden-probably-not-prediction-market-says/

2024-05-20 11:35

Judge James Mellor released his written judgement on the Crypto Open Patent Alliance vs Craig Wright case on Monday. Craig Wright lied extensively in his evidence during a U.K. court case regarding his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, according to the written judgment. Most of the lies related to forged documents that purported to support his claim, the judge wrote. Craig Wright lied "extensively and repeatedly" in both his written and oral evidence in the Crypto Open Patent Alliance case regarding his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, Judge James Mellor said in his written judgement on Monday. Mellor also concluded that the issue of injunctive relief - a legal remedy to stop a defendant from doing something - will be argued at a Form of Order hearing that will be appointed after the judgment has been handed down. Mellor in March concluded Wright was not Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, and that he had not authored the cryptocurrency's foundational document known as the white paper. "I want to thank those of you who sent me messages of support yesterday. I await the written judgment at which point I will consider my options for appeal,” Wright said on X (formally known as Twitter) in March. Although the ruling can be appealed, Mellor’s definitive statement following the month-long trial was cause for celebration for the broader crypto industry, which has long criticized and been victim to Wright’s legal battles against members of the community. “Dr. Wright is not the person who adopted or operated under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in the period 2008 to 2011. Third, Dr. Wright is not the person who created the Bitcoin System. And, fourth, he is not the author of the initial versions of the Bitcoin software,” Mellor said after both parties to the trial had presented their evidence. The Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), whose stated mission is to protect the adoption of crypto and fight threats against the new technology, filed to take Wright to court in 2021. The trial commenced on Feb. 5, with COPA accusing Wright of forgery and, later, perjury. "I am entirely satisfied that Dr Wright lied to the Court extensively and repeatedly," Mellor said. "Most of his lies related to the documents he had forged which purported to support his claim." COPA, whose backers include Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN), said it will seek several injunctions to prevent Wright from claiming to be Nakamoto and taking Bitcoin developers to court again. It has also said it may ask U.K. prosecutors to consider perjury charges against Wright for statements made during the trial. "Dr Wright’s attempts to prove he was/is Satoshi Nakamoto represent a most serious abuse of this Court’s process," Mellor said in his judgment. "The same point applies to other jurisdictions as well: Norway in particular." Wright also had a nearly five year long legal battle against Norwegian bitcoiner Hodlonaut. In March, Mellor imposed a worldwide freezing order on 6 million British pounds ($7.6 million) worth of Wright assets to ensure he couldn't move them offshore or evade costs from the COPA trial. According to the order, COPA's costs for the case amounted to 6.7 million pounds at the time. Update (12:58 UTC): Adds relief line to second paragraph and Wright Tweet to third paragraph and impact to other jurisdictions to the tenth paragraph https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/05/20/craig-wright-lied-to-uk-court-extensively-and-repeatedly-judge-writes/