2024-11-21 09:16

The company received a license from the local regulator in August. US digital asset infrastructure provider BitGo has officially launched BitGo Singapore. Although the company has operated in the city for several years, it will now offer a wider range of services for institutions. It follows the Monetary Authority of Singapore issuing a local license to BitGo in August this year. BitGo, the U.S. digital asset infrastructure provider for institutions, has officially launched its services in Singapore, the company announced on Thursday. Though BitGo has operated in APAC since 2015 and had a presence in Singapore, it did not provide specific Singapore-regulated services. The firm received a Major Payment Institution License (MPI) from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), in August this year. As a result, it is now rolling out a wider suite of products that will put its local offerings on par with those offered in Europe and the U.S. In addition to its custody and wallet services, BitGo will now offer regulated cold storage for over 1,100 digital assets, 24/7 electronic and voice trading, real-time automated settlements and full-service token management solutions. Globally, BitGo already has over 1,500 institutional clients in 50 countries and secures approximately 20% of all on-chain bitcoin (BTC) transactions by value. In Singapore, it’s hoping to tap into demand from institutional clients operating in the city for regulated infrastructure services, CEO of BitGo Singapore, Youngro Lee told CoinDesk. “A lot of institutions in Singapore and Asia haven't really done much [in crypto]. There have been some traditional institutions that have been working with digital assets, but in a very limited fashion,” Lee said, adding that most of the activity in Singapore is coming from “non-traditional institutions” such as investment funds, venture funds, hedge funds, family offices and high net worth individuals. “We believe the market will grow larger over time, especially with the U.S. elections and how the world is trending toward digital asset adoption, especially bitcoin. More traditional investors and traditional institutions will want to both offer and engage in digital asset services, and we hope to be one of the partners in Singapore,” he said. Singapore has emerged as a strong contender for becoming a regional crypto hub in Asia, thanks in part to introducing a regulatory framework for crypto service providers in 2019. That said, despite hundreds of applications, to date only 29 companies are listed on MAS’s website as holding an MPI for digital payment token services. This includes other well-known crypto companies such as Coinbase, Circle, OKX, Paxos and Ripple. While BitGo’s team in Singapore remains small – less than 20, according to Lee – the company also expects to grow its local team if and when market demand increases over the next few years. In addition to its Singapore subsidiary, BitGo also has operations in South Korea, where Hana Financial and SK Telecom have 25% and 10% stakes in its local company, respectively. BitGo is also mulling further expansion into other areas in APAC. “We don't have any specific plans yet, but obviously we're looking at the different opportunities and challenges. A lot of it depends on the regulatory environment and how effective and efficient the process will be for us to work with regulators,” Lee said. “So far, we've had a great relationship and great dynamic with MAS, and that's one of the reasons why we decided to commit to building in Singapore,” he said. https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/11/21/bitgo-launches-singapore-services-eyes-other-crypto-friendly-regions-in-asia/

2024-11-21 06:50

Deribit's BTC futures expiring in March, June and September 2025 trade above $100,000. Deribit's BTC futures expiring in March, June and September 2025 trade above $100,000. BTC call option at the $100,000 strike now boasts an open interest of over $2 billion. Bitcoin (BTC) futures have surged past the $100,000 price mark on Deribit, trading at a premium to its spot market price. At press time, BTC futures contract expiring on March 28 traded 4.8% higher at $101,992, representing a. premium of nearly 5% to the global average spot price of $97,200, according to data source Deribit and TradingView. Contracts expiring on June 27 and Sept. 26 changed hands at $104,948 and $107,690 in an upward-sloping futures curve. The pricing represents expectations that the spot price will be comfortably above $100,000 by the end of March and beyond. Deribit's BTC options suggested the same, with the $100,000 call option boasting a notional open interest of $2.13 billion. However, the futures contract expiring in a few weeks from now on Dec. 28 traded in five figures. Those trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, considered a proxy for institutional activity, also traded below $100,000, according to TradingView. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/21/bitcoin-futures-smash-through-100k-barrier-on-deribit/

2024-11-21 06:04

Traders are adding leverage on top of an already leveraged MSTR ETF, signaling heightened risk appetite and a build up of speculative excesses. Options tied to Defiance's 2X long MicroStrategy ETF (MSTX) exhibit extreme bullish positioning. The leveraged ETF is designed to two times or 200% of the daily performance of MSTR's share price. The crypto market right now is like a roller coaster racing ahead and then adding a few extra loops for good measure, pushing the thrill and risk to new heights. With bitcoin (BTC) on the run toward the $100,000 mark, traders are using options tied to an already leveraged 2x long exchange-traded fund (ETF) tied to bitcoin holder MicroStrategy's share price to amplify gains. The Defiance Daily Target 2X Long MSTR ETF, trading under the ticker MSTX on Nasdaq, seeks to deliver two times or 200% of the daily performance of MSTR's share price. The ETF surged 20%, briefly topping $180 on Tuesday, as MSTR jumped 10% to $473. Meanwhile, trading volumes in options tied to the ETF blew up, with market participants piling into the deep out-of-the-money (OTM) higher strike call option at $230, according to data tracked by analytics platform ConvexValue. Deep OTM calls are cheaper than those near the going market rate of the underlying asset, offering an asymmetric payout potential. The demand for the $230 strike call was spread across multiple expiries, including contracts set to settle on June 20, 2025. A call option gives the purchaser the right but not obligation to buy the underlying asset at a predetermined price on or before a specific date. The option allows the buyer to control a large position in the underlying asset while paying a small premium upfront, thereby amplifying potential gains. The extreme bullish sentiment is consistent with the MSTR options market, where calls recently traded at a record premium relative to puts usually used to protect against price slides, according to data source Market Chameleon. Similar uber bullish flows have been crossing the tape on the CME, Deribit and the nascent options tied to BlackRock's spot bitcoin ETF, hinting at retail investor mania and build up of speculative excesses that often lead to market corrections. The frenzied action comes as expectations for friendlier regulatory approach under President-elect Donald Trump and Fed rate cuts drive BTC higher. The leading cryptocurrency by market value set new lifetime highs above $97,000 early Thursday, taking the month-to-date gain to 38%, CoinDesk data show. MSTR is the world's largest publicly listed BTC holder, with a coin stash of 331,200 ($3.04 billion) steadily accumulated since 2020. At one point on Wednesday, the company was the most traded U.S. stock, outpacing even Nvidia (NVDA), according to Eric Balchunas, a senior analyst at Bloomberg. Nvidia is almost three times the size of MicroStrategy by market cap. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/21/leveraged-microstrategy-markets-showcase-risk-on-like-never-before-as-bitcoin-aims-for-six-digit-price/

2024-11-21 03:59

BTC traded above $96,500 in early Asian hours, less than 6% from a landmark $100,000 figure that would push it above a $2 trillion market capitalization. Bitcoin (BTC) momentum shows no signs of slowing as a rally catalyzed by a Republican win earlier this month keeps on going, pushing the asset above $97,000 for the first time earlier Thursday. BTC traded above $97,500 in early Asian hours, less than 3% from a landmark $100,000 figure that would push it above a $2 trillion market capitalization. It has added nearly 30% in the past 14 days, data shows, driven by a pro-crypto government in the U.S. and a fresh round of rate cuts by the Federal Reserve that brought back risk appetite among traders. The run is being colloquially termed a “Trump trade” among traders, with all asset classes from stocks to bond gaining since Donald Trump’s election win. Swift interest in the newly-offered BlackRock IBIT options, which track bitcoin prices and are physically settled, and a pro-crypto cabinet serve as a bedrock for the latest run. As CoinDesk first reported Wednesday, the Trump transition team is considering Teresa Goody Guillén, partner at law firm BakerHostetler and co-lead of its blockchain team, among several candidates to become the next SEC chair, industry sources said. Meanwhile, IBIT options launched to a $2 billion milestone on their first day, indicative of a shifting market structure. “The options market for BlackRock's BTC spot ETF (IBIT) made a strong debut, trading an astounding 73k contracts within the first hour on Tuesday with a bullish call-to-put ratio of 4.4:1,” Singapore-based QCP Capital said in a Telegram message earlier Thursday. “This activity places IBIT among the top 20 most active non-index options, underscoring the growing institutional confidence in Bitcoin as a mainstream asset class.” “This market response is likely to attract new investor cohorts and enable diversified trading strategies, which could help reduce both volatility and downside risk, solidifying Bitcoin’s place in mainstream markets,” they added. Banks and traditional finance analysts have issued targets as high as $200,000 in the coming months on the Republican win. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/21/bitcoin-nears-96k-continuing-wild-trump-trade-rally/

