CoinDesk Crypto

A Berlin-based startup creating a tech stack for automated Ethereum services, has raised $1.2 million in a seed round led by Polkadot backer IOSG Ventures and crypto merchant bank Galaxy Digital.

• Gelato Network announced Tuesday the funding would go towards developing its network infrastructure as well as launching an decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that will one day take over governance.
• Founded late last year, Gelato is building a product that adds the next stage to smart contracts, allowing Ethereum developers to automate contract execution on their dapps.
• While smart contracts execute functions once pre-defined conditions are met, most still require users to manually send the transaction itself.
• That can either introduce bottlenecks into the system if the user isn’t online, or additional risk if a third party has to be trusted to execute the transaction when required.
• Having moved to a live mainnet offering in June, Gelato offers developers programmable bots – software that performs automated tasks online – that can be customized to execute specific transactions for selected smart contracts.
• While automated smart contract execution is already available, Gelato says this will be the first such product built entirely on a completely decentralized infrastructure.
• That means bots aren’t programmed by just one team of developers and are, therefore, less at risk to a single point of failure.
• One use case for Gelato could be automating repayments on DeFi lending platforms, which makes the loan process seamless and faster, saving borrowers from paying unnecessary interest when they’re not online.
• Seed round co-leader IOSG Ventures has invested in many of the industry’s household names, such as Vechain, Dfinity, Lisk, Cosmos and Polkadot.
• Meanwhile, Galaxy Digital was a major stakeholder in alternative blockchain platform EOS – which it moved out of last year.
• The seed round also included commits from Gnosis; two venture DAOs, MetaCartel Ventures and The LAO; and Christoph Jentzsch, who was part of the team that created the original Ethereum DAO back in 2015.
• Part of the role of the seed investors is to help with the long-term sustainability of the Gelato DAO, which will ultimately allow Ethereum projects to coordinate and identify what services and functions should be automated.
• The DAO is scheduled to launch sometime in Q1 2021, Gelato “Legendary Member” Hilmar Orth told CoinDesk.
• It’s unclear when Gelato anticipates launching its DAO. CoinDesk reached out to the team for comment but hadn’t received a response by press time.
• In a statement, ISOG founding partner Jocy Lin said Gelato was, among other things, providing some of the “critical infrastructure” for the still-nascent DeFi space.

See also: RGB Continues Its Work to Bring Better Smart Contracts to Bitcoin

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• Nigeria’s SEC Says All Crypto Assets Are Securities by Default

Michael Saylor, the founder of MicroStrategy, said Tuesday his company has acquired an additional $175 million in bitcoin (BTC) in a single purchase.

• Saylor said on Twitter that his business intelligence company had completed the acquisition of 16,796 bitcoin on Monday.

• This has significantly increased the total size of MicroStrategy’s bitcoin holdings up to 38,250 bitcoin – worth roughly $416 million at current prices.
• MicroStrategy told the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday that it “may increase” its BTC holdings above the $250 million purchased in August.

Read more: MicroStrategy Buys $250M in Bitcoin, Calling the Crypto ‘Superior to Cash’

Related Stories

• First Mover: Bitcoin Investors the Sane Ones as Federal Reserve Cheers Inflation, Price Nears $11K
• Analyst ‘Cautiously Bullish’ on Bitcoin but Says Equity Sell-Off Still a Threat
• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Passes $10.7K; Ethereum Gas Usage Hits Record September Highs
• RGB Continues Its Work to Bring Better Smart Contracts to Bitcoin

Bank regulators in 48 U.S. states are to unveil a consolidated regulatory framework that will make compliance for cryptocurrency companies simpler.

• The Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS), a coordinating body for state regulators, confirmed to Reuters the new regime for money service businesses (MSB) will introduce the same rules and standards across 48 states.
• This will streamline compliance, making it easy for MSBs, companies like Coinbase and Ripple, to work across multiple states, instead of going through the time and expense of getting regulated in each and every one.
• It isn’t clear yet what two states have decided not to participate in the consolidated framework.
• Officials from a handful of states will represent all 48 regulatory bodies under the new regime, which will apply to 78 MSBs, including Western Union and PayPal, that together move a reported $1 trillion annually.
• Speaking to Reuters, John Ryan, CSBS’ president and CEO, said the framework will be just as robust, but much more efficient, at enforcing state regulation.
• The CSBS is expected to unveil the new regulatory regime sometime on Tuesday.

See also: The OCC’s Crypto Custody Letter Was Years in the Making

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• Investment Platform BnkToTheFuture to Integrate KYC Identity Solution from Blockpass
• Nigeria’s SEC Says All Crypto Assets Are Securities by Default

India is reportedly moving to ban the trading of cryptocurrencies.

• The federal cabinet is expected to soon discuss a new bill before passing it to the parliament, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
• While the government is exploring the possible uses of blockchains to manage land records, pharmaceutical drugs supply chain or records of educational certificates, it is against cryptocurrency trading, according to the two sources.
• The Reserve Bank of India had banned commercial banks from servicing to crypto traders and exchanges in 2018.
• The nation’s supreme court overruled the central bank’s ban in March.
• Since then, trading volumes on cryptocurrency exchanges servicing Indian clients have picked up sharply.
• A private think tank recently said the Indian government should regulate bitcoin like a corporate stock.
• If the ban is passed it would be a blow to the rapidly growing crypto scene in India that has flourished since the banking ban was overturned.

Also read: Crypto Banking Firm Cashaa Eyes India Expansion After $5M Raise

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• Nigeria’s SEC Says All Crypto Assets Are Securities by Default

One of the interesting things about cryptocurrency investors is they really do look at the world very differently from many of their counterparts in traditional finance. 

The thinking goes something like this: The efforts of governments and central banks to repair the economy are doomed to fail, and likely to make the situation worse. There is no point in moving to a defensive investment strategy because prices for digital assets are going to the moon. Every time the stock market goes up, it just validates the reality that the dollar is being debased by trillions of dollars of central bank money printing. 

The latest turn-logic-on-its-head zinger came Monday from Dan Morehead, a former Wall Street trader and hedge fund executive who now heads the cryptocurrency-focused investment firm Pantera Capital in the San Francisco area. 

