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CoinDesk Crypto

Russia, With Bitcoin Playing Bit Part, Tried to Hack 2016 US Election, Senate Report Finds

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence highlighted bitcoin’s limited role in Russia’s 2016 election hacking campaign in a report that reaffirmed the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion the Kremlin worked to put Donald J. Trump in the White House in 2016.

  • Released Tuesday in redacted form, the final report added new details and accusations to U.S. authorities’ broad-based belief that Russia used disinformation, hacking and tactical leaks to bolster then-candidate Trump’s presidential bid.
  • But it also revealed the sometimes salacious role cryptocurrency played in helping the Russians execute their influence campaign.
  • For example, the report suggests jailed Russian spy Maria Butina, whose fling with Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne led to the crypto booster's August 2019 ouster, may have attended a 2015 libertarian convention discussion on bitcoin that Byrne led.
  • “[Byrne’s] remarks about the coming ‘electronic’ changes in our 21st century economy were exciting,” read a draft email between businessman Paul Erickson and Butina that the committee obtained.
  • Butina told the committee that “someone was talking about bitcoin, and there were some ideas that I wanted to discover” at the conference, but never specifically named Byrne.
  • The write-up also reiterated crypto allegations previously revealed in past reports and indictments, including those released in the wake of the report by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.
  • Bitcoin payments paid for the “DCLeaks.com” domain that hosted leaked DNC emails, as well as the virtual private servers Russia’s GRU used during their spear-phishing campaign, the report said.
  • That bitcoin was new, too: The Russians are said to have mined it themselves.
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CoinDesk

DeFi-Yield-Hunting Token YFI Explodes to $11K From $32 in One Month

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

The governance token for yEarn.finance (YFI) has shot up over 32,000% since mid-July as investors have poured hundreds of millions into its protocol, which identifies and exploits some of the best opportunities in the white-hot decentralized finance (DeFi) space. 

  • CoinGecko data shows YFI tokens shot up to nearly $11,250 on Tuesday before giving back some gains: they were just $32 when they started trading on July 18.
  • As the graph below shows, YFI soared past $1,000 the day after launching and was already worth $4,000 by the start of August.
  • Investors have poured hundreds of millions into yEarn since it launched mid-May. On July 18, the protocol had $9.3 million in total value locked; at press time there were over $600 million, according to DeFi Pulse.
  • After a relative lull, the token doubled from $5,500 on Sunday to over $11,000 earlier Tuesday before dropping over $1,500 to $9,800 as this article was going to press.
  • In yEarn, investors deposit digital assets into the protocol which identifies and executes various DeFi trading strategies, offering ROIs of up to 95% on their holdings – the platform taking 5% of total yield as fees.
  • As a governance token, users can stake YFI in order to determine the overall direction of the protocol along with other token holders.
  • Helping drive demand is the scarcity of the tokens. There are only 30,000 YFI tokens – a $300 million market cap – with the vast majority already circulating in the ecosystem.
  • yEarn founder Andre Cronje told CoinDesk the price rise likely came from a combination of scarcity and the fact traders were using YFI in some of the other DeFi protocols.
  • Many big holders, such as Framework Ventures, are now hoarding YFI tokens for the staking rewards – increasing supply pressures still further, he said.

See also: YAM’s Market Cap Falls From $60M to Zero in 35 Minutes

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Blockchain Bites: Hashrates Drop, Bitcoiners Hodl and an Open Letter to Bankers

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

Floods are dampening bitcoin mining hashrates, Ethereum Classic may be thrown off its most popular exchange and bitcoin is moving off exchanges.

You’re reading Blockchain Bites, the daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news, and why they’re significant. You can subscribe to this and all of CoinDesk’s newsletters here. 

Top shelf

Flooded network
Major Chinese bitcoin mining pools are each seeing daily hashrate drops of between 10% and 20% following continuous rainstorms in Sichuan. China’s southwestern Sichuan province, estimated to have over 50% of the Bitcoin network’s total computing power, has been hit by heavy rainstorms since last week. Data from BTC.com shows the world’s top four bitcoin mining pools – PoolIn, F2Pool, BTC.com and Antpool, all based in China – have each seen their hashrates drop between 10% and 20% over the last 24 hours. 

Related: First Mover: Bitcoin Passes $12K, Dollar Worries Grow, OMG Jumps, Portnoy’s Orchid #Pump

Exchanging patterns
Bitcoin exchange reserves have fallen to a 21-month low. Data shows the number of bitcoins held in exchange addresses fell by 0.83% to 2,610,278 BTC on Monday – the lowest level since Nov. 24, 2018. Some view this an indicator investors feel is bullish about the market. Investors tend to move digital assets from their wallets onto exchanges when they lose confidence in the current price movement, as happened during the Black Thursday sell-off, when bitcoin crashed by 40% and exchange balances surged by 2%. Bitcoin is now riding a 13-month high.

Is ETC OK?
OKEx, the exchange with the highest trading volume of ethereum classic (ETC), is considering delisting the cryptocurrency after two recent 51% attacks drained $5.6 million from its coiffures. “Given ETC’s popularity and standing, we are not rushing into delisting… We also do not want to foot the bill for ETC’s security vulnerabilities that have made it particularly susceptible to attack(s),” said Jay Hao, chief executive of the exchange. It’s assumed the hacker used OKEx during the attacks because of its ETC liquidity. The exchange has since increased confirmation times for ETC trades.

Chipping away
Investors suing chipmaker giant Nvidia for allegedly misreporting the size of its crypto mining-related revenue have complained the company is now trying to block key evidence from a former employee. The lawsuit, begun in 2018, alleges Nvidia downplayed the quantity of graphics cards sold to crypto miners. Shareholders have now told the court Nvidia’s lawyers had gotten the former marketing executive to “disavow” several key statements. Plaintiffs allege the former employee has retracted the testimony out of fear of retaliation.  

Crypto trusts
Grayscale Investments’ Bitcoin Cash Trust (BCHG) and Litecoin Trust (LTCN) crypto products are set to begin trading publicly on over-the-counter markets after receiving DTC eligibility Monday. The twin funds provide institutional and retail investors exposure to their namesake cryptocurrencies: bitcoin cash ($5.8 billion market cap) and litecoin ($4.3 billion market cap). The crypto trusts serve as a gateway for investors who lack the technical know-how or risk tolerance to hold coins themselves. (Grayscale is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, CoinDesk’s parent firm.)

