Grayscale 'Committed' to Bitcoin ETF

MicroStrategy buys more BTC, BoJ pilots digital yen, Jay Clayton on coming crypto regulation.

What you need to know today in crypto and beyond  April 5, 2021 Sponsored By:     If you were forwarded this newsletter and would like to receive it, sign up here.   Send feedback to daniel.kuhn@coindesk.com – we'd love to hear from you! Today's must-reads Top Shelf BITCOIN ETF? Grayscale Investments said it's "100% committed" to converting its flagship Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into an exchange-traded fund (ETF). The firm said it will reapply to the proper securities regulator because the premium on its flagship cryptocurrency product has failed to pick up. (Grayscale and an editorially independent CoinDesk are both owned by Digital Currency Group.) In other news, MicroStrategy, a business intelligence firm that has become a quasi-BTC ETF by replacing its cash reserves with the crypto, purchased another $15 million worth of BTC. DIGITAL ALTERNATIVES: The Bank of Japan (BOJ) has entered the first phase of its central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot, which will study the commercial and monetary impacts of such a scheme. Starting Monday, the digital yen proof of concept will run through March of next year. Separately, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs said the nation may be considering blockchain and digital alternatives to SWIFT, fearing the nation's access to the global payments network may be cut off as tensions involving Russia, the European Union and the U.S. ramp up. SECOND ACTS: Ex-Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Jay Clayton, "speaking as a citizen" on CNBC's "Squawk Box," said bitcoin had the status as a non-security at the SEC but new domestic and international regulations should be expected. Chainalysis' former chief technical officer will replace Financial Crimes Enforcement Network's (FinCEN) Kenneth A. Blanco as acting director of the agency, signaling the federal government's growing interest in crypto. HACKS & ATTACKS: Hackers have been using GitHub cloud infrastructure to covertly mine multiple cryptocurrencies. Meanwhile, decentralized finance (DeFi) hedge fund Force DAO was attacked early Sunday, with one of the perpetrators returning the stolen funds.   – Daniel Kuhn Overheard on CoinDesk TV Sound Bite "What's changed with bitcoin over the past year … a lot of the downside risk has gone away, which makes it a kind of asymmetrical trade. … That's why people hodl."   – Texture Capital CEO Richard Johnson said on CoinDesk TV's "First Mover." A message from Nexo Your digital assets deserve a savings account in their BEST INTEREST. Leading crypto lender Nexo treats you, your crypto and your fiat to industry-best Crypto & Fiat services, featuring:    * Up to 12% interest on digital assets, paid out daily! * Yields available on BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH, XRP, XLM, EOS, TRX, LINK, BNB, PAXG, USDT, USDC, TUSD, PAX, DAI, HUSD, GBP and EUR. * No minimum or maximum limits on funds deposited, offering infinite opportunities to earn. * #ZeroFees on all transactions. * Military-grade wallet security and top-tier insurance on all custodial assets with SOC 2 Type 2 certified crypto custodian BitGo.   Get started at nexo.io A message from CoinDesk CoinDesk's Christine Kim and Consensys' Ben Edgington present a weekly podcast series on the live development of Ethereum 2.0 and its potential impact on the crypto markets.   In each episode, the team discusses major news events related to Eth 2.0 from addressing skepticism to the consequences of node slashing.   Listen to "Mapping Out Eth 2.0" every Thursday on the CoinDesk Podcast Network. What others are writing... Off-Chain Signals Astral Codex Ten on how to address the ethical and environmental considerations of NFTs, while also making a mint. Coinbase is set to go public with two directors who are members of the audit committee and are major shareholders, WSJ reports. Not cronyism, but a potential conflict of interest between new and existing shareholders, according to corporate governance experts. FT's Yuan Yang on an NFT exhibition in China: "It is a remarkable twist that the first major gallery in the world to host a crypto-art exhibition is in a country where the artists are forbidden from supporting themselves through the proceeds." Cointelegraph covers the "silent" price crash across illiquid NFT markets. Protos games out how the SEC might approach Beeple's $69 million token sale. David Hockney on why NFTs are for "crooks and swindlers." (Decrypt, & original interview)   – D.K. Investor Momentum to NFT Boom: CoinDesk Research's Quarterly Review Introducing CoinDesk Research's quarterly review, covering the main developments over the first three months of 2021 in Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi, stablecoins and – of course – NFTs.   The report presents over 100 insights on how retail investors are picking up market momentum, how Ethereum activity is not being driven by NFTs as much as one might think, how stablecoins have responded to increased activity, how DeFi is for now the realm of decentralized exchanges and more.   Download the CoinDesk Quarterly Review, First Quarter 2021. Putting the news in perspective The Takeaway A Day to Be Thankful for Bitcoin My last two posts cast doubt on bitcoin's near-term prospects as a payment system for everyday and even big-ticket purchases. Today brings a haunting reminder of why it's valued nonetheless.   Eighty-eight years ago, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed executive order 6102, which forbade the "hoarding" of gold. If I were smarter I would have started working on this post weeks ago, dug into contemporaneous newspaper articles and interviewed some historians. But the anniversary crept up on me. Tl;dr: Americans were given less than a month to turn in "all but a small amount of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates owned by them to the Federal Reserve" or else face steep fines and prison, according to Wikipedia.   Reasonable people can disagree about questions of monetary policy, but the civil liberties implications of the order, which was not repealed until 1974, are unquestionably chilling.   "Less than 100 years ago, in the United States of America, it was ILLEGAL to hoard gold. it was ILLEGAL to have a shiny rock in your home. I find that fact astonishing," the bitcoin user and educator known as 6102Bitcoin said last year on Stephan Livera's podcast.   That this happened in the Land of the Free along with more recent abuses of civil asset forfeiture laws underscores one reason why bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, despite being "backed by nothing" and lacking "intrinsic value" (the critics' words, not mine), are worth something: They are hard to confiscate because wallets are controlled by cryptographic private keys, not a central administrator that can be subpoenaed.   Not impossible, but hard. As I wrote nearly four years ago:   Inb4 the strawmen: I am not claiming that cryptocurrency users are "above the law." An individual who refuses to give up his private keys under court order can still be thrown in jail. The point is that the government has to throw that person in jail, or perhaps beat him with the proverbial rubber hose, to get him to comply. It can't unilaterally seize his funds. ... In this way, cryptocurrency claws back a modicum of power for the individual. This raises an interesting, if unsettling question: Could Uncle Sam try to pull a 6102 on bitcoin? Ray Dalio, the hedge fund manager and (shill alert!) upcoming speaker at Consensus 2021, thinks so. "Every country treasures its monopoly on controlling the supply and demand," the billionaire said in a recