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Fee war breaks out among spot Ether ETF issuers ahead of listings

Franklin Ethereum ETF (EZET) has emerged as the fee race’s frontrunner.

Virtually all of the soon-to-be-listed Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are temporarily waiving or discounting fees as rivalries among issuers heat up ahead of next week’s anticipated listings, according to documents filed with United States regulators.

The promotional discounts range from full waivers to roughly 50% fee reductions and vary in length from six months to a year. Some discounts also expire once ETFs pull a certain amount of assets under management (AUM).

In total, seven out of 10 proposed spot Ether (ETH) ETFs are touting fee cuts. Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) and Invesco Galaxy Ethereum ETF are opting out of the fee war. The other outlier — ProShares Ethereum ETF — has lagged behind peers in the registration process and is not expected to list next week.

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SEC approves Grayscale, Proshares spot Ethereum ETFs for trading on NYSE Arca

The issuers must still await final regulatory signoff on S-1 filings before listing the funds.

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved two spot Ethereum  exchange-traded funds (ETFs) — Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust and ProShares Ethereum ETF — for listing on the New York Stock Exchange’s (NYSE’s) Arca electronic trading platform, according to a July 17 filing

The approval of the so-called Form 19b-4 filing authorizes NYSE to facilitate trading of the funds. However, the issuers must still stand by for final comments on the ETFs’ respective S-1 filings before the spot products can actually commence with listing.

“Grayscale is excited to share that the [SEC] has approved Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust’s (proposed ticker: ETH) Form 19b-4,” a Grayscale spokesperson said in a statement. “The Grayscale team continues to engage constructively with SEC staff, as we seek full regulatory approval for US spot Ethereum ETPs.”

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Latam Insights Encore: El Salvador Is Uniquely Positioned to Become the Microstrategy of Nation States

Plaintiffs amend complaint in Tether lawsuit for alleged USDT scheme

The class-action lawsuit alleges Tether and Bitfinix conspired to manipulate crypto market prices.

Plaintiffs in a years-long class-action lawsuit against Tether and Bitfinix filed an amended complaint accusing the companies of manipulating crypto prices through a deceptive scheme involving USDT, Tether’s dollar-backed stablecoin, according to court documents filed in the Southern District of New York. 

The complaint alleges Tether and Bitfinix “executed a sophisticated scheme to fraudulently inflate the price” of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), through “massive, carefully timed purchases […] to signal to the market that there was enormous demand and thus cause the price of those commodities to spike.”

The companies purportedly financed these purchases with billions of dollars in USDT, which — in contradiction to repeated assurances by Tether — was not, in fact, backed one-to-one by United States dollars. In doing so, the Plaintiffs claim that Tether and Bitfinix violated both the Commodities Exchange Act (CEA) and the Sherman Antitrust Act.

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Latam Insights Encore: El Salvador Is Uniquely Positioned to Become the Microstrategy of Nation States

US military partner Constellation opens Hypergraph network to app developers

The “Layer 0” network was created in collaboration with the United States Department of Defense and is now open for commercial Web3 applications.

On July 15, Constellation Network opened its Hypergraph blockchain, created in partnership with the United States military, to application developers at a global hackathon event hosted alongside technology giants IBM and Panasonic.

The hackathon marks the debut of Constellation’s “meta graph” application layer, which enables third-party developers to build Web3 applications—or even new layer 1 blockchains—on top of Hypergraph’s existing network.

Hypergraph is a so-called “Layer 0” protocol designed to validate and store data from interoperable applications and networks—known as “meta graphs”—on its ledger. According to the announcement, its meta graphs can work with any data type, interface directly with external data sources, and accept mainstream programming languages such as Java.

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Latam Insights Encore: El Salvador Is Uniquely Positioned to Become the Microstrategy of Nation States

Donald Trump picks crypto-friendly JD Vance as running mate

The Ohio senator reported holding up to $250,000 worth of Bitcoin in 2022 and has supported specific pro-crypto legislation.

Prospective Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump has chosen Senator JD Vance to be his running mate in 2024.

In a July 15 announcement on Truth Social, Trump said the Ohio senator would join his ticket as the vice presidential Republican candidate. Vance is rated as a “strong” supporter of cryptocurrencies by Coinbase’s Stand With Crypto initiative, based on positive social media posts and voting in favor of pro-crypto pieces of legislation.

In a 2022 financial disclosure report for the US Senate, Vance reported holding between $100,001 and $250,000 in Bitcoin (BTC) through crypto exchange Coinbase. He also voted in favor of a joint resolution to overturn a Securities and Exchange Commission rule on banks reporting crypto as a liability on their balance sheets — legislation President Joe Biden vetoed.

