The Block
Quick Take Tether’s USDT stablecoins now represent over 70% of all stablecoins in circulation after seeing significant growth compared to competitors in 2023. The company recently crossed the threshold of 100 billion stablecoins minted, according to data from The Block.
Quick Take The SEC has released a statement addressing the recent security incident that led to a false spot bitcoin ETF approval announcement on the SEC’s X account. The statement claims the agency is “still assessing the impacts of this incident on the agency, investors, and the marketplace” and does not mention multi-factor authentication.
Quick Take GameStop’s NFT marketplace will wind down on February 2, 2024. The company killed its NFT wallet last August, citing regulatory uncertainty for both moves.
Quick Take The nine recently-approved spot Bitcoin ETFs have already seen nearly $1.5 billion of inflows. Of the current offering, BlackRock’s iShares ETF leads the pack; it saw nearly $500 million in inflows in the first two days of trading.
Quick Take In a note to investors, Morgan Stanley’s head of digital asset markets said spot bitcoin ETF approvals mark a significant point in the adoption of bitcoin by the global financial system.
Quick Take Chances are slim that the SEC will greenlight a spot Ethereum ETF in the near future, according to TD Cowen. “The wait might not be as long as 26 months, but it likely would be after the election,” the investment bank said.
Quick Take The Block’s Frank Chaparro gives his opinion on last week’s spot bitcoin ETF approvals. This first appeared in Chaparro’s biweekly The Scoop Newsletter on Jan. 12. Sign up now.
The first day of active spot bitcoin trading, largely viewed as a success, was followed by another active day on Friday, with the total volume exceeding $3.1 billion.
Quick Take Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. and Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., asked SEC Inspector General Deborah J. Jeffrey to open an investigation into what happened when the SEC’s X account was compromised. Axios first reported the news on Friday.
Quick Take “There’s an irony in the midst of this — Satoshi Nakamoto said this was going to be a decentralized system and finance — this has led to centralization,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said on CNBC. Gensler also responded to comments from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on Friday morning.