Related: MicroStrategy Buys $175M More in Bitcoin, Upping BTC Holdings to $425M

In a monthly letter, Morehead was discussing how central banks typically succeed when they pointedly attempt to increase inflation, as the Federal Reserve is now pursuing as an official policy. He cited Venezuela and Zimbabwe as two prior success stories, as it were.   

Morehead then pivoted to the argument that asset prices “are not rising because stock fundamentals have improved,” but because “a huge wave of money is being printed.”

“Gold is at a 5,000-year high,” Morehead wrote. “Or, said another way, paper money is at an all-time low.” 

It’s that counterintuitive, “put another way” perspective that can sometimes seem refreshing, partly because the crypto investor keeps getting proven right. Audiences on both Wall Street and in broader society are now becoming more receptive to the idea that the traditional financial system and economy are both unsustainable and unfair.

Related: Analyst ‘Cautiously Bullish’ on Bitcoin but Says Equity Sell-Off Still a Threat

The Federal Reserve’s top monetary officials meet this week to discuss their next steps for healing the U.S. economy, which at this point appears to consist of doing nothing for the next several years until inflation rises above the central bank’s historic 2% target and stays above that level for a while.

As reported by First Mover Monday, it’s possible the Fed’s next move would come if the stock market takes a fresh dive, prompting the central bank to step in and pump more money into the economy to keep markets functioning smoothly.

Jeff Dorman, another former Wall Street veteran who’s now chief investment officer of the cryptocurrency-focused investment Arca Funds in Los Angeles, wrote Monday in his weekly column that Congress, which has been gridlocked over a new coronavirus-related stimulus package, might also be prone to a similar do-nothing-until-you-have-to dynamic.          

He has written in the past that “it would likely take an equity temper tantrum before Congress acts,” and he wrote this week, “Methinks Congress will be acting soon.”

“Moral hazard never left, but it’s definitely back,” according to Dorman. 

What tips the scales toward the crypto investors being the sane ones and not the other way around is that market signals are currently validating the crypto investment thesis.

Bill Gross, the legendary former Pimco bond fund manager, is encouraging investors to get defensive because “there is little money to be made almost anywhere in the world,” CNBC reported Monday. 

Tell that to Morehead of Pantera, whose Digital Asset Fund has returned 168% so far this year, according to the letter.  

Morehead said bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are winning because they have a relatively fixed supply, similar to gold, and “improved usage/fundamentals,” similar to tech stocks like Amazon and Netflix. 

Just compare the following chart of year-to-date asset-class performance from Pantera:

To this one from Goldman Sachs (off by a few days so the percentages are a touch different):

One includes crypto, and goes up to 244%; the other doesn’t include crypto, and it goes up to 29%. So far this year, based on the track record so far anyway, it turns out the smart money was in crypto. 

Bitcoin Watch

Bitcoin looks north, having breached a 10-day-long sideways trend with a move above $10,500 on Monday. 

Bullish developments on key technical indicators back the range breakout. For instance, the 14-day relative strength index has violated a descending trendline, signaling an end of the price pullback from the August high of $12,476. 

Further, the MACD histogram, an indicator used to gauge trend strength and trend changes, has crossed above zero, indicating a bullish reversal. 

As such, resistance levels at $11,000 and $11,200 could soon come into play. That said, the cryptocurrency remains vulnerable to a potential sell-off in equity markets, according to analysts. 

“Previous sell-offs have been exacerbated by risk-off momentum in stocks, particularly the tech-heavy Nasdaq index,” Matthew Dibb, co-founder and COO of Stack Fund, told CoinDesk in a WhatsApp chat. “We remain cautiously bullish this week.”

Read More: Analyst ‘Cautiously Bullish’ on Bitcoin but Says Equity Sell-Off Still a Threat

– Omkar Godbole

Token Watch

BZx (BZRX): DeFi lending project recovers $8M of cryptocurrency from attacker who exploited code bug. 

Aave (LEND), Yearn.Finance (YFI), Compound (COMP), Synthetix (SNX), MakerDAO (MKR), REN (REN), Kyber Network (KNC), Loopring (LRC), Balancer (BAL), Augur (REP): New 10-token DeFi Pulse Index provides way for traders to “get exposure to DeFi without having to go and buy every token individually.”  

Tether (USDT), Tron (TRX), Ethereum (ETH): Tether moves 1B of its dollar-linked USDT stablecoins to Ethereum blockchain from Tron. 

What’s Hot

Bitcoin mining-computer-maker Bitmain enters new chapter of fight between co-founders as Jihan Wu gains upper hand (CoinDesk)

As Swiss firms SEBA, Sygnum and Bitcoin Suisse explore development of a digital franc, “interoperability” becomes new buzzword (CoinDesk)

Thailand uses blockchain-enabled platform to sell $1.6B of government savings bonds (CoinDesk)

Peer-to-peer bitcoin exchange Paxful exits Venezuela, citing “increasingly strict” regulations (CoinDesk)

Bitcoin blockchain consumes as much electricity as the Czech Republic, more than Switzerland, Kuwait or Algeria (Decrypt)

Japanese cryptocurrency exchange sues Binance, alleging it helped to launder some of funds stolen in $60M hack in 2018 (CoinDesk)

Analogs The latest on the economy and traditional finance

Volume of single-stock options trading tops volume of regular shares for first time (WSJ)

Taxi medallion lender forgives $70M of debt that soured as lockdowns shut down New York City (WSJ)

Economists warn of US ‘wasteland’ without stimulus deal with bipartisan support (Financial Times)

Proposal to put government ministers on Bank of Indonesia board after $27B bond-buying binge could portend new era of erosion in central-bank independence (Nikkei Asian Review)

Indian shares rise after inflation data; small, mid-caps extend gains (Reuters)

Tweet of the Day Related Stories

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Online fintech and blockchain investment platform BnkToTheFuture has made a strategic investment into know-your-customer (KYC) identity solutions provider Blockpass.

• Announced Tuesday, the investment deal – the value of which was not disclosed – will also see Blockpass’ KYC and anti-money laundering verification software integrated into BnkToTheFuture’s ecosystem.
• Blockpass’ digital identity protocol allows end users to create a verified portable identity that can be re-used to onboard with any service, according to a press release.
• The investment in Blockpass is meant to “streamline” compliance requirements, BnkToTheFuture CEO Simon Dixon said, citing his business’ long-term involvement with global securities laws.
• Established in 2010, BnkToTheFuture enables users to invest in blockchain, crypto and fintech companies like Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp, Circle and Ripple with any of 25 fiat currencies or 35 cryptocurrencies.
• In August, the firm announced it would move client assets to Hong Kong-based First Digital Trust citing a “systemic risk” with traditional banking.

See also: BitMEX to Mandate ID Verification for All Traders as Maverick Exchange Ends Wild Ways

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Bitcoin (BTC) has crossed into bullish territory, but prices remain vulnerable to a potential sell-off in stocks, an analyst believes.

• The leading cryptocurrency jumped above $10,700 on Monday, confirming an upside break of 10-day-long price consolidation.
• While the breakout has exposed resistances at $11,00–$11,200, Matthew Dibb, co-founder and COO of Stack Funds, said it’s too early to call an end of the price pullback from August highs above $12,400.
• “Previous sell-offs have been exacerbated by risk-off momentum in stocks, particularly the tech-heavy Nasdaq index,” Dibb told CoinDesk. “We remain cautiously bullish this week.”
• Bitcoin's decline from $12,000 to $10,000 seen in the first week of September was also accompanied by a 10% drop in U.S. tech stocks.

• Analysts at investment banking giant Goldman Sachs say the U.S. stock market sell-off is nearing an end.
• However, Joel Kruger, a strategist at LMAX Exchange, believes stocks are going to have a hard time rallying, leaving the door open for a bitcoin price pullback to the $6,000–$8,000 range.
• “Bitcoin needs to clear the 2019 high of $13,800 to force me to rethink my bearish bias,” Kruger told CoinDesk.
• Meanwhile, Stack’s Dibb is also keeping an eye on the action in the foreign exchange markets.
• “We are paying close attention to the USD trade flow and any further rotation to reserve currencies [like the U.S. dollar] that may signal macro hedging,” he said.
• The dollar index, which gauges the greenback’s value against major fiat currencies, has come under pressure this week, propelling hard assets like bitcoin and gold higher.
• Bitcoin has developed a relatively strong negative correlation with the dollar index this quarter.
• The cryptocurrency is currently trading near $10,870 at press time, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index.
• From a technical analysis standpoint, the immediate bias will remain bullish as long as prices hold above $10,500.
• However, $11,200, which acted as strong support in August, may now prove a tough nut to crack, according to Patrick Heusser, a senior cryptocurrency trader at Zurich-based Crypto Broker AG.

Also read: Market Wrap: Bitcoin Passes $10.7K; Ethereum Gas Usage Hits Record September Highs

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• MicroStrategy Buys $175M More in Bitcoin, Upping BTC Holdings to $425M
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• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Passes $10.7K; Ethereum Gas Usage Hits Record September Highs
• RGB Continues Its Work to Bring Better Smart Contracts to Bitcoin

Money transmitters like Western Union, PayPal, and cryptocurrency firms will be able to more easily expand across the United States, after 48 state regulators agreed to a single set of supervisory rules that should reduce their compliance costs.

The chief financial watchdog of Nigeria will treat cryptocurrencies and token offerings as forms of security until proven otherwise.

• In a statement signed Friday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of Africa’s most populous country said all crypto assets will fall under the regulation that covers securities exchanges and transactions on exchanges.
• It added that the burden of proof will be on issuers themselves to show the regulator, in an initial assessment filing, how their particular digital asset doesn’t count as a security.
• “The position of the Commission is that virtual crypto assets are securities unless proven otherwise,” the SEC said.
• The SEC confirmed all forms of digital asset offering taking place in the country, as well as participating individuals and companies, acting for themselves or on behalf of others, will be subject to its regulatory guidelines and approval.
• As well as clarifying in no uncertain terms whose jurisdiction cryptocurrencies fall into, the move might also cover all bases and ensure even offerings that don’t meet the criteria as a securities sale still register and file with the SEC.
• It may also be an attempt to better control overseas offerings. Issuers that are based in countries without reciprocal investment agreements with Nigeria, such as the U.S., could be compelled to set up a local branch in the country.
• Nigeria isn’t the first African nation aligning digital asset offerings with existing securities guidance. South Africa published a policy paper in April that called for all token offerings to adhere to traditional regulation as much as possible.

See also: Nigerians Are Using Bitcoin to Bypass Trade Hurdles With China

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U.S. presidential candidate and crypto entrepreneur Brock Pierce was apparently served legal papers relating to a lawsuit alleging securities fraud during his campaign rally in New York on Monday.

• Video footage posted to Twitter on Tuesday shows Pierce receiving what appear to be court documents resulting from a class-action lawsuit brought against the founders and former executives of blockchain developer Block.one.
• Lawyer James Koutoulas, who tweeted the video, said his team had served Pierce for his alleged involvement in the EOS token sale, which raised $4.1 billion between June 2017 and June 2018.
• “When you’re trying to avoid getting served for a multi B fraud case, maybe lay off outlandish presidential campaigns,” Koutoulas wrote.
• Lead plaintiff Crypto Assets Opportunity Fund is accusing Block.one, CEO Brendan Blumer, CTO Dan Larimer, former CSO Brock Pierce and former partner Ian Grigg of deceiving investors over the token sale and are seeking damages.
• Block.one is a private blockchain company that began in 2017 and is best known for developing the EOS.IO protocol – for which the EOS token is the native cryptocurrency.
• In September 2019, Block.one reached a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and agreed to pay $24 million in damages for running an unregistered securities sale in exchange for waiving legal restrictions.
• However, Jenny Vatrenko, legal director at Haven Network, replied to comments on Twitter, saying: “Fortunately for the investors who lost money, they have a private cause of action against Block.one that’s not precluded by the SEC’s settlement.”
• Pierce announced his presidential bid back in July, but missed filing deadlines in several states to place his name on the ballot.
• Pierce has also co-founded other crypto projects including stablecoin tether (originally called Realcoin) and Blockchain Capital, a venture capital firm.
• As a child actor Pierce appeared in several Disney films including “The Mighty Ducks” and “First Kid.”

See also: Judge Worries Plaintiffs’ Lawyers Trying to Line Their Pockets in Block.one ICO Lawsuit

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A Japanese cryptocurrency exchange that suffered from a $60 million hack in 2018 is suing Binance for “aiding and abetting” the laundering of some of the stolen funds.

According to a complaint filed by Fisco in the Northern California District Court on Sept. 14, the Japanese exchange alleged that soon after it lost nearly 6,000 bitcoin in the 2018 hack, the thieves sent 1,451 bitcoin to an address belonging to Binance, which was worth $9.4 million at the time.

Fisco – called Zaif at the time of the hack – added that the thieves subsequently laundered the funds on the world’s largest exchange platform, due to its allegedly lax know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) protocols that “do not measure up to industry standards.”

Related: DeFi Lender bZx Reclaims $8M Stolen in Sunday’s Attack

The thieves are claimed to have taken advantage of Binance’s policy that allowed new users to open accounts and transact on the platform in amounts less than 2 bitcoins without needing to provide any meaningful identifying information.

“The thieves broke the stolen bitcoin into seven thousands of separate transactions and accounts, all valued below the 2-bitcoin threshold. In this way, the thieves converted the stolen bitcoin into other cryptocurrencies and transmitted the value from the Binance platform,” the plaintiff said.

Fisco alleged that since Binance was notified and had “actual knowledge” that the stolen funds were sent to its platform, it “either intentionally or negligently failed to interrupt the money laundering process when it could have done so.”

As such, Fisco is demanding Binance to pay for its loss of the laundered funds in addition to other punitive damages.

Related: DeFi Lender bZx Loses $8M in Third Attack This Year

Zaif was sold by its then-parent entity Tech Bureau to Fisco shortly after the incident, which compensated users’ who had lost funds in the hack.

$41 million-worth of crypto assets from the hack belonged to Zaif customers including those based within the U.S. and California, according to the court filing.

Biannce has not yet responded to CoinDesk’s request for comment.

The case has the potential to draw further attention to cryptocurrency exchanges’ KYC and AML procedures, as the Financial Action Task Force is working towards bringing global regulators in line with its 2019 anti-money laundering guidance on “virtual asset service providers,” known as the Travel Rule.

Also read: FATF Compliance Effort Adds Huobi, Bitfinex and Tether to Governance Task Force

California claims

Fisco also argued that the case should be brought to trial in the California court not only because there were victims who were based in the region, but also “critical components” of Binance’s business are located in the U.S. state.

For example, Fisco said Binance uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) to host its servers and has the ability to select whichever AWS data center it chooses for its operations.

The argument comes after repeated statements made by Binance that it has no traditional physical headquarters anywhere in the world.

“Upon information and belief, a significant portion if not all of the AWS servers Binance relies on for its operations are located in the State of California. Upon information and belief, the AWS Region and AWS Availability Zones housing Binance’s digital data used to run its technical platform are located in California,” Fisco said.

In addition to Binance having hired half a dozen employees in California, Fisco argued that a significant portion of Binance’s cryptocurrency reserves is also stored in offline hardware facilities located in the San Francisco Bay Area, which are controlled and managed by custodians headquartered in the region.

“For example, on July 7, 2020, Binance acquired cryptocurrency startup Swipe. Binance admits that Swipe uses Coinbase and Bitgo, both of which are located in the San Francisco Bay Area, to custody the cryptocurrency used in Swipe’s business,” the plaintiff said.

Fisco is seeking a jury trial over its allegations.

See the full court filing below:

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In a new twist in Bitmain’s ongoing power struggle, co-founder Jihan Wu has regained the legal representative status of the bitcoin miner maker giant.

China’s business registration record update on Sept. 14 shows Wu has again become the legal representative and executive director of Beijing Bitmain Technology, the operating entity of Bitmain.

Subsequently, Micree Zhan, the rival co-founder who was ousted last October by Wu but regained control earlier this year, is no longer the legal representative and executive director but remains a general manager of the firm.

Related: The Business of Geopolitical Competition

The role of a company’s legal representative in China has broad powers to act on a firm’s behalf and usually also holds the company’s official seal, a crucial element for signing company decisions into effect.

In an announcement published Sept. 15 via the WeChat account of Bitmain’s AntMiner brand, Wu reaffirmed the status update and said the company’s respect for Zhan “remains unchanged.”

Battle for Bitmain

The update suggests Bitmain’s internal power fight may have come to a short-term end although the two sides’ lawsuit in the Cayman Islands – where Bitmain’s parent holding entity resides – is pending for a final judgment.

Wu added in the announcement that Bitmain’s management now aims to work out sustainable solutions to solve all kinds of problems caused for employees, investors and customers due to the co-founders’ war of words.

Related: Bitcoin News Roundup for Sept. 10, 2020

“Since 2020, the management’s feud has damaged Bitmain’s market shares and its brand image. We have lost customers and employees were forced to take sides,” Bitmain said in the post. “Various breaking events and negative news even thwarted our plan to go public. Our equity option promised to employees almost became a useless piece of paper.”

Read more: Leaked Transcript Details Power Struggle Inside Bitcoin Mining Giant Bitmain

In an October coup last year, Wu removed Zhan’s role as Bitmain’s chairman, executive director and legal representative even though Zhan is the biggest shareholder of Bitmain. Wu alleged that Zhan’s leadership during 2019 caused serious issues – including a significant drop in Bitmain’s bitcoin miner market share. Zhan filed a lawsuit in the Cayman Islands in December over the legitimacy of Wu’s move.

The event has quickly escalated to a yearlong power struggle. Earlier this year, Zhan regained his status as a legal representative after winning the local government’s favor and forcing his way into Bitmain’s Beijing office.

Read more: How Was It Possible for Bitmain to Oust Its Largest Shareholder Overnight?

Soon after that, Bitmain’s manufacturing business for bitcoin mining equipment was essentially hard-forked into two with each side trying to establish their own sales arms and factory supply chains.

As a result, Bitmain’s employees were forced to take sides and the stand-off caused significant shipment delays for Bitmain’s customers, many of whom had to turn to rival miner makers such as Shenzhen-based MicroBT.

Related Stories

• Why Crypto Investments Are Less Vulnerable to US-China Tensions
• Court Denies Bitmain $30M in Damages From Co-Founders of Rival Poolin

The New York Attorney General’s office is losing patience with Bitfinex and Tether.

NYAG senior enforcement counsel John Castiglione filed a letter Monday ahead of a conference between the regulator and the two cryptocurrency firms arguing it is way time they complied with a 17-month-old document production order detailing financial information within the next two months. 

For their part, counsel representing the two firms argue the order is too broad, and the scope should be limited first.

