European Union countries are making the transition to a tough new crypto regime set by Brussels.
Existing crypto companies could get a “fast-track regime” to new European crypto rules, the country’s Financial Markets Authority (AMF) said in a Friday statement.
France recently toughened its crypto registration procedures in the wake of FTX’s collapse, and in preparation for the European Union’s Markets in Crypto Assets law, MiCA.
The European Parliament voted in favor of MiCA last week, and the rules are set to take effect starting around July 2023.
There’ll now be “consideration of a possible fast-track modular licensing” between France’s existing regime, known as PSAN, and MiCA, which includes much tougher governance, consumer-protection and financial-stability rules, the AMF said.
The regulator said it will also consider how to bring provisions on reserves, conflicts of interest, custody, and documentation in line with Europe.
Under MiCA, companies already registered in France – such as Binance or Bitstamp – will get an extra 18 months to comply with the higher European norms.
“These players can, during this period, continue to offer their services solely to the French public,” the said the AMF, responsible for administering one of the most advanced crypto regimes currently in effect in Europe.
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The SEC cannot regulate digital assets involved in the case as the UST stablecoin is a currency, not a security, lawyers for the disgraced crypto executive have said.
Lawyers for Do Kwon, founder of collapsed crypto issuer Terraform Labs, have requested a U.S. court to dismiss charges brought against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) partly for lack of jurisdiction, court filings from Friday show.
Kwon, who has been on the run from regulators since the collapse of his multi-billion dollar crypto enterprise in May 2022, was recently arrested in Montenegro for attempting to travel with falsified documents. Following his arrest, the SEC charged the South Korean national with securities fraud.
In the civil action brought against Kwon, the regulator failed to prove “personal jurisdiction” as products referenced by the SEC were “available to the world and not directed at U.S. persons,” a 47-page supporting document for a motion to dismiss the charges said. It also says that a digital asset involved in the case, the stablecoin UST, does not fall under the purview of the SEC as it is a currency and not a security.
“Congress has not granted the SEC the power to regulate the digital assets at issue here,” the document, filed with a New York court said.
The company also did not conduct any public offerings of securities that warranted an SEC registration, according to Kwon’s representatives. SEC Chief Gary Gensler has been facing mounting criticism over his handling of crypto regulation, mainly through enforcement action.
Kwon still faces criminal fraud charges by the U.S. prosecutors as well as charges of capital markets law violations in South Korea. Both nations have requested the extradition of the former executive who must first face trial and possible jail time in Montenegro.
The SEC can oppose the motion to dismiss by May 12.
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The startup offers multi-chain structured financial products with plans for a buy-side altcoin options market.
Thetanuts Finance, a multi-chain structured products protocol, has closed a $17 million funding round led by Polychain Capital, Hyperchain Capital and Magnus Capital.
The new funding will help the company create new partnerships with layer 1 and layer 2 networks, liquidity providers, blockchain foundations, market makers and exchanges.
The fundraise comes as the industry continues to slowly climb out of the crypto winter deep freeze that’s nearly stalled the investment landscape. Infrastructure product shave proven most resilient and decentralized finance (DeFi) projects have taken favor over centralized products after the collapse of centralized exchange FTX last fall.
Thetanuts Finance is a DeFi firm offering a range of crypto structured products that cater to a wide customer base, including option traders, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), market makers and other liquidity providers. Users of the platform can earn yield on major cryptocurrencies and popular altcoins, provide liquidity, and execute short and long options strategies.
Thetanuts Finance will soon launch a buy-side altocin options market powered by decentralized options vaults (DOVs), which the firm says will make options strategies – particularly those involving altcoins – available for a wider range of investors.
“At Thetanuts Finance, we are dedicated to leading the way in building a thriving altcoin options market for both budding and established ecosystems across different chains, including non-EVMs. Our commitment to innovation and decentralization has never been stronger, and we look forward to driving the DOV model to new heights,” said Thetanuts Finance advisor Sherwin Lee in the press release.
Thetanuts Finance last raised an $18 million funding round in March 2022 led by crypto fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC), Deribit, QCP Capital and Jump Crypto. 3AC began its public collapse about three months later due in part to the $60 billion implosion of the Terra ecosystem.
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The exchange will be open to professional investors. HashKey plans to welcome retail users in coming months.
Digital asset financial services firm HashKey Group plans to introduce a regulated exchange in the second quarter, the company said in a statement on its website.
The exchange, called HashKey PRO, will offer bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), USD coin (USDC) and fiat trading pairs, according to the statement. HashKey said it is preparing to offer services to retail investors “in the coming months.”
The company is one of only two firms with the licenses from Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) to operate a virtual asset trading platform and provide trading services. While the regulator has indicated it is considering allowing licensed platforms to serve retail investors, the investor protection measures under which these services could be offered are not yet set.
The SFC has indicated that licensed exchanges will be able to offer only very liquid virtual assets for retail trading and its token admission requirements are not yet clear.
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The latest price moves in crypto markets in context for April 14, 2023.
This article originally appeared in First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.
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Ether (ETH) continues to outperform bitcoin (BTC) following the Ethereum network’s Shanghai upgrade, which has proven to be bullish for much of the cryptocurrency market, with many altcoins following suit. Ether is up 6% on the day vs. bitcoin which gained 1%. Bitcoin did briefly cross $31,000 on Friday for the first time since June 2022, marking a 10% gain over the last 7 days. Ether rose 13% over the same time frame. Arbitrum (ARB) an Ethereum scaling solution, led gains this week, rising almost 30%. According to Sheraz Ahmed, STORM’s managing partner, ARB is bouncing back from the overselling caused by its airdrop in March, which saw the Ethereum layer 2 distribute its long-awaited governance token to community members. The airdrop, however, was plagued with bugs and phishing scams. “The crypto markets are heavily emotionally driven, and we often see overbought/sold tokens based on over-reactions,” said Ahmed.
Top 10 protocols with a market capitalization > $1B. (Messari)
The tokenization of real-world assets gathers pace, Bank of America (BAC) said in a research report Thursday, which noted that the tokenized gold market surpassed $1 billion in value last month. Tokenization is the process of putting ownership of tangible assets – precious metals being one example – on the blockchain, and thus offering the convenience of buying and selling these assets around the clock as the involvement of traditional brokers is not necessary. Bank of America sees this tokenization – which could also include commodities, currencies and equities –as a “key driver of digital asset adoption.”
Solana Labs’ crypto-forward smartphone Saga will go on public sale May 8, the company behind the Solana blockchain said Thursday. Pre-ordered devices are shipping now. The Android smartphone is a gamble on mobile being imperative to the future of crypto, employees at Solana-focused companies told CoinDesk. It was nearly 10 months ago that Solana first teased the radical potential of a cellphone that doubled as a dedicated crypto hardware wallet, and the possibilities such a product could hold for its entire ecosystem. The new device from Solana Mobile costs $1,000 and is built on hardware from Bay Area smartphone company OSOM. Phonemaker names both big and small – HTC and Sirin Labs among them – have previously failed in their efforts to create a crypto-forward smartphone, setting an ominous precedent for Solana, a device built for and marketed to a single crypto ecosystem.
Chart of the Day
Source: Refinitiv, The Market Ear newsletter
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The size and price range for the offering has yet to be determined
Blockchain and smart-contract platform Chia Network – founded by Bram Cohen, inventor of BitTorrent – has submitted a confidential draft registration to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering (IPO).
The size and price range for the offering has yet to be determined, Chia said in a press release on Friday.
Chia’s aspirations for a public listing go back to bull run of 2021, when Bloomberg reported the blockchain raised $61 million in a Series D funding round, led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Richmond Global Ventures, at $500 million valuation. At the time, then chief operating officer (now CEO) Gene Hoffman was reported to have said that it was on “an accelerated timeline” to an IPO.
Native token XCH has shown little response to the news, currently up around 2.59% on the day, though showing no upward movement since Chia’s announcement at around 13:30 UTC, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Edited by Aoyon Ashraf.
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APT quickly retraced the entire move after Musk deleted a tweet saying, “AI APT OTT!”
Aptos (APT) rallied by 7.4% in less than a minute on Friday after Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted, “AI APT OTT!”
“APT,” in this context, however, was an acronym for Advanced Persistent Threats, not the Aptos token, and APT retraced the entire move higher after Musk deleted the tweet one hour later.
This is not the first time Elon Musk or companies he’s associated with have moved crypto markets. Only days ago, Twitter changed its logo from the blue bird to the Shina Inu dog that represents dogecoin, sending that memecoin surging as much as 35%. The logo has since been switched back.
Even with the retracement, Aptos, which is the native token of the Aptos blockchain, remains up by 8.2% over the past 24-hours alongside gains for much of the altcoin market following Ethereum’s successful Shanghai upgrade.
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APT has now rallied by more than 89% since its debut in October 2022.
The company, based in Austin, Texas, says the new offering is the first bitcoin trust that takes advantage of Bitcoin’s multi-signature capability.
Bitcoin financial services firm Onramp has launched a spot bitcoin (BTC) trust for high net worth investors, that takes advantage of the cryptocurrency’s multi-signature (multisig) capability to enable what Onramp calls multi-party custody – where a group of separate custodians each hold a private key in a multisig arrangement.
Onramp has recruited qualified custodian Kingdom Trust and bitcoin financial services firm Unchained Capital to create a 2-of-3 multisig model, meaning two of those three entities will need to sign a transaction in order to move client funds. The goal is to give clients direct exposure to bitcoin without the hassle of self-custody or the risk of trusting a single custodian.
Each unit of the trust will be equivalent to one BTC and clients will be able to process in-kind redemptions, where they redeem the underlying asset (bitcoin) without triggering a taxable event.
Bitcoin exchange traded funds (ETFs) in the U.S. are currently not allowed to hold bitcoin directly and typically hold bitcoin futures contracts instead. Other investment funds like the $18.7 billion Grayscale bitcoin trust (GBTC) – the world’s largest bitcoin investment fund – do hold BTC but don’t allow in-kind redemptions.