Quick bites At stake

Related: Blockchain Bites: Bitcoin on DeFi and DeFi on Bitcoin

Last week, the Financial Times reported the coronavirus is driving bond trading digital. 

According to JPMorgan Chase’s Treasury trading desk, only 50% of pre-pandemic U.S. Treasury trades were carried out electronically. The figure has since increased to 70% in April and 77% in June. The trend is likely to continue, says JPMorgan. 

In times past, trades would be executed by “picking up the phone to negotiate with a human trader” or standing on the trading floor, the FT reports. This is no longer feasible due to hygienic concerns. 

Apart from cultural impediments, the bond market is resistant to digitization due to its sheer size. “In fact, there are only 43,000 stocks in the world, but there are millions of bonds, each with [its] own legal and financial idiosyncrasies,” the FT reported in 2018. 

But is a human touch necessary to make sense of trading debts? 

One of blockchain’s aims is to provide a sound foundation for the digital economy. To create unique and persistent digital representations of any asset or debt.

While still in its infancy, the blockchain bond industry has seen early success. Governments, nonprofits and corporations have all had successful trials or issuances using a blockchain. Most recently, Thailand’s Ministry of Finance announced plans to issue $6 million in debt.

Market intel

Peaked?
Bitcoin (BTC) was flat after jumping on Monday to a new 2020 high above $12,400. Analysts are speculating whether the largest cryptocurrency can hold the higher ground. The latest move up came on high volume, and it was a “convincing break,” Denis Vinokourov, head of research for the crypto prime broker BeQuant, told CoinDesk. Monday’s high was just 11% off the 2019 peak of $13,880. This insight came from First Mover. You can subscribe here. 

Tech pod

Second sleuth
Elliptic has added Binance Chain and its native payments token BNB to its monitoring platform, becoming only the second blockchain analysis company to do so. Starting Tuesday, Elliptic’s automated compliance, wallet monitoring and transaction tracing tools can all tap into Binance Chain activity. Binance executives said compliance is key to BNB adoption.  The SEC inked a deal with competing firm CipherTrace in July, specifically for its BNB tracing ability.

Op-ed

Dear banker
Ouriel Ohayon, CEO and co-founder of ZenGo, penned an open letter to all bankers urging them to experiment with crypto, professionally and personally. Crypto won’t supplant banks, but banks cannot survive the path they are on. “No one is asking you to change everything overnight. Just start somewhere, learn continuously, explore the rabbit hole, do some pilots. Start with more familiar territories like custodial exchanges and U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins, which are in high demand everywhere,” he writes.

Podcast corner

Inflated narratives?
Nathaniel Whittemore takes a look at the macroeconomic environment to discuss the countervailing forces affecting inflation in the latest edition of The Breakdown.

Who won #CryptoTwitter? Related Stories
CoinDesk

Dust Attacks Make a Mess in Bitcoin Wallets, but There Could Be a Fix

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

When dust settles in your home, you wipe it up. But what about when unwanted dust makes its way into your bitcoin wallet? Well, cleaning it up may not be so simple.

In Bitcoin parlance, “dust” is the technical term given to trace amounts of bitcoin that are considered too small to send in a transaction because the transaction fee would exceed the amount sent. Typically, dust is no more than a few hundred satoshis (a microunit of measurement for bitcoin).

Because sending dust is expensive relative to the transaction size, normal bitcoin users have no reason to transact with dust. But that doesn’t mean other entities, like bad actors or blockchain researchers, don’t have a use for it.

Letting the dust settle

Related: First Mover: Bitcoin Passes $12K, Dollar Worries Grow, OMG Jumps, Portnoy’s Orchid #Pump

Entities conducting blockchain analytics may use dust to deanonymize users and their wallet addresses. The idea is to create enough deterministic links between the analysis firm’s wallets and the recipient addresses. Once these links are created, the firm can run analysis using the data it collects to trace IP addresses to the recipient wallets. 

“When the dust is consolidated with the user’s other funds, it helps with chain analytics by making it easier to cluster addresses,” Sergej Kotliar, the CEO of Bitrefill, told CoinDesk. If users don’t consolidate the unspent transactions (UTXOs), then they don’t need to worry about their anonymity. However, most wallets automatically consolidate UTXOs when a user creates a transaction, so this can be tough to navigate around unless you are choosing which UTXOs to spend manually.

CoinDesk reached out to Chainalysis and CipherTrace to ask if they use dust in their analytics. Both companies denied using this technique, though Chainalysis Manager of Investigation Justin Maile added that dusting is “more often [used] by investigators” to trace illicit funds. Maile continued that exchanges may use dusting to trace stolen funds following a hack.

Read more: How Do Bitcoin Transactions Work?

Related: Bitcoin Holding Sentiment Strongest in Nearly Two Years

Dave Jevans, the CEO of blockchain analytics company CiphterTrace, told CoinDesk that “hackers may use dusting as a strategy for identifying individuals who can then be phished or extorted.”

The threat of anonymity aside, consolidating these UTXOs would mean spending more in fees than the dust is worth. The resulting dilemma then becomes: leave the too-piddling-to-spend UTXOs to clutter the wallet or consolidate them and thus compromise privacy. (It’s not uncommon for users to have their wallets dusted more than once by the same entity, leading to significant clutter. Phil Geiger, the director of marketing at Unchained Capital, for instance, told CoinDesk he has “had addresses dusted repeatedly.”)

Some wallets, like Samourai and Bitcoin Core, let you freeze UTXOs, which would bar them from being consolidated in a new transaction. But Kotliar emphasized that most average users will not know how to navigate this feature.

Raising dust limits?

To mitigate the impact dust has on the network, Kotliar has suggested raising the dust limit as designated by the Bitcoin Core wallet. Currently, most wallets are designed to cap transactions at 546 sats (0.00000546 BTC, or roughly 7 cents). 

“Blocking these would be censorship, but maybe raising the dust limit makes sense,” Kotliar said, adding that his proposal “is a way to raise the topic and have other people weigh in on it.”