2024-11-20 21:35

The SEC sued BitClave in 2020, alleging that it violated securities laws in the course of its $25.5 million initial coin offering in 2017. Some investors in defunct crypto startup BitClave will soon get their money back, plus interest, according to a Wednesday announcement from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). “The checks are in the mail,” the SEC posted to X on Wednesday afternoon. According to the SEC, the BitClave Fair Fund has disbursed a collective $4.6 million to eligible investors in BitClave’s 2017 initial coin offering (ICO). BitClave’s ICO, which occurred during the 2017 ICO boom, raised $25.5 million from thousands of investors in just 32 seconds. In 2020, under former SEC Chair Jay Clayton, the SEC sued BitClave alleging that the sale of its Consumer Activity Token (CAT) violated federal securities laws. BitClave settled the charges without admitting any wrongdoing, and agreed to forfeit the entirety of the money it raised in 2017, plus another $4 million in interest and penalties. It also agreed to destroy all uncirculated CAT and request that exchanges delist it as part of the settlement agreement. Though BitClave agreed to pay approximately $29 million to the SEC’s fund to pay back investors, it had only paid $12 million as of February 2023, according to the SEC’s most recent document detailing the plan for the BitClave Fair Fund. Eligible investors were required to submit their claims by August 2023. The SEC informed claimants if their claims were accepted or denied this past March. It is unclear what will happen with the remaining $7.4 million in the BitClave Fair Fund. Neither the SEC nor the fund administrator responded to CoinDesk’s request for comment or clarification on the discrepancy between the disbursement amount and the amount in the BitClave Fair Fund by press time. https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/11/20/sec-distributes-46m-to-bitclave-investors/

2024-11-20 20:00

The partnership brings Project Liberty to Consensys' Linea layer-2 network and its popular MetaMask crypto wallet. Project Liberty, which is building a decentralized social media ecosystem, is working with Consensys to expand into Ethereum (ETH). The project is "meeting the zeitgeist" and is population-scale ready, founder Frank McCourt said in an interview. Project Liberty, billionaire Frank McCourt's attempt to create a decentralized social media platform, is partnering with Ethereum developer Consensys to enter that blockchain's ecosystem. Under the agreement, announced on Wednesday, Project Liberty's Frequency blockchain will become compatible with Consensys' technology, including the Linea layer-2 network that uses "zero knowledge" privacy technology to achieve massive transaction throughput and the MetaMask self-custody wallet, which has 30 million monthly active users. The added compatibility may help spur interest in Frequency and its Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP), an open standard for moving data around, while generating fee income for Linea. Frequency is already one of the largest parachains in the Polkadot environment, and the plan is to add other blockchains as the non-profit organization looks to expand its reach to a wider user base. Project Liberty says it wants to reduce consumer reliance on monolithic social media companies, such as Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter) and Meta's (META) Facebook. User dissatisfaction has already led to an exodus from X, including to Meta's alternative called Threads. Many have flocked to Bluesky, which is set up as a public benefit corporation and embraces decentralization principles that echo Project Liberty's, following the U.S. election two weeks ago. Bluesky has added 1 million accounts on some days and this week crossed the 20 million user threshold. "We all know how the network effect works, and when you own so many relationships and so many people in your walled garden, you have a privilege versus everyone else," McCourt said in an interview. "By opening up and creating this universal social graph that's accessible by everyone, where individuals control their stuff, you then have the network effect embedded in the internet." The scope of Project Liberty's vision is wider and deeper than just tackling some of the more prominent abuses found in social media, however. According to the company, it's about building a fairer internet, devoid of walled gardens and surveillance capitalism, closely aligning the project with Web3, a concept originally espoused by technologists like Consensys chief Joe Lubin. "This is a transformative moment, in my opinion," McCourt said. "We're meeting the zeitgeist where it is with something that's been extremely well engineered and thoughtfully done with a massive amount of time and money invested in it. We need an internet where we're not eventually clicking on the terms and conditions of use of apps, but the apps are clicking on our terms and conditions of use for our data." Over five years in the making and with some $500 million backing it, Project Liberty says it's "population-scale" ready. Interoperability is the key to realizing this goal and is inevitable, McCourt said, recalling a telecommunications company called RCN that his family started back in the early 1990s, which foresaw the harmonization among large incumbent telcos that happened later in the decade. People will look back in 10 years and find it absurd that you had to be on Facebook to talk to someone on Facebook, McCourt said. "I think when people are empowered, they're going to move fast," McCourt said. The Project Liberty Summit on the Future of the Internet takes place this week in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 21-22. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/20/frank-mccourts-decentralized-internet-project-enters-ethereum-ecosystem-with-consensys-partnership/