Related: NY AG Asks Court for New Order to Make Bitfinex Turn Over Tether Loan Documents

“As of this filing, the 354 Order has been in place for seventeen months. In that time, Respondents have produced ‘jurisdictional’ documents (as directed by this Court) but failed to produce the core information called for in the Order. The delays must stop, and Respondents should be directed to comply promptly,” Castiglione said.

New York State Supreme Court Justice Joel M. Cohen scheduled the hearing for this Thursday, after receiving a request from the NYAG’s office last week complaining that Bitfinex and Tether had yet to turn over any documents. 

According to Castiglione, the NYAG is requesting all documents be submitted within 60 days and an injunction preventing Tether from loaning funds to Bitfinex be extended a further 90 days. Charles Michael, an attorney with Steptoe and Johnson LLP representing Bitfinex, opposed any extension of the injunction in his own letter.

“The allegedly concealed facts have been out in the open for 17 months, during which consumers have been free to redeem their tethers without restriction,” he wrote. “Instead, they have chosen to buy, with tethers’ market cap growing six-fold (to over $14 billion).”

Related: Bitfinex Invests in Derivatives Exchange Built With Bitcoin’s Lightning Network

In his view, the fact that tether’s market cap has increased this dramatically indicates market confidence in the dollar-pegged cryptocurrency, and negates the justification for the injunction.

“Consumers are well protected today, and do not need OAG’s injunction. The loan transaction supposedly impairing tethers’ reserves was over 25% of tethers’ backing at the time of the injunction, but, thanks to Bitfinex’s repayments and tethers’ growth, the balance now is less than 4% of tethers’ backing,” Michael wrote.

He added that Tether’s assets exceed the amount of tether (USDT) issued by $160 million.

17 months

It has indeed been a long journey. The case began in April 2019, when the Attorney General’s office said Bitfinex had lost access to close to $1 billion in customer funds, and borrowed from Tether’s reserves. The stablecoin issuer shares corporate owners and executives with Bitfinex, though in various legal filings counsel for the companies said the loan and a subsequent line of credit were negotiated independently of each other. 

The NYAG won an injunction preventing Tether from sending any more funds to Bitfinex, and Cohen ordered the firms to share all documentation about the deals, as well as documents about tether issuances, among other concerns.

Bitfinex and Tether appealed the ruling, but lost the appeal in July. Earlier this month, the NYAG’s office asked to schedule Thursday’s conference to request a new production order with a strict timeline. 

Monday’s letter provided more information. The NYAG wants Bitfinex and Tether to produce purchase information for tether, U.S. dollar withdrawal requests, tax documents and account information within one week. 

Read more: NY AG Asks Court for New Order to Make Bitfinex Turn Over Tether Loan Documents

Within a month, the NYAG wants communications about Tether’s loans, loans to third parties and a list of U.S. or New York customers who had funds on Crypto Capital, and within 60 days it wants “full production” of information related to a November 2018 subpoena, a February 2019 letter and jurisdictional documents. 

The original production order from 2019 called for the materials to be ready within a month, Castiglione said.

“Most of the materials called for are core business documents that should exist and be readily accessible: order and trade information, client lists, lists of bank accounts and their balances, tax returns, and other similar material,” the letter said, adding that, “the 354 Order is well over a year old and the appeal was decided two months ago.”

Michael wrote that some of the requests would require Bitfinex or Tether to “generate reports, accountings or answer questions” that do not currently exist.

‘Extensive ties’

The NYAG also preemptively stated its opposition to any narrowing of the judge’s order, noting that “respondents have stated they will move this court” to do so. According to Castiglione, the court’s role in the case is limited beyond the orders already signed, and the production demand is well within the NYAG’s authority under the Martin Act, the law it’s using to conduct its inquiry into Bitfinex.

Michael’s opposition letter wrote that the court could limit the scope to avoid unduly burdening the respondents, in this case Bitfinex and Tether. The court itself has already said that any “unreasonable or not terribly relevant” requests can be opposed. 

Bitfinex is arguing that a request for all documents about all tether transactions is overbroad. Michael likened it to “asking GM for all documents about cars.” The NYAG is also looking for documents outside its jurisdiction, he claimed. 

In his brief, Michael wrote that the proposed timeline should be denied. Instead, he proposed a 30-day period for the two parties to discuss the scope of the request, saying Bitfinex and Tether would produce documents “not subject to dispute” in the meantime.

Read more: Tether, Bitfinex File Motion to Dismiss Market Manipulation Lawsuit

He seemingly pushed back against the NYAG’s claims that insufficient documents have been produced, writing that the crypto firms have produced more than 70,000 documents so far.

“Bitfinex and Tether also voluntarily produced extensive information to OAG, even while the First Department stay was in effect, including via two multihour presentations and a series of other communications aimed at answering directly the questions OAG indicated it was most interested in having answered,” Michael wrote.

He also noted that Bitfinex and Tether announced a ban on all New York customers nearly three years ago. 

Castiglione, in contrast, wrote that an investigation into Tether and tether is proper, “given their [respondents] extensive ties to the state.” 

In his view, the appeals court’s ruling in the NYAG’s favor suggested that the regulator could find additional information that would reveal further violations of the law.

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Paxful is pulling out of Venezuela’s peer-to-peer (P2P) bitcoin scene.

• “Increasingly strict” regulations hampered the P2P bitcoin exchange’s ability to “provide services to Venezuelans,” according to a video tweeted by Paxful Monday.
• A company spokeswoman confirmed the exit with CoinDesk. “Concerns regarding the regulatory landscape around Venezuela and Paxful’s own risk tolerance” prompted the exit, she said.
• New Venezuelan account creation will be disabled and existing users will have 30 days to withdraw, according to an exit plan shared with CoinDesk.
• The departure will deprive Venezuela’s underground crypto scene of its second-largest P2P outlet. Venezuela’s crypto traders heavily favor P2P crypto exchanges like Paxful and market leader LocalBitcoins over government-approved alternatives.
• It also denies Paxful an emerging market it courted for years as the future of bitcoin adoption. Venezuela’s rampant inflation, unbanked population and high mobile phone usage have long appealed to company CEO Ray Youssef.
• But those attractions weren’t enough to overcome the myriad difficulties of operating in an economy as sanctioned and scrutinized as Venezuela’s.
• In addition to Venezuela’s internal cryptocurrency regulator SUNACRIP, the country’s international exchanges also face potential troubles from financial sanctions levied by the U.S.
• Paxful blamed U.S. sanctions when it shut off trades involving the Bank of Venezuela in June.
• It was not immediately clear whether the regulatory uncertainty cited by Paxful was internal or external, perhaps due to U.S. sanctions.

