Archive for the ‘Bitcoin’ Category
Bitcoin gets boring and why that’s a good thing for Wall Street – DLNews
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GM, Joanna here!
Bitcoin is getting boring.
As the crypto world breathlessly awaits the approval of a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, Bloomberg reports that a startup of Citigroup alumni has launched a depositary receipt for Bitcoin.
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That might not sound very sexy, but bear with me it says volumes about where crypto is headed in 2024.
In short: the TradFi creep is real and its coming.
Lets get the technical details out of the way.
Depositary receipts give US investment companies exposure to foreign companies, but in a way that feels safe and familiar.
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How do they do that?
What does that have to do with Bitcoin?
The startup, Receipts Depositary Corporation, is planning to offer an instrument that looks like a depositary receipt but provides direct ownership of Bitcoin.
RDC said the underlying assets will be safeguarded at licensed custodian bank Anchorage Digital, and cleared through the DTC.
The depositary receipts dont go through the same Securities and Exchange Commission approvals process as ETFs do, as they are covered by a regulatory exemption.
They are limited, however, to institutional investor clients this is not a retail product.
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Why is a Bitcoin depositary receipt important?
If this all sounds a bit dry, thats the point. Institutional investors such as banks and pension funds like dry.
Wall Street has spent the past decade talking a big game about innovation, but really these firms are too heavily regulated to move fast into new asset classes.
While hedge funds trading their own money have a foothold in crypto, Bitcoin has remained too risky for, say, pension funds managing the retirement savings of teachers and firemen.
Volatility, regulatory uncertainty, cybersecurity concerns, and a lack of market structure that feels safe and familiar are all deterrents.
But pensions and endowments represent potentially huge inflows of money one of the reasons theres so much excitement about the prospect of ETFs.
The Bitcoin depositary receipts are an answer to the question: How do you get direct ownership without the hassle of taking physical possession of the asset?
Thats what David Easthope, a senior analyst who heads up the market structure and technology team at Coalition Greenwich, told me.
With these receipts, you dont have any of the hassle of counterparty risk or cybersecurity. You are not controlling the physical asset. You dont have to worry about your private key, your wallet, [or if you will] participate in staking if you offer a product for Ethereum, Easthope said.
Firms dont want the headache of selecting and onboarding a custodian to safeguard the asset, he added.
They just want to have 0.5% or 1% of the endowment or whatever to have access to Bitcoin, but without having to bring on a new technology vendor.
Whether depositary receipts or spot ETFs, for that matter are good solutions remains to be seen. Investors will vote with their dollars.
But RDCs product is one more sign that capital markets firms are laying claim to crypto.
Email me joanna@dlnews.com or Telegram @joannallama.
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Bitcoin gets boring and why that's a good thing for Wall Street - DLNews
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Lazarus withdraws $1.2m Bitcoin from crypto tumbler – crypto.news
Notorious cybercriminal group Lazarus seems to be moving stolen Bitcoin after siphoning over $600 million from crypto protocols and users in 2023.
The North Korean-funded hacker organization withdrew some 27.3 Bitcoin (BTC) worth an estimated $1.2 million from an unidentified crypto mixer. Per Arkham Intelligence data, Lazarus cashed out its ill-gotten BTC over two transactions on Jan. 8.
A Lazarus wallet received 10 BTC valued at $440,000 and 17.3 BTC worth $762,000 from a contract address. Shortly thereafter, the receiving address transferred 3.3 BTC to another address holding just under $300,000 in Bitcoin.
The hacker group holds $79 million in illicit wealth in wallets labeled by Arkham. Bitcoin, Ether (ETH), and Binances BNB comprised the top three assets held by Lazarus, which reportedly orchestrated a third of all crypto hacks last year.
Crypto users throw their cryptocurrencies into mixers or tumblers to obfuscate the origin of the assets. Bad actors often leverage the process to cover their blockchain footprints following a hack or an exploit.
In the past, Lazarus sent stolen digital assets to services like Tornado Cash, Sinbad, and Blender.io. However, authorities in the U.S. have blacklisted some of these platforms and even levied charges against their creators.
Tornado Cash developer trio Alexey Pertsev, Roman Semenov, and Roman Storm currently face money laundering and conspiracy charges in the U.S. and the Netherlands. All three individuals deny wrongdoing, and industry proponents argue that open-source protocol inventors should not be held liable for third-party applications.
District Judge Katherine Polk Failla threw out a lawsuit against Uniswap, which sought damages and restitution from the decentralized exchange due to losses incurred from trading scam tokens.
The ruling might be regarded as a boon by crypto participants and defendants battling defi-related charges in courthouses across the globe, although a district court judge sided with the U.S. Treasury Department in a lawsuit that involves Coinbase and sanctions imposed on crypto mixer Tornado Cash.
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Lazarus withdraws $1.2m Bitcoin from crypto tumbler - crypto.news
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