Grayscale ceased redemptions in 2014, citing compliance with Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, although some, including Onramp and hedge funds like Fir Tree Capital Management, argue Grayscale’s stopping redemption was self-imposed.
“GBTC did do redemptions,” Michael Tanguma, CEO and co-founder of Onramp told CoinDesk. “They stopped doing them back in 2014/2015 as they wanted to accumulate AUM [assets under management].”
The inability to redeem has been a source of disgruntlement for institutional investors like Fir Tree, which has sued GBTC over the matter. Tanguma says Onramp’s in-kind redemptions (which can be processed after an initial 12-month lockup period) and multi-party custody arrangement sets it apart from Grayscale and offers a new model for bitcoin custody.
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“It’s essentially the product GBTC should have been,” Michael Tanguma, CEO and co-founder of Onramp told CoinDesk. “And I believe it will be the future of how bitcoin is custodied.”
When asked whether Onramp would need SEC approval to start the redemptions and if so why the regulator would approve the plan, Tanguma responded: “It does not require formal approval because bitcoin is a commodity as per the CFTC, not a security. With that, Onramp does plan to work with securities lawyers to get opinion letters in place to reduce the 12-month lock-up period for redemptions, and will work with all regulators to make sure Onramp stays compliant in all jurisdictions where it offers its services.”
The Singapore firm is one of the largest bitcoin miners in the world with 16.2 EH/s of hashrate.
Bitcoin miner Bitdeer listed today on the Nasdaq after several delays, to lukewarm reception, as the shares of the miner, under the ticker BTDR , lost almost 30% of their value, trading around $6.81 at the time of publication.
The stock was halted shortly after market open, several times, for volatility. Other crypto mining stocks saw single-digit upticks in their share value at the same time frame.
Its merger with a special-purpose acquisition vehicle (SPAC), called Blue Safari Group Acquisition Corp, was approved on Tuesday.
The Singapore-based firm is one of the largest miners in the world, shows a March prospectus filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It has six mining sites across Washington state, Texas, Tennessee and Norway, with a total energy capacity of 775 megawatts (MW) as of the end of 2022, about less than what it had estimated in February 2022. Its hashrate or computing power at the end of January stood at a total of 16.2 exahash per second (EH/s), second only to bankrupt Core Scientific (CORZ) and higher than Riot Platforms (RIOT) and Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA).
About one quarter of that is used for self-mining, meaning it keeps the bitcoin rewards, whereas the rest is given out for cloud mining, meaning customers rents its machines and reap the rewards.
Bitdeer was born out of the world’s largest rig manufacturer, Bitmain, when after a spat between the two co-founders, one of them left and took Bitdeer. Another cloud mining firm also affiliated with Bitmain, BitFuFu, is also in the process of going public via SPAC, but has delayed the listing.
Bitdeer’s, along with other bitcoin miners, financial performance deteriorated in 2022, in part due to worsening market conditions. The firm reported revenues of $330.3 million, and a loss of $62.4 million for 2022, compared with $394.7 million in revenue and a profit of $82.6 million the year before, according to the prospectus filing.
The miner is going public at a better time than last year as market conditions have improved, with bitcoin passing the $30,000 mark and mining equities in many cases outperforming the digital asset in percentage growth. In the future the “market will begin to shift from not only focusing on operators with the biggest scale, but also operators with the best unit economics,” said investment bank Stifel Nicolaus’s analyst Bill Papanastasiou.
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The department will explore economic growth, investment and business opportunities in these areas, as well as implications on regulation.
The U.K.’s newly formed Department of Science, Innovation and Technology will advance the country’s metaverse and Web3 strategy, an individual familiar with the matter not authorized to speak publicly told CoinDesk.
The country’s 2023 Spring Budget, released in March, said the government wanted to “lead on the future of web technology, sometimes known as Web3 or the metaverse.” The new tech department, set up in February, will lead the charge in this work. The department’s work will not focus on specific technologies like blockchain and virtual reality but will instead look at potential economic growth opportunities, investment and business models associated with concepts including the Metaverse and Web3, along with implications for regulation, according to the source.
The metaverse, which is a collection of virtual worlds where people can buy and sell things, was described as a $13 trillion dollar opportunity by investment bank Citigroup. Meta – formerly known as Facebook – dove into the sector, shifting much of its operations to focus on building the metaverse, though the recent crypto winter has put a damper on its growth.
The U.K. government has said its science and technology framework will be supported by more than 370 million British pounds ($463 million) in new funding “to boost infrastructure, investment and skills for the U.K.’s most exciting growing technologies, from quantum and supercomputing through to artificial intelligence.”
It’s not clear how much of that money has been dedicated to the tech department and its metaverse work. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who had previously vowed to turn the country into a crypto hub, said the department was put in place to turn scientific and technical innovations into “practical solutions to the challenges we face.”
CoinDesk has reached out to the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology for comment.
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