Read more: Chainalysis Report Shows Healthy Crypto Usage in Venezuela

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The Thai central bank, Bank of Thailand, announced on Friday that it has launched a blockchain-enabled platform for the issuance of government saving bonds. 

• According to a press release, the Thai central bank sold 50 billion Baht (approximately $1.6B) worth of government savings bonds over one week’s time.  
  
• The release added that the blockchain-enabled platform will help build a more secure, efficient mechanism for issuing government bonds and also aid in reduction of associated operational costs. 
  
• Thailand has been pivoting its bond market toward blockchain-enabled platforms as the country’s finance ministry had earlier in June announced plans to sell $6.42 million worth of low-face-value government savings bonds using state-owned Krung Thai Bank’s blockchain wallet. 
  
• “In the next phase, the infrastructure will expand to support all different government bonds,” the release said. Thailand’s finance ministry announced last month that the funds obtained from selling $1.6 billion worth of savings bonds would go toward financing the government’s budgetary deficit. 

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New York federal prosecutors charged two men with running a phony bitcoin brokerage service that duped victims of $5 million.

• As alleged in a criminal complaint unsealed Monday, former fugitive Randy Craig Levine and disbarred attorney Philip Reichenthal never bought their two high-rolling investors any bitcoin despite promising to do so.
• One victim, an unnamed “purported cryptocurrency escrow firm,” wired Levine $3 million to fund an over-the-counter desk’s bitcoin buy, according to prosecutors, who said the second victim, a Florida bitcoin investor, wired Levine $2 million.
• Levine allegedly told the victims their funds were moved into an “escrow” service and then stopped responding to the victims’ questions.
• But Levine’s escrow was actually Reichenthal’s money-laundering front, prosecutors allege. They claim Reichenthal wired millions to Russian, Mexican and Guatemalan bank accounts controlled by Levine aliases.
• Levine and Reichenthal allegedly pocketed the money, giving their victims no refunds or bitcoin.
• The pair face allegations of wire fraud, money laundering and commodities fraud in New York federal district court.
• Levine is currently awaiting extradition from Austria; he’s been on the run from U.S. authorities since 2005. Reichenthal was disbarred last October in a Florida court.

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Bitcoin is making gains Monday and Ethereum usage is hitting record highs in September.

• Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $10,669 as of 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET). Gaining 3.4% over the previous 24 hours.
• Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $10,250-$10,759
• BTC above its 10-day and 50-day moving averages, a bullish signal for market technicians.

The price of bitcoin hit as high as $10,759 on spot exchanges such as Coinbase Monday. That level has not been seen since Sept. 3 and the cryptocurrency is now heading into bullish territory. 

“The trend is indeed higher,” said Darius Sit, managing partner of quant firm QCP Capital. 

Related: RGB Continues Its Work to Bring Better Smart Contracts to Bitcoin

Read More: Bitcoin’s Jump to $10.7K Ends 10-Day Sideways Trend

Buy liquidations, the crypto equivalent of a margin call that wipes out short-sellers on derivatives exchanges such as BitMEX seemed to be helping to push bitcoin’s price up. A total of $19 million buy liquidations were more than double the $9.1 million in sell liquidations over the weekend and into Monday on BitMEX, helping fuel the price upswing. 

In the options market, some traders remained highly bullish that bitcoin can hit new highs. 

“While bitcoin price dabbles around $10,000 now, traders have still priced in a chance that bitcoin will trade at $20,000 by March 2021,” said William Purdy, an options trader and founder of analysis firm PurdyAlerts. 

Related: Bitcoin’s Jump to $10.7K Ends 10-Day Sideways Trend

Indeed, based on how options are currently trading in the market, it appears as if options traders are estimating a 10% chance that bitcoin will be at $20,000 by the March 2021 expiration date. 

Over in the futures market, investor interest seems to have waned somewhat. 

Read More: Some Bitcoin Traders Are Betting on a $36K Price by Year’s End

“Bitcoin futures aggregate open interest has dropped $1 billion, or 20%, since the start of September,” noted Jason Lau, chief operating officer for cryptocurrency exchange OKCoin.

However, Lau said a higher bitcoin price could mean an increase in futures interest. “It seems traders are in a holding pattern,” Lau added. “U.S. markets have had a strong opening this morning, which pushed BTC up 5%, so it will be interesting to see what impact that has on open interest in the coming days.”

Ethereum record gas usage

Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was up Monday, trading around $375 and climbing 3.2% in 24 hours as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET). 

Read More: Uniswap Takes Over SushiSwap Less Than 24 Hrs. After Rewards Drop

The total amount of “gas” (or costs) used on the Ethereum network to send transactions and interact with decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols hit new highs in September. On Sept. 6, a record 80 billion units of gas was used on the network, and Friday (Sept. 11) was the second-highest usage day ever, at 79,743,954,147 units used.

Read More: SushiSwap Users Ordered Changes, but the Protocol Can’t Deliver

“I have short-term concerns about Ethereum network congestion but it’s a positive for the long term because it shows demand,” said Brian Mosoff, chief executive officer of Eth Capital, which invests in the Ethereum ecosystem. 

The short-term issues could cause pain from a usability standpoint, Mosoff added. “Realistically, until the second and third phases roll out in ETH 2.0, high gas costs or requiring the use of a supporting or competing network are going to be the reality.” 

Read More: The Virtual CoinDesk Invest: Ethereum Economy Event October 14

Other markets

Digital assets on the CoinDesk 20 are all in the green Monday. Notable winners as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):

• neo (NEO) + 9.9%
• lisk (LSK) + 7.5%
• ethereum classic (ETC) + 3%

Read More: How Bitcoin Correlations Drive the Narrative

Equities:

• Asia’s Nikkei 225 ended the day up 0.65% as investors digested signals that easy money policies would continue in Japan.
• Europe’s FTSE 100 closed flat, in the red 0.10% amid reports industrial production numbers have not returned to pre-coronavirus levels.
• In the United States, the S&P 500 climbed 1.6% with tech leading the way, boosted by Nvidia's $40 billion deal to buy chip designer Arm Holdings from Softbank.

