“The company, which currently has a proposed bitcoin ETF under review by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed an ether ETF on Friday that would allow retail and institutional traders to gain exposure to the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency.
VanEck intends to work with Cboe BZX Exchange on the offering. The same exchange is providing support for VanEck’s proposed bitcoin ETF.
Canadian regulators have already approved several ether ETFs. WisdomTree, another company hoping to launch a bitcoin ETF in the U.S., has also listed an ether exchange-traded product in Germany and Switzerland.”
See Also: Ether Sets New All-Time High of More Than $3.8K
“The 3iQ CoinShares Bitcoin ETF has reached over C$1 billion (US$823 million) in assets under management (AUM) after only three weeks of trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Reaching $1 billion in only three weeks speaks to the enormous market demand for bitcoin.”
“While the amount of ETH locked in DeFi protocols is up 75% since the start of 2020, the sum of Ether held on centralized exchanges has fallen by 30% over the same period.
Since the start of 2020, the share of supply represented by Ether on centralized exchanges has dropped more than a quarter, from roughly 17% to 12%. Over the same period, the percentage of ETH locked in smart contracts has increased by three-quarters, from 13% to 22.8%, showing that DeFi is steadily eating into the centralized exchanges’ profits”
“All assets will eventually be tokenized, from stocks to bonds to commodities. At least that’s the perspective of many crypto-industry executives who predict that most, if not all, of modern finance will eventually run on digital rails. Such thinking lurks behind a new report from the World Economic Forum.
Many anticipate a future blurring of the lines between traditional publicly listed equities and tokenized private company shares.
What’s perhaps most notable about the 100-page report is the length to which the authors go in estimating the potential size of the traditional markets that might be ripe for disruption. In all, it works out to $866.9 trillion:
- Equity markets: $95 trillion
- Debt markets: $106 trillion
- Securitized products: $10 trillion
- Derivatives: $560 trillion
- Securities financing: repurchase agreements $4 trillion, securities lending $2.9 trillion
- Asset management/fund administration: $89 trillion.
The opportunity could be substantial for an already fast-growing crypto industry with a current market capitalization currently around $2.3 trillion.”
See Also: 4 Phases of the Crypto Bull Cycle Explained (Video)
“The Internet Computer, the Dfinity Foundation’s long-awaited platform for smart contracts that run at internet speed, is now live. Founded in 2016, Dfinity has been working to bring the project to life for five years.
It launches now with multiple ecosystem companies built to prove out its technology stack, including Enso Finance (a decentralized exchange), Distrikt (a professional social network), Fleek (infrastructure for the decentralized web) and Origyn (a provenance platform for luxury goods), among several others.
With this launch, the 469,213,710 utility tokens (ICP) are live and under the authority of the Network Nervous System (NNS). This means they can move onto exchanges such as Coinbase, which has already announced a plan to list them on its Coinbase Pro product.”
See Also: How Dfinity Could Give Ethereum Another Layer of Censorship Resistance
“Hsu will succeed current Acting Comptroller Blake Paulson, who assumed the position after former Acting Comptroller Brian Brooks stepped down in January. At the Fed, Hsu was part of the supervision and regulation division, meaning he oversaw major banks.
It’s unclear how Hsu will approach the issue of digital assets, or whether he is U.S. President Joe Biden’s pick for a full-term comptroller. The OCC made waves during the past year under Brooks for publishing letters and other forms of guidance aimed at bringing the crypto industry into the U.S. financial system.
Mike has devoted his career to the stability and supervision of America’s banking system.”
“Marathon Digital Holdings’ (MARA) new mining pool has mined a bitcoin block that is “fully compliant with U.S. regulations,” meaning the company has started excluding transactions from entities it believes are sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Treasury or have been involved in dark web activity.
Marathon said it is addressing a concern among “many large funds and corporations” that have” expressed interest in purchasing bitcoin” by marketing its mined bitcoin as OFAC-compliant.
It is totally against the Bitcoin ethos as they are trying to make it a permissioned protocol instead of open for all.
Despite Marathon’s surveillance, transactions from a Russian dark web market, Hydra, were still processed in the “clean” block. Further, shortly after Marathon blazoned the “clean” block on social media, bitcoiners from Iran and around the world began to send bitcoin to the address that received the Marathon “clean” block reward. The gesture was meant to display how easy it is to undermine Marathon’s initiative (and thus demonstrate how futile the chase is for “clean” coins).“
See Also: Canadian Bitcoin Miner Bitfarms Approved for Nasdaq Global Market Listing
“Users in China can set up on AWS to “farm” Chia’s XCH cryptocurrency.
Chia Network, a blockchain and smart transaction platform, published a white paper in February announcing its goal of making mining easier for individuals, letting them commit unused hard drive space to support its decentralized network.
The system is geared toward supplanting the energy-intensive proof-of-work model (as used by bitcoin) with proof-of-space-time, whereby network participants show they have been storing data over a period of time.”
“In a somewhat bizarre move from the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), trading of cryptocurrency mined outside the country has reportedly been banned. The ban attempts to stymie capital flight from the country that could be attributed to the effects of its depreciating national currency, the rial.
How exactly the central bank intends to regulate the inflow of fungible cryptocurrency from outside the country’s borders remains unclear.
Iran has already banned the use of cryptocurrency for payments, while the country’s financial institutions are free to use cryptocurrency, derived from sanctioned miners, to pay for imports.”
The Disrupt 