Grayscale announces plans for Bitcoin ETF spinoff

July 19, 2024 Coin Telegraph

bitcoin etf

Current GBTC shareholders will receive shares in Grayscale’s new Bitcoin ETF in proportion to what they currently hold in GBTC.

On July 19, crypto asset manager Grayscale announced plans to spin off a portion of its flagship Bitcoin fund, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), into a new exchange-traded fund (ETF).

On July 31, Grayscale will contribute 10% of the spot Bitcoin (BTC) held by GTBC to its new ETF, Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust (BTC). The company said the ETF is set to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange’s (NYSE) Arca exchange pending final regulatory signoff.

Current GBTC shareholders will receive shares in the Mini Trust in direct proportion to the shares they hold in GBTC. As a result of the spinoff, GBTC holders will hold the same amount of spot BTC as before, but across two different funds.

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Messari CEO Ryan Selkis resigns after political, discriminatory posts

July 19, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Selkis stepped down as CEO of Messari following statements on social media platform X. Eric Turner will head the company.

Ryan Selkis has resigned as CEO of the data aggregator platform Messari following public controversy over calls for civil war and political remarks on immigrants in the United States as election season heats up.

According to an announcement, Eric Turner, chief revenue officer of Messari, will head the company. Turner joined Messari in 2018.

“I’ve decided to step aside from my operating CEO role at Messari and transition to the role of Senior Advisor. This was a decision I did not take lightly and one I was very close to making last month, as I considered the problems I was most passionate about tackling in society at large,” reads Selkis’ statement.

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Tyler Winklevoss donates $500K to John Deaton’s campaign

July 18, 2024 Coin Telegraph

<div>Tyler Winklevoss donates 0K to John Deaton's campaign</div>

Coin Telegraph

The tech entrepreneur characterized incumbent Elizabeth Warren's regulatory power over the Biden administration as a "Faustian bargain."

Tyler Winklevoss, co-founder of Gemini and Winklevoss Capital, announced a $500,000 donation to attorney John Deaton's Senate campaign on July 18.

The investor and entrepreneur laid out his case in a lengthy social media thread that was highly critical of incumbent Elizabeth Warren, characterizing the Massachusetts Senator as the "chief architect" behind the Biden administration's war on the crypto industry.

Winklevoss claimed that President Joe Biden granted Elizabeth Warren, who is a senior member of the Democrat Party, veto power over his regulatory nominees in exchange for endorsing his 2020 presidential campaign.

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Pixelverse PIXFI token rises nearly 50% in first hours after airdrop

July 18, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Airdrop

Pixelverse airdropped 10% of PIXFI’s total supply to holders of its Rare, Epic, and Legendary non-fungible token (NFT) collections.

Pixelverse, a non-fungible token (NFT) and gaming platform on The Open Network (TON), launched its native token, PIXFI, in a much-anticipated airdrop on July 18.

The token traded up almost 50% in the first hours after listing and approached approximately $200 million in fully-diluted market capitalization before pulling back later in the day, according to CoinMarketCap.

The PIXFI token is now listed on several centralized exchanges, including Bybit, HTX, Gate, Bitget, MEXC, according to another Pixelverse X post.

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Crypto Super PAC spends $1.3M on media buy for Arizona Democrat

July 18, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Arizona

The Protect Progress political action committee has been behind media buys for candidates in many congressional races across the United States.

The political action committee (PAC) Protect Progress has used more than $1.3 million to support the campaign of a Democratic candidate for Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District.

According to expenditures filed with the Federal Election Commission, the Protect Progress Super PAC disseminated more than $1.3 million in a media buy to support Yassamin Ansari. The Arizona Democrat will compete for the congressional seat in a July 30 primary against Raquel Terán and Duane Wooten.

Though Terán’s and Wooten’s policy positions on crypto and blockchain were unclear at the time of publication, Ansari’s campaign website stated she supported “lead[ing] the way in the blockchain and crypto innovation.” The Democratic candidate also completed Coinbase’s Stand With Crypto questionnaire, suggesting she would support pro-crypto legislation if elected to Congress.

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

July 18, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

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

July 17, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

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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Plaintiffs amend complaint in Tether lawsuit for alleged USDT scheme

July 15, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Binance

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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US military partner Constellation opens Hypergraph network to app developers

July 15, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

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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Donald Trump picks crypto-friendly JD Vance as running mate

July 15, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

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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