Read More: SEC Charges Rapper TI With Securities Violations for Promoting 2017 ICO

Commodities:

• Oil is flat, in the red 0.01%. Price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude: $37.29.
• Gold was in the green 1% and at $1,958 as of press time.

Read More: Iran May Fund Car Imports With Cryptocurrency Mining

Treasurys:

• U.S. Treasury bond yields climbed Monday. Yields, which move in the opposite direction as price, were up most on the two-year bond, in the green 3%.

Read More: The Crypto Firms Collaborating on a Swiss Franc Stablecoin

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The Takeaway

• Under development by the LNP/BP Standards Association, the RGB protocol entered beta in June.
• The second layer network promises to bring smart contracts and tokenized assets to Bitcoin with a Lightning Network-esque technical design.
• RGB could be used to issue tokenize securities and nonfungible tokens (NFT), and to offer a more private means of stablecoin issuance and transfer. 

Smart contracts and Bitcoin. These technical phenomena are rarely associated with each other, often because people believe Bitcoin’s paired-down scripting language can’t support the smart contract applications that have become the darlings of the Ethereum ecosystem.

But as the new smart contract-enabling protocol RGB launches its beta, the folks at the LNP/BP Standards Association are trying to change this perception.

Related: Market Wrap: Bitcoin Passes $10.7K; Ethereum Gas Usage Hits Record September Highs

The group (whose acronym is short for Lightning Network Protocol and Bitcoin Protocol) is building RGB, a smart contract network built on top of Bitcoin. (The protocol is named after the “RGB” additive coloring scheme because it originally started as a project to improve Bitcoin’s colored coins scheme for tokenized assets.)

The “third layer” network, as one of its architects, Giacomo Zucco, calls it, has entered beta and could help outfit Bitcoin with the tokenizing capabilities that have made Ethereum the go-to blockchain for issuing tokenized assets like securities, collectibles, crypto dollars and more.

Read more: A Protocol for Issuing Tokens Launches on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network

The new old thing

RGB was first conceptualized by Bitcoin Core developer and cryptography consultant Peter Todd. With undisclosed funding from Bitfinex/Tether, Fulgur Ventures and Poseidon Group, the protocol entered beta testing at the end of June. LNP/BP head Giacomo Zucco clarified that the “RGB node for the software itself is in beta” but that all RGB-compatible wallets are still in alpha. 

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The pursuit of Bitcoin-based smart contracts – and more generally, tokenizing assets on Bitcoin – is nothing new.

Read more: Writing Bitcoin Smart Contracts Is About to Get Easier With New Coding Language

Bitcoin’s OP_RETURN function has allowed for limited smart contract functionality since the coin’s inception. This function set the technical groundwork for Bitcoin-based NFTs/collectibles through the Counterparty protocol, as well as the issuance of the tether (USDT) stablecoin on Bitcoin through the Omni protocol.

For its own part, the Lightning Network’s hash time-lock contracts – the technical parameters that lock bitcoin (BTC) into payment channels on the secondary network – are a form of smart contract. 

Leveraging techniques (and trade-offs) of Lightning

So-called “sidechains” are trusted blockchains in the sense that a federated body of representatives run the nodes that oversee the sidechain’s operations, such as issuing assets and “pegging” bitcoin into the sidechain. These networks, running parallel to a decentralized blockchain like Bitcoin, market smart-contract functions as one of their primary use cases.

RGB, on the other hand, is not a trusted blockchain like RSK or Liquid, nor does it rely on Bitcoin’s main chain to execute transactions like Omni or Counterparty. Instead, its design is taken in the image of its technical cousin, the Lightning Network.

Read more: What Is Bitcoin’s Lightning Network?

The Lightning Network relies on “client-side verification” for its peers to verify the movement of funds. When you send funds to a peer on Lightning, the “state” of the payment channel with this peer is updated on both your Lightning node and your peer’s Lightning node. The final state of the payment channel is not recorded on Bitcoin’s blockchain until the channel is closed. 

This delayed verification allows the Lightning Network to process near-instantaneous payments, but this comes at a cost: You must keep your node running at all times or the peer on the other end of your payment channel may try to cheat you by broadcasting a false channel state to the blockchain (a technical service known as Watchtowers are working to mitigate this attack vector).

Zucco said RGB “leverages the techniques and trade-offs of Lightning,” in that assets will be transferred in the same way.

“The RGB design is a client-side validation design. It means that when I send you something, I don’t publish the transfer on the network; I send it to you, peer-to-peer, and I will just use the public network to prevent double-spending. You should use the blockchain only to prevent double-spending, but not for transferring assets.”

He emphasized that the trade-offs are the same as in Lightning and stressed that each RGB node will need to keep backup data of its entire state.

To issue assets on RGB, the issuer creates a “schema” for the asset that defines parameters like fungibility, circulating supply and inflation rate, among others. The asset and its schema are then anchored to a reference point on Bitcoin’s blockchain, such as a UTXO or an address, to index the token and its schema. 

RGB use cases

The long-term goal is to make RGB compatible with Lightning, but seeing as the project is still in beta this integration will be some time in the making before it is user-ready.

Until that integration happens, one concrete and logical use case for RGB on its own is for NFTs (although Zucco personally doesn’t find this too exciting). NFTs are unique tokens that typically represent a digital collectible such as a piece of art.

Read more: Money Reimagined: Bitcoin and Ethereum Are a DeFi Double Act

The classic example is CryptoKitties, those breedable NFT felines minted on the Ethereum network. Another perhaps less-familiar example comes from the RarePepe cards issued on Bitcoin using the Counterparty protocol.

RGB could have a leg up on these forms of NFTs because RGB would allow you to send the computer file for the NFT in the same transaction as the asset that represents it. When you send a CryptoKitty as an ERC-721 token on Ethereum or a RarePepe “colored coin” on Bitcoin, the file for the actual collectible has to be transferred separately. With RGB, both asset and collectible can be “sent inside the same channel,” Zucco claimed.

A more salient use case for RGB, according to Zucco, would come from issuing tether on the protocol. Since all transactions are handled off-chain, Zucco said RGB carries with it the promise to be possibly more private than even the Lightning Network.