If this limit were raised, then it would be more expensive to execute a dusting attack. But, of course, this comes at the detriment of honest users spending small sums. If bitcoin were to go up in price dramatically, then the dust limit would have to be recalibrated so as to not price out smaller accounts from sending transactions.

Read more: To Beat Online Censorship, We Need Anonymous Payments

“If the destructive action is cheaper than a constructive one, then we should fix it. In Bitcoin, we don’t have a way of censoring things we don’t like, but we can change these defaults to make it more expensive.”

Sergej Kotliar

Another fix, proposed some time ago by Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd, involves wrangling dust UTXOs and spending them in a CoinJoin transaction to preserve privacy. In a back and forth on Twitter discussing Todd’s “dust-b-gone” proposal, a representative for Samourai indicated the privacy wallet is seriously considering adding such a feature in the future. 

The dust piles up

There’s no guarantee that raising the dust limit would clean this problem up for good.

“I’m not sure that raising the dust limit would prevent this,” Ergo, a pseudonymous analyst for OXT Research, told CoinDesk, though it would “certainly [be] a deterrent.”

Blockchain analysts, for example, may still be willing to stomach the premium to send dust if the limit is raised, especially if they have high-dollar contracts with government agencies. 

Still, it may deter some bad actors from wasting block space on trivial transactions. Bitcoin’s blockchain keeps a record of every transaction ever executed on the network, and there’s only so much space per block to accommodate new transactions; dust, then, causes unnecessary bloat on Bitcoin’s transaction ledger because blockspace that may have been used to accommodate legitimate, larger transactions is instead devoted to transactions worth pennies.

Read more: Inside Chainalysis’ Multimillion-Dollar Relationship With the US Government

And the pennies (or satoshis) add up. In the most recent dusting attack to hit the Bitcoin network, for instance, Ergo has traced some 84,000 dust outputs from 146 transactions to an entity that appears to be advertising an obscure Bitcoin SV messaging application. Each transaction includes a message directing users to the application. (Kotliar noted, “This does not appear to be a malicious attack.”) 

The apparent advertising campaign has cost the BSVers roughly 1.147 BTC, according to the most recent figures produced by Ergo, and the attackers have spent three times more on fees than the dust itself. Ergo told CoinDesk that this round of dusting began on Aug. 4 and has been “fairly consistent.”

Jensen mentioned that promotional dustings like this are not uncommon. At the end of 2018, for instance, 100,000 addresses were dusted as a way to advertise the now-defunct mixing service Bestmixer.

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CoinDesk

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

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

A federal banking regulator’s decision to let banks provide crypto custody services may have seemed out of the blue, but the agency has been looking at cryptocurrencies for years.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced last month that federally regulated banks could provide services to crypto startups in addition to custody. It turns out the OCC was already leaning toward the move before Acting Comptroller Brian Brooks took the top job at the agency.

Indeed, the OCC has been examining the cryptocurrency space since at least 2018 and likely longer, said Jonathan Gould, senior deputy comptroller and chief counsel. He told CoinDesk that the very act of writing an interpretive letter typically takes months.

Related: Anchorage Is Streamlining Custody of Tokensoft’s ERC-1404 Security Tokens

“Before we actually put pen to paper that process can sometimes take a while,” he said. 

Read more: Banks in US Can Now Offer Crypto Custody Services, Regulator Says

The OCC’s interpretative letter last month opened the door for banks to provide services to crypto companies in addition to custody services for cryptocurrencies directly, but it’s unlikely that banks will immediately start providing either service. 

Rather, these letters are supposed to help banks that are also interested in crypto determine whether it makes sense for them to begin getting involved in the space, Gould said. 

Related: Unpacking the Avit, Avanti Bank’s New Digital Asset Being Built With Blockstream

Banks still need to ensure they have proper risk management practices and otherwise ensure they are prepared legally to offer these services before they can actually do so.

Iterative process

The process of creating an interpretive letter typically begins when a bank makes a request, or the OCC sees a number of similar requests from different institutions. 

The actual act of drafting interpretive letters can take weeks or months, Gould said.

“A lot of times we just provide informal advice, meaning advice about what we think is okay, and when we do [we do] so without putting anything in writing,” he said. “But sometimes we put things into these interpretive letter forms so again it’s a function of kind of the nature of the issue.”

The OCC looks at how many banks are asking about a specific issue or whether the regulatory agency itself thinks there might be a commonly held question, with these factors determining whether there will be an informal response or a formal letter.

Read more: ‘Inherently Borderless’: Acting OCC Chief Talks Crypto, State Licenses and DeFi

“The kind of process to actually write an interpretive letter like this one, that doesn’t necessarily take a huge amount of time,” he said. “But kind of thinking through the legal and other issues associated with an issue that can take a lot longer depending upon the complexity of the issue.”

The letter is just the beginning of a longer process. The OCC will interact with banks on their next steps if they do decide to pursue crypto services.

“There are a whole host of legal, regulatory and supervisory expectations that we have,” he said. “Especially with new activities that involve kind of iterative and interactive dialogue with the OCC supervisors, about how XYZ activity can be done in a safe and sound fashion, whatever risks are associated when activity can be appropriately kind of managed and so forth.”

The OCC has published more than 1,100 letters it believes are precedential or otherwise of interest to the general public.

Longer term

Gould did not say how long the OCC had been looking at last month’s interpretive letter on crypto services specifically, but reiterated that it could take the agency weeks or months to draft a 10-page letter. 

The OCC has been considering the legal and supervisory questions around crypto for years, he said, prior to Brooks joining the agency from his previous role at Coinbase. But Brooks has been able to bring specific knowledge about the crypto space to the agency.

“It is certainly the case, however, that because we have an Acting Comptroller who is exceptionally knowledgeable about these areas that has been hugely beneficial in terms of the agency’s thinking and understanding,” Gould said.

Read more: Following OCC Letter, Some US Banks Appear Open to Providing Crypto Services

Banks that are now interested in branching out into crypto should reach out to their local OCC supervisors if they have additional questions, and Gould said he hopes institutions that are looking at crypto reach out sooner than later.

“This is and will continue to be a learning process for us from a supervisory perspective and so we really need that engagement and welcome it on our end,” Gould said.

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CoinDesk

Binance Credited With Helping Take Down Ukraine Crypto Laundering Group

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

Binance’s internal data security team aided Ukrainian cyber cops in busting an alleged cryptocurrency money laundering operation in June, according to a joint press release published Tuesday.

  • Ukrainian authorities say the unnamed group distributed ransomware, washed hacker funds to the tune of $42 million and built a robust darknet laundering network during its two-year run.
  • Three suspects were arrested in late June 2020. At the time, the Ukrainian Cyber Police force said it seized $200,000 in computer equipment, weapons, ammunition, cash and “digital evidence” linking the trio to the two-year laundering campaign.
  • On Tuesday, Cyberpolice confirmed Binance had a hand in cracking the alleged ring. Department Chief Oleksandr Hrynchak cited the cryptocurrency exchange’s fraud detection tactics and crypto tracing techniques in a press release.
  • Binance’s in-house “Sentry” division worked with blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs to detect and then identify the group, the exchange said in a statement.
  • The laundering bust appears to be Binance’s first successful collaboration under its “Bulletproof Exchangers” initiative to detect and disrupt illicit crypto actors. Binance said it “allocated additional resources” to the ongoing anti-laundering project earlier this year.
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CoinDesk

Crypto Exchange LGO Integrates With Fireblocks to Speed Up Trading Times

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

Institutional crypto exchange LGO has joined up with transaction platform Fireblocks to speed up deposit times and enhance clients’ trading experience.

  • LGO announced Tuesday it had joined Fireblocks’ Deposit Acceleration Program.
  • Crypto exchanges have to load digital assets onto the platform before they begin trading: a process that can take anywhere between ten minutes to 24 hours to complete, depending on network congestion and how quickly miners confirm transactions.
  • This has a clear opportunity cost as traders can’t exploit fleeting arbitrage chances or liquidity margins.
  • As the name suggests, Fireblocks’ Deposit Acceleration Program speeds up the process – allowing exchanges to load assets onto their platforms in real-time.
  • LGO CEO and co-founder Hugo Renaudin said the program was a way for their institutional clients to better position their trading capital efficiently and securely.
  • Crypto derivatives exchange FTX joined the program as soon as it launched last month.

See also: Elliptic Teams With Fireblocks to Automate Security and Compliance in Crypto Industry

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CoinDesk

First Mover: Bitcoin Passes $12K, Dollar Worries Grow, OMG Jumps, Portnoy’s Orchid #Pump

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago
Price point

Bitcoin (BTC) was flat after jumping on Monday to a new 2020 high above $12,400. 

Analysts are now speculating whether the largest cryptocurrency can hold the higher ground. The latest move up came on high volume, and it was a “convincing break,” Denis Vinokourov, head of research for the crypto prime broker BeQuant, told CoinDesk. Monday’s high was just 11% off the 2019 peak of $13,880.  

You’re reading First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily markets newsletter. Assembled by the CoinDesk Markets Team, First Mover starts your day with the most up-to-date sentiment around crypto markets, which of course never close, putting in context every wild swing in bitcoin and more. We follow the money so you don’t have to. You can subscribe here.

Related: Bitcoin Holding Sentiment Strongest in Nearly Two Years

Elsewhere, prices for the recently-and-strangely-launched Curve DAO token slid 26% on Monday, even as total value locked into the affiliated Curve Finance protocol rose above the $1 billion mark. That’s a five-fold increase over the past week, in the latest episode of this year’s frenzy in decentralized finance, or DeFi.   

Market moves

Suddenly, It’s Not Just Bitcoiners Who Think the Dollar’s Going Down

By Bradley Keoun 

Related: Market Wrap: Bitcoin Cracks $12.4K; DeFi Crosses $6B Locked

As the news broke in recent days that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway had bought shares in a gold miner, commentators immediately began to wonder if the billionaire investor might be betting against the U.S. economy or the dollar. 

Bitcoin analysts and investors wondered why it took him so long, given the trillions of dollars of money pumped into the financial system this year by the Federal Reserve to help fund the ballooning U.S. national debt.  

“The money printer working overtime is obviously causing Buffett and his board grave concern,” Mati Greenspan, of the foreign-exchange and cryptocurrency research firm Quantum Economics, wrote Monday. “While Buffett is perhaps not so sure how to react to a world that no longer values bonds and government debt, others are sure.”

There’s a growing sense among members of the cryptocurrency community that their longstanding assessment of the traditional financial system as unsustainable is finally gaining traction among Wall Street experts and mainstream investors. If the concerns spread, it might buoy prices for bitcoin, which many digital-asset investors view as an inflation hedge similar to gold.

Goldman Sachs, which in May of this year panned bitcoin as “not a suitable investment,” hired a new head of digital assets earlier this month and acknowledged rising interest in cryptocurrencies from institutional clients. The firm warned in July that the U.S. dollar was at risk of losing its status as the world’s reserve currency. 

Dick Bove, a five-decade Wall Street analyst who now works for the brokerage firm Odeon, wrote last week in a report that the U.S. dollar-ruled financial system could come to an end amid challenges from a possible multi-currency system, which include digital currencies. 

“The case for bitcoin as an inflationary hedge and sound investment is being articulated with crystal clarity by influential people outside of our crypto bubble,” the digital-asset analysis firm Messari wrote last week. Buffett didn’t return a call for comment.  

Dollar dominance on the wane?

Whether or not bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are the answer, there’s little on the horizon that might turn investors away from the gnawing sense that U.S. finances are becoming more precarious. 

Goldman Sachs economists predicted in an Aug. 14 report that the Federal Reserve will pump $800 billion more into financial markets by the end of this year, followed by another $1.3 trillion in 2021.

According to Bank of America, there’s a risk investors might shift their “portfolio allocation out of U.S. dollar assets” to position for the “erosion of the hegemony of the dollar as a reserve currency.” 

“A constitutional crisis is one dynamic that could potentially accelerate the process of de-dollarization,” they wrote, noting that November’s presidential election might be “fiercely divisive” and “contested.” 

According to the bank, a recent survey of fixed-income money managers showed nearly half of respondents expect foreign central banks to decrease their reserve holdings of dollars and dollar-denominated assets over the next year. 

It may not sound outlandish to bitcoin bulls. 

Bitcoin watch

By Omkar Godbole

Bitcoin rose 3.2% on Monday to about $12,300, confirming an ascending triangle breakout on the daily chart. 

The pattern resumes the uptrend from July lows under $9,000. The focus now is on resistance at $13,200 (July 2019 high) and $13,800 (June 2019 high).

“The market is looking at the 2019 high, and that’s the level to watch,” Joel Kruger, a currency strategist at LMAX Digital, told CoinDesk in a Twitter chat.

The on-chain data is supportive of continued gain in bitcoin. For instance, the balance of coins held on cryptocurrency exchanges sank to 21-month lows on Monday, indicating a strong holding sentiment in the investor community. 

The bullish momentum looks strong as the cryptocurrency’s recent gains have been accompanied by increased miner supply. According to crypto data company ByteTree’s miner’s rolling inventory (MRI) figure, miners have run down inventory by selling more than what they mined over the past five weeks. In other words, buyers have been able to absorb extra miner supply. 

From a technical analysis perspective, the bullish bias would be invalidated if prices dropped back below $12,000 on Tuesday.

Token watch

OMG (OMG) gets boost from blockchain backup: Rising congestion  on the Ethereum blockchain is spurring interest in crypto projects that might speed traffic on the network. Prices for OMG, the token for the OMG network – a “layer-2” scaling solution for Ethereum transactions – rose by more than 70% over the past weekend, according to data source CoinGecko. It reached as high as $3.30 earlier on Monday and then quickly fell below $3. The OMG network uses a protocol called Plasma to scale up Ethereum transactions. Market participants are looking for OMG to “spreadhead layer-2 solutions,” said Denis Vinokourov, head of research at the London-based digital asset firm BeQuant.

Orchid Protocol (OXT) takes off even though it’s not a DeFi token: Prices for Orchid, the native token to a blockchain project that enables private internet browsing from Orchid Labs, hit an all-time high at $0.84 over the past weekend, up fivefold from a March low, according to CoinGecko. Barstool Sports’ David Portnoy, who claimed to have at least $1 million worth of bitcoin after meeting last week with the Winklevoss twins of the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange, tweeted earlier Monday that he has invested in OXT. “I’m now in on the shitcoin $oxt,” Portnoy wrote on Twitter, with a hashtag of “#pump.” The Orchid project previously raised $43 million for its token sale, as reported by CoinDesk. Its major investors included big names such as Andreessen Horowitz and Blockchain Capital.

Ethereum Classic (ETC) facing delisting? The Malta-based OKEx said it may consider delisting Ethereum Classic from trading on its exchanges after it lost approximately $5.6 million of ETC from two recent 51% attacks. It won’t be an easy decision to make, Chief Executive Officer Jay Hao told CoinDesk, considering that OKEx has the highest trading volume of ETC among crypto exchanges. The impact of the two attacks on ETC’s prices, however, have not been significant: ETC’s price was still at around $7 on Monday, little changed from the week before the attacks first took place on Aug. 1.

– Muyao Shen

Analogs

The Federal Reserve is propping up the junk-bond market.

Economist says the “real recession has yet to emerge.”

George Soros says market sustained by expectation of more stimulus.

Bond market appears to believe Fed won’t fight inflation.

China regulator says Fed money printing erodes U.S. dollar, financial stability.

Japan’s economy shrinks most on record.

Tweet of the day What’s hot

Bitcoin DeFi May Be Unstoppable: What Does It Look Like? (CoinDesk)
One of the quietest yet best-funded bitcoin companies in the world is gearing up to enter the 2020 decentralized finance bull run. 

‘Link Marines’ Are Making an Obscure Cryptocurrency Red Hot (Bloomberg)
Chainlink’s meteoric rise to fifth place in market value is this year’s crypto success story, driven mostly by exuberance over DeFi yield harvesting.

Top Bitcoin Mining Pools See 15% Hashrate Drop Amid Continuous Rainstorms in China (CoinDesk)
Major Chinese bitcoin mining pools are each seeing daily hashrate drops of between 10% and 20% following continuous rainstorms in Sichuan.

– Sebastian Sinclair

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Elliptic Adds Monitoring Support for Binance Chain and BNB

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

Elliptic has added Binance Chain and its native payments token BNB to its monitoring platform, becoming only the second blockchain analysis company to do so.

  • Starting Tuesday, Elliptic’s automated compliance, wallet monitoring and transaction tracing tools can all tap into Binance Chain activity.
  • Binance executives said they seek to bolster BNB adoption by expanding the token’s monitoring network. More coverage means more transparency means regulatory clarity, or so the thinking goes.
  • U.S. regulators appear to agree. In late July, the Securities and Exchange Commission inked a deal with competing firm CipherTrace specifically for its tracing products’ coverage of BNB “and all tokens on the Binance Network.”
  • Elliptic also plans to roll out support for BEP2 tokens issued on Binance Launchpad, according to Chief Scientist Tom Robinson.
  • “By adding support for the Binance Chain we now have the capability to add BEP2 tokens to our platform, and so BEP2 assets will be prioritized for coverage like any other” asset, Robinson told CoinDesk.

See also: Chainalysis Says Bitcoin Scammed From Twitter Users Is ‘On the Move’

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Bitcoin Holding Sentiment Strongest in Nearly Two Years

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

Bitcoin exchange reserves have fallen to a 21-month low, a possible sign investors are feeling bullish about the shape of the market.

  • Glassnode data shows the number of bitcoins held in exchange addresses fell by 0.83% to 2,610,278 BTC on Monday – the lowest level since Nov. 24, 2018.
  • Investors tend to move digital assets from their wallets and onto exchanges when they lose confidence in the current price movement so they can easily sell them.
  • In the days leading up to the Black Thursday sell-off, when bitcoin crashed by 40%, exchange balances surged by 2% to a high of 2,947,555 BTC.
  • But bitcoin has since surged to a 13-month high of $12,400 on Monday and is currently up 200% from the $3,867 low it fell to five months ago. 
  • As such, exchange balances are down 1.4% over the past week, and nearly 3% in the last month. Balances were down more than 11% from the March 13 high at press time.
  • The price rises come despite bitcoin looking increasingly overbought on the weekly chart relative strength index (RSI) – an indicator that helps traders recognize the signs of overbought and oversold markets.
  • eToro analyst Simon Peters told CoinDesk: “Lower BTC spot exchange balance indicates a current holding mentality among investors, I see this as being pretty bullish.”

See also: First Mover: As Wall Street Goes Topsy-Turvy, Crypto Traders Are Bullish as Ever

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Chainlink Up Nearly 1,000% Since ‘Black Thursday’ Crash

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

The rally in data oracle coin Chainlink means it is now nearly 1,000% up on where it was when markets tumbled during the Black Thursday sell-off.

  • After bottoming at a near-year low of $1.79 on March 17, LINK tokens have been within a few cents of the $20 boundary in the past few days.
  • CoinGecko data shows LINK hit $19.54 in the past 24 hours – 983% above its mid-March price. It hit its all-time high of $19.84 on Sunday.
  • The price rise has been accompanied by a surge in investor enthusiasm: searches for Chainlink on Google are at an all-time high and its trading volumes have soared past that of bitcoin’s.
  • Media owner and latter-day trader David Portnoy has spurred the hype on further after reportedly buying $50,000 worth of LINK at the weekend.
  • Some are concerned. Mati Greenspan, the founder of analyst firm Quantitative Economics, told CoinDesk the euphoria surrounding Chainlink was a worrying sign some investors may be getting in over their heads.
  • “Kids bragging on social media about getting their parents’ and grandparents’ retirement funds into this [is] usually a good sign that the top is near,” he said.
  • At press time, LINK tokens were down 10%, trading just above $17.

See also: Link Price Surges 32% to Overtake Bitcoin Cash as 5th-Largest Crypto by Market Cap

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Game Show Winner Loses $39K in Bitcoin Facebook Scam

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

A former winner of the game show Deal or No Deal has been scammed out of his retirement savings after investing in bitcoin through an ad on Facebook.

  • According to a Daily Record report on Tuesday, Scottish retiree Graeme Garioch was defrauded of £30,000 (US$39,400) by a phony investment company.
  • The former railway worker, who appeared on Deal or No Deal in 2007, clicked on a Facebook ad from a company called OMC Markets.
  • Interested in investing ahead of his retirement, Garioch agreed to invest after speaking to a company representative who claimed they were in London but were actually based in Bulgaria, according to the report.
  • Garioch deposited a total of £29,000 (US$38,090) into a bitcoin wallet and signed a waiver denying him access to his funds for six months.
  • The scammers also convinced Garioch to give them access to his bank account, supposedly so they could make bitcoin trades on his behalf.
  • After doubling his money, Garioch tried to pull out his funds in March 2019 but was told he needed to pay a further £6000 (US$7,880) in fees, to which Garioch complied.
  • Shortly after Garioch’s funds were completely drained and OMC Markets ignored Garioch’s email requests demanding an explanation.
  • “Facebook needs to do more,” Garioch said who was planning on buying a house with his investment earnings, “you cry inside.”

See also: Google, Twitter and Facebook Face $600M Lawsuit Over Crypto Ad Bans

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Binance Charity Pledges $20K to Beirut Explosion Relief Efforts

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

Binance’s charity arm is donating to the victims of the Aug. 4 explosion that rocked the city of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital.

  • Binance’s Beirut Relief Fund campaign has committed $20,000 in donations to the victims of a devastating explosion that claimed the lives of over 150 people and injured 5,000 more.
  • Binance will donate $10,000 directly to Beirut victims with a further dollar-per-dollar amount in crypto matched for each donation it receives, up to a total of $10,000.
  • According to a company blog post on Tuesday, Binance Charity lead Helen Hai said the organization would “work closely with local partners to help improve conditions and livelihoods.”
  • On Aug. 4, 2,750 metric tonnes of a highly explosive chemical used in agricultural fertilizers exploded, wreaking havoc and displacing some 300,000 people.
  • Immediately following the blast, a group of Lebanese expats residing in Europe quickly mobilized to raise relief funds with crypto. The effort was conceived as a way to bypass Lebanon’s banking crisis.

Read more: Bitcoiners Launch Cryptocurrency Relief Fund Following Beirut Explosion

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Top Bitcoin Mining Pools See 15% Hashrate Drop Amid Continuous Rainstorms in China

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

Major Chinese bitcoin mining pools are each seeing daily hashrate drops of between 10% and 20% following continuous rainstorms in Sichuan.

China’s southwestern Sichuan province, a mountainous region that is estimated to have over 50% of Bitcoin network’s total computing power, has been hit by heavy rainstorms since last week, which peaked over the last two days.

The heavy rainstorms have caused electricity outages in parts of the region as hydro-plants stop generating power to help discharge the floods. Some counties are also experiencing telecommunication and internet breakdowns, said Kevin Pan, CEO and co-founder of PoolIn.

Related: PayPal Co-founder, DCG-Backed BTC Mining Firm Layer1 Accused of Patent Infringement

As result, impacted bitcoin mining farms in the region are forced to unplug from the network for the time being. It’s not clear when the situation will prove as the rainstorms are still ongoing.

Data from BTC.com shows the world’s top four bitcoin mining pools – that is PoolIn, F2Pool, BTC.com and Antpool, all based in China – have each seen their hashrates drop between 10% and 20% over the last 24 hours. The computing power connected to these four pools accounts for around 50% of the Bitcoin network’s total.

Pan said in a Weibo post Tuesday China time that in addition to mining farms being forced to unplug due to electricity and internet disruptions, some have also proactively paused operations ahead of time and evacuated their on-site staff in advance for safety precautions.

According to the Xinhua News Agency, the accumulated rain volume in a dozen most-impacted cities in Sichuan between Aug. 10–15 alone has already surpassed the average August monthly volume in any year’s record.

Related: Mining Firm Hut 8 Reports 28% Drop in Q2 Revenue Following Bitcoin Halving

Further, one major highway that leads to Sichuan’s mountain area, where most of the mining farms are located, is shutdown due to severe floods and mudslides.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s last three-day and one-day average hashrate has dropped to around 123 and 110 exahashes per second (EH/s), respectively. These numbers are down over 3% and 10%, respectively, from the seven-day rolling average around 127 EH/s, which is still at an all-time high.