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Latam Insights Encore: El Salvador Is Uniquely Positioned to Become the Microstrategy of Nation States

US Bitcoin miners hodl in expectation of BTC price rises

US mining firms are confounding pre-halving expectations by hodling the BTC they mine.

Marathon Digital Holdings didn’t sell any of its Bitcoin in June.

The decision marks a growing trend among United States-based Bitcoin (BTC) miners, who are choosing to keep the Bitcoin they mine rather than sell it.

Cointelegraph spoke to Salman Khan, Marathon’s chief financial officer, to better understand how miners decide when to accumulate their Bitcoin and when to move them onto the market.

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Latam Insights Encore: El Salvador Is Uniquely Positioned to Become the Microstrategy of Nation States

Whistleblowers asked the SEC to investigate OpenAI over alleged illegal NDAs

The complainants called the matter "urgent," but it remains unclear if the SEC will open an investigation.

Parties representing anonymous whistleblowers from artificial intelligence firm OpenAI have reportedly filed a grievance with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission over the firm’s alleged use of illegal non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). 

Documents sent exclusively to the Washington Post, per a report, indicate that a group of whistleblowers associated with OpenAI filed a complaint with the SEC in June alleging the company made former employees sign restrictive, illegal NDAs in order to prevent them from discussing safety and other concerns with federal agents.

According to the post, the documents it received, linked here, were sent to the newspaper by Senator Chuck Grassley’s office:

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Latam Insights Encore: El Salvador Is Uniquely Positioned to Become the Microstrategy of Nation States

SEC drops investigation of Bitcoin Stacks developer Hiro — Filing

This is the second crypto investigation the US securities regulator dropped this week.

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped a three-year investigation into Hiro Systems, the developer of Bitcoin’s Stacks layer-2 blockchain, which raised $70 million from token sales between 2017 and 2019, according to a July 12 regulatory filing. 

Hiro, which was previously called Blockstack, has been treating its native token, STX, as a security under US law since its launch in 2018.

“Based on the information we have as of this date, we do not intend to recommend an enforcement action by the Commission against Hiro Systems PBC, formerly known as Blockstack PBC,” according to a letter from the regulator included in the Friday filing.

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Latam Insights Encore: El Salvador Is Uniquely Positioned to Become the Microstrategy of Nation States

US lawmaker asks Congress to treat Binance exec in Nigeria as a ‘hostage’

Rep. Rich McCormick called on the US government to formally declare Tigran Gambaryan as a hostage if his criminal case in Nigeria was not resolved by mid-July.

Representative Rich McCormick introduced a resolution to the US Congress calling on lawmakers to consider a Binance executive who has been detained in Nigeria since February as a hostage.

In a July 10 resolution referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Rep. McCormick claimed the government of Nigeria had wrongfully detained Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan “in order to extort” the cryptocurrency exchange. He called on the US government to formally declare Gambaryan as a hostage and take steps to ensure the Nigerian government releases him and provides medical care if the case was not resolved by mid-July.

“Tigran’s detainment has been ongoing since February of 2024, the court typically takes a recess from mid-July to September,” said Rep. McCormick. “[I]f Tigran’s case is not resolved by mid-July, he may remain in detention for an even longer undue period of time.”

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Latam Insights Encore: El Salvador Is Uniquely Positioned to Become the Microstrategy of Nation States

House fails to override Biden’s veto on nullifying SEC crypto rule

Though the resolution overturning an SEC rule on banks handling crypto passed in the House in May, the legislation required at least 288 members to override President Biden’s veto.

The US House of Representatives could not gather enough support to override President Joe Biden’s veto of a resolution affecting a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule on banks recording cryptocurrency as a liability on their balance sheets.

In a July 11 vote, 228 House members voted to override President Biden’s veto of H.J.Res. 109, overturning SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin (SAB) No. 121 — 60 votes short of the two-thirds majority required. The failed vote suggested that the veto would likely stand, and US banks would be limited from serving as crypto custodians for their customers, barring future legislation.

“It did not have to be this way,” said Representative Patrick McHenry on July 10 before a potential vote. “On digital assets, on the regulation of digital assets, on the functioning of a new asset class that a substantial number of Americans and the world are using [...] The Biden administration has been given every opportunity to work with this Congress on digital asset policy and to come to a reasonable resolution on digital asset policy.”

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Latam Insights Encore: El Salvador Is Uniquely Positioned to Become the Microstrategy of Nation States