For something like the stablecoin tether, whose on-chain address on blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, EOS and Tron can be easily tracked and, in extreme scenarios, blacklisted, this could bolster tether’s privacy and censorship resistance.

Read more: High Ethereum Fees Push Tether to Its Eighth Blockchain, OMG Network

“RGB is very private. I cannot follow an RGB asset on the blockchain. Only when you receive an asset do you see the history of the asset, but it’s obfuscated cryptographically with Confidential Transactions technology we reused from Blockstream. Once you send an asset, you won’t be able to see where it goes afterwards,” Zucco told CoinDesk.

Battle-testing RGB in beta

Of course, before these use cases can be realized, RGB needs some battle testing in beta. And there’s still Lightning Network integration and wallet design to consider, as well.

The LNP/BP Standards Association won’t be designing a wallet itself, Zucco said, but will work with third-party developers that do.

After all, LNP/BP will have itd hands full hardening the RGB backbone: its source code. As for the protocol’s appendages – its wallets and other integrations – this development will be up to Bitcoin’s distributed community to bring to life.

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Data company DeFi Pulse and investment-minded Set Protocol have created a permissionless index of the very best DeFi tokens, called the DeFiPulse Index.

DeFi Pulse has become the key source of information for assessing which projects are leading and which ones are rising, judged by the total amount of crypto staked on each one, which the company calls Total Value Locked (TVL).

“We want a way that people can get exposure to DeFi without having to go and buy every token individually, because that costs a lot of gas,” Scott Lewis of DeFi Pulse told CoinDesk in a phone call.

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Ethereum users can now get exposure to a curated set of DeFi projects by buying one token, called DPI, available now on Uniswap: No staking, rebasing, swapping or composing required. It will also be available on Set’s TokenSets, through Zapper, Argent, Dharma and others. 

Read more: Why DeFi Pulse’s Key Metric Is So Simple It’s Confusing

While there have been questions about the underlying value in the DeFi market, Lewis pushed back.

“Decentralized finance is infrastructure to enable human coordination. Traditional finance is also infrastructure to incentivize human coordination, and when humans work together it produces value,” Lewis said. “It’s still early. We still have to figure out if that’s an experiment that works.”

DeFiPulse Index

Related: Chainlink to Start Supplying Data for Crypto.com’s DeFi Wallet

The index will have 10 DeFi tokens: LEND, YFI, COMP, SNX, MKR, REN, KNC, LRC, BAL and REP. That order is arranged from the largest portion of the index (LEND at 18.3%) to the smallest (REP at 1.63%).

“It’s like a [market] cap-weighted index,” Lewis explained, which he described as “analogous to how the S&P 500 is weighted.”

The team has an extensive list of criteria for tokens included on the list, including always limiting it to Ethereum, eschewing synthetics, options, wrapped tokens and tokens that stand in for real-world assets. Tokens need to have some respectable time in the markets and of course they have to be listed on DeFi Pulse.

Read more: What Is Yield Farming? The Rocket Fuel of DeFi, Explained

Set CEO Felix Feng emphasized that while there are some synthetic options that represent the same exposure, DeFiPulse Index will represent real assets. That means a user could take the DPI token to Set and redeem it for the actual underlying assets.

The index will be rebalanced from time to time, though probably at the beginning more frequently than the quarterly rebalancing more typical indexes use. It will depend on market conditions, both Set and DeFi Pulse noted, with the goal of moving to quarterly shifts eventually.

The initial token is targeting a price of roughly $100 each, though like all crypto it will be divisible so users should be able to buy in at any amount they like.

Not only is DeFi complicated, but as its popularity grows a lot of untrustworthy projects have arisen. A part of the purpose of the DeFiPulse Index is to let buyers know the coins represent vetted projects.

Read more: What Is Yearn Finance? The DeFi Gateway Everyone Is Talking About

“DeFi Pulse makes its reputation from separating authentic projects from inauthentic projects,” Lewis said. “We’ve talked to enough teams all over DeFi to sense which ones are really trying to build quality projects.”

For most users, DeFiPulse Index will be accessible by purchasing on exchanges like Uniswap, though for larger traders and desks they can also mint the token directly through Set Protocol, by depositing the underlying assets directly.

“I think one of the things that’s really exciting about the DeFiPulse Index is we think it’s going to be a pretty key asset in the entire industry. We anticipate that this asset will be used for yield farming,” Feng said.

Set v2

“The crypto market’s changed a lot. The kinds of strategies that people are interested in change depending on the market,” Feng said.

The DeFiPulse Index is the first product coming out of Set Protocol v2.0. Over the period of “crypto winter,” Feng explained, Set focused on two-token sets that gained value through programmatic trades based on technical analysis. It’s what the company had to do, but enabling indexes was always what Set wanted to build the most.

Read more: Set Protocol Launches Ethereum Trading Strategy Bots

This index represents the first offering from v2, Feng explained. Later on, the firm will debut indices that can incorporate the more complicated features of DeFi, such as derivatives.

Tokens with unusual behaviors, such as AMPL’s rebasing mechanism, would not work for the current stage of v2, but that’s coming. Set will be rolling out updates over the coming year.

Within the current DPI array, there are tokens like YFI that earn a small amount of dividend by staking, but YFI in the index won’t be staking and COMP won’t be engaging in governance, at least not at the beginning.

“Currently the initial version will be abstaining [from voting]. But in the future we could enable active participation of the token in governance. Or even to generate additional yield,” Feng said.

Feng described DeFi Pulse as a natural first partner for this product. “DeFi Pulse is one of the main destinations in DeFi,” Feng said. “Given their understanding of all the different projects and their growth, they had really good domain knowledge.”

And as for the target audience, Feng was clear:

“We are pretty excited to give retail access to DeFi.”

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MicroStrategy is refusing to rule out future bitcoin gambles.

• The business intelligence company told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday it “may increase” its bitcoin (BTC) holdings beyond the $250 million haul purchased in August.
• That blockbuster buy transformed much of MicroStrategy’s cash reserves into bitcoin, placing the Nasdaq-traded firm among Wall Street’s most notable bitcoin bulls.
• Future allocations would continue down the treasury allocation path. On Sept. 11, the board formally recognized bitcoin as MicroStrategy’s “primary treasury reserve asset on an ongoing basis.”

Read more: MicroStrategy Buys $250M in Bitcoin, Calling the Crypto ‘Superior to Cash’

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