The monsoon season in China every year brings abundant rain and thus excessive hydropower resources especially in the country’s southwestern regions, including Sichuan and Yunan. Such energy excess leads to cheap electricity prices that have been attractive to Bitcoin miners.

But over the years, the unpredictable weather also caused floods and mudslides, which resulted in bitcoin mining farms halting operations temporarily or even being completely destroyed.

Read more: The 2020 Rainy Season Is Tougher Than Ever for China’s Bitcoin Miners

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Nvidia Accused of Trying to Discredit Ex-Employee in Crypto Mining Revenue Trial

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

Investors suing chipmaker giant Nvidia for allegedly misreporting the size of its crypto mining-related revenue have complained it is now trying to block key evidence from a former employee.

  • The group of shareholders said Thursday that Nvidia’s lawyers had gotten the former employee, dubbed “FE 5,” to “disavow” several key statements and were now pushing for the whole testimony to be thrown out of court.
  • Having first brought charges in December 2018, the lawsuit alleges Nvidia downplayed the quantity of graphics cards – specifically GeForce GPUs – it was selling to cryptocurrency mining operations in order to buoy up the stock price.
  • Nvidia has denied the accusations, claiming plaintiffs “cherry-picked” the data.
  • FE 5 gave evidence for an amended complaint in mid-May that appeared to show the chipmaker’s executive team, including founder and CEO Jensen Huang, was regularly updated with figures of GeForce GPUs being bought by crypto miners.
  • FE 5 was head of Nvidia’s consumer marketing in South Asia for five years until 2019.
  • Nvidia’s lawyers informed plaintiffs in June they had identified and contacted FE 5, who had responded saying he/she had spoken under the misapprehension it was for research into the semi-conductor industry and not as evidence for a trial against the company.
  • Plaintiff’s lawyers said they had clearly identified themselves from the start, and argue FE 5 is now giving these allegedly false statements out of fear Nvidia could retaliate against her/him.
  • Plaintiffs are calling on the court to strike down Nvidia’s motion to dismiss evidence partly on the basis federal courts have rejected attempts by defendants to discredit the testimony from former employees in the past.

See also: AMD-Backed Blockchain Project Amassing 20K GPUs but Won’t Say Why

Read the motion here:

Related: Capital One Files Patent for AI That Would Slice, Dice Social Media to Find Crypto Trading Picks

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Market Wrap: Bitcoin Cracks $12.4K; DeFi Crosses $6B Locked

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

Bitcoin made a major gain Monday while investors have locked over $6 billion in crypto into various DeFi services.

  • Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $12,332 as of 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET). Gaining 4.1% over the previous 24 hours.
  • Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $11,774-$12,485
  • BTC slightly above its 10-day and 50-day moving averages, a bullish signal for market technicians.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization opened the week with higher-than-normal volume pushing bitcoin to as high as $12,485. For some market observers it was only a matter of time before it happened. 

Read More: Bitcoin Surges Past $12,000 to New 2020 High

Related: Grayscale’s Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin Trusts Begin Trading Publicly

“Bitcoin has been trading in a $11,000-$12,000 range for two weeks or so,” said Darius Sit, managing partner of Singapore-based QCP Capital. “It has been consolidating, threatening to break past $12,000, so this is not too surprising,” he added. 

Thus far in August, Coinbase’s daily average bitcoin volume has been $182 million, but on Monday volume was at $245 million as of press time. “Unlike last week, today’s attempt to break through the $12,000 level carried enough momentum to make a convincing break, sending BTC all the way to the $12,500 area,” said Denis Vinokourov, head of research for crypto brokerage BeQuant.

William Purdy, an options trader and founder of analysis firm PurdyAlerts, says the derivatives market is showing where traders think bitcoin’s price will be in the future as the cryptocurrency trends upward. “I think what is most interesting right now is how clear the upcoming expected price targets for bitcoin are via the option open interest,” he told CoinDesk, adding, “$12,000, $13,000, $14,100 and $16,000 are the spots with the greatest open interest, so the price is likely to settle on these as upcoming support/resistance.” 

Read More: Bitcoin DeFi May Be Unstoppable: What Does It Look Like?

Related: Bitcoin Surges Past $12,000 to New 2020 High

Of note is how traders view price movements of ether (ETH) relative to bitcoin. 

“Ether was largely a bystander Monday, mimicking the surge higher instead of being the driving force behind it,” BeQuant’s Vinokourov said. “This is suggesting a growing unease towards the current valuation.” Skyrocketing Ethereum transaction costs were among the reasons for this sentiment, Vinokourov noted. 

Read More: DeFi Frenzy Drives Ethereum Transaction Fees to All-Time Highs

Ether options bearish

Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was up Monday trading around $438 and climbing 1.9% in 24 hours as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET). 

Read More: Huobi Launches Consortium of DeFi Providers and Platforms

The total value locked in decentralized finance, or DeFi, crossed the $6 billion threshold over the weekend, and it is currently up to $6.4 billion Monday. Over half of the value locked is in just three DeFi services: Maker ($1.51 billion), Aave ($1.15 billion) and Curve Finance ($1 billion).

Jean-Marc Bonnefous, managing partner for Tellurian Capital, which has been investing in crypto projects since 2014, says some of this DeFi frenzy seems to be proceeding unchecked, and warned that caution is needed. 

“Some of these DeFi applications are going to market too quickly and without even testing the code. That is highly risky,” he said to CoinDesk. “There will be a flight to quality towards those protocols that have sound operational foundations and also real added business value.” 

Read More: YAM’s Market Cap Falls From $60M to Zero in 35 Minutes

Other markets

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

Read More: Litecoin Gets Bullish Speculation, at Last, as Upgrade Approaches

Notable losers as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET): 

  • tezos (XTZ) – 6.2%
  • eos (EOS) – 1.1%
  • iota (IOTA) – 1%

Read More: BitMEX to Mandate ID Verification for All Traders

Equities:

Read More: Pantera Tells SEC Its Crypto Fund Has Raised Nearly $165M

Commodities:

  • Oil is up 1.4%. Price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude: $41.81.
  • Gold was in the green 2.1% and at $1,985 as of press time.

Read More: Lending Protocol Aave Eyes Tokenized Mortgages With Launch of V2

Treasurys:

  • U.S. Treasury bonds were mixed Monday. Yields, which move in the opposite direction as price, were down most on the 10-year in the red 3.3%.

Read More: Blockchain VC Firm SPiCE VC Taps Coinbase for Digital Asset Custody

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Capital One Files Patent for AI That Would Slice, Dice Social Media to Find Crypto Trading Picks

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

Capital One has moved to patent an artificial intelligence platform capable of turning the internet’s 24/7 cryptocurrency informational overload into actionable trading recommendations. 

  • Capital One’s “credibility analysis engine” would sort through and analyze price speculations from Telegram, Twitter and Reddit crypto influencers; hacking news; regulatory headlines; YouTube videos; protocol blog posts and more, according to the Aug. 13 patent application.
  • This AI-backed engine would then weigh these signals against historical trends and source track-records to generate a “market trend prediction” for the cryptocurrencies, the filing said.
  • The result: a “personalized trading decision” for cryptocurrencies that users could opt to execute on the platform, according to the application.
  • “It would be impossible for human traders to track,” digest, decipher and trade on the entire breadth of cryptocurrencies intelligence alone, Capital One said in the application.
  • Capital One did not immediately respond to CoinDesk questions on what it plans to do with its AI credibility engine or if the platform is already in use. 

Read more: eToro Launches Crypto Portfolio Weighted by Twitter Mentions

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OKEx Mulls ETC Delisting After Losses From Two 51% Attacks

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

OKEx has confirmed a loss of approximately $5.6 million in Ethereum Classic (ETC) from two recent 51% attacks and is considering removing ETC from its exchanges.

Yet, as the cryptocurrency exchange with the highest trading volume of ETC, OKEx acknowledged that removing ETC from trading would not be an easy decision to make, according to Jay Hao, chief executive of the exchange.

“Given ETC’s popularity and standing, we are not rushing into delisting,” Hao told CoinDesk in a Telegram message on Aug. 17. “However, they need to implement significant upgrades to the network to reduce the chances of another 51% attack happening.”

Related: Ethereum Classic’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

The Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange reimbursed all the lost ETC in full to its customers as part of its user-protection policy, according to a report published by OKEx on Saturday, and all deposits and withdrawals of ETC have been suspended due to the attacks.

Read more: Ethereum Classic’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

“We know that it is impossible to prevent a 51% attack on any decentralized exchange, but we also do not want to foot the bill for ETC’s security vulnerabilities that have made it particularly susceptible to attack(s),” said Hao.

Continued vulnerability

The recent 51% attacks on Ethereum Classic first occurred on Aug. 1 with total double-spending of $5.6 million worth of ETC. The second attack took place just five days later, losing about $1.68 million worth of ETC. 

Related: Crypto Long & Short: 51% Attacks and Open-Source Value

A 51% attack on a blockchain refers to a situation where one or more miners try to gain control of more than half of the mining power of the network. Compared with blockchains such as Bitcoin that have much a higher hashrate, blockchains with lower hashrates including Ethereum Classic are “more vulnerable” to this type of attack, according to OKEx’s report.

Read more: Crypto Long & Short: 51% Attacks and Open-Source Value

“It is evident that this breach in the blockchain’s secure functioning was due to a common problem with the Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains that have low global hashpower,” the report said. “… [T]his is certainly not limited to Ethereum Classic, which experienced a similar attack just last year. Other blockchains, such as Bitcoin Gold (BTG), have suffered such attacks in the past.”

Liquidity, and targeting OKEx

The exchange said in its report its only involvement in the attacks was the attackers used OKEx to purchase and trade ETC. This claim was a rebuttal to an analysis by blockchain analytics firm Bitquery, which alleged those wallets the attacker(s) used belonged to OKEx.

“As for why the attacker(s) chose OKEx in particular to purchase and trade their ETC, the most likely reason is liquidity,” the exchange said. “OKEx provides excellent ETC liquidity, seeing some of the largest ETC transaction volumes in the industry. This just means that the attacker(s) likely calculated that they would be able to relatively easily and promptly trade large amounts of ETC on OKEx.”

Similar to other exchanges, OKEx said it will increase the confirmation times for ETC deposits and withdrawals in the future.

The fate of Ethereum Classic has remained in question since the attacks. For now, 51% attacks are a reality for low-cap cryptocurrencies, ETC Coop Executive Director Bob Summerwill told CoinDesk, but options such as an emergency hard fork to a different hashing algorithm could help avoid future attacks.

Read more: OpenEthereum Supported 50% of Ethereum Classic Nodes. Now It’s Leaving the Project

OKEx also revealed its hot wallet system, providing more transparency about the depositing and withdrawing process on its hot wallet system.

According to a chart provided by OKEx in its report, 95% funds at OKEx are stored in its cold wallet and about 5% funds are stored in its hot wallet system, which has deployed both online and semi-offline risk management systems.

“This attack has been educational for us,” Hao said. “We learned that our robust hot wallet system worked exactly as designed but we also found some ways to improve it and are still working on this. Communication and cooperation are key in [the crypto] space and these are missing currently from our relationship with ETC, which is why we continue to see what their next moves will be.”

Ethereum Classic’s price was $7.49 as of press time, up by 4.12% over the past 24 hours.

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Grayscale’s Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin Trusts Begin Trading Publicly

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

Grayscale Investments’ Bitcoin Cash Trust (BCHG) and Litecoin Trust (LTCN) crypto products are set to begin trading publicly on over-the-counter markets after receiving DTC eligibility Monday.

  • The twin funds provide institutional (and now retail) investors exposure to their namesake cryptocurrencies: bitcoin cash ($5.8 billion market cap) and litecoin ($4.3 billion market cap).
  • Grayscale has fashioned its growing family of crypto trusts as a gateway for investors who lack the technical know-how or risk tolerance to hold coins themselves. (Grayscale is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, CoinDesk’s parent firm.)
  • Prior to the announcement, Grayscale reported accredited investors already held 6,028,000 BCHG shares and 2,500,800 LTCN shares through private placement deals.
  • Those shares can now trade publicly as long as their institutional buyers’ one-year hold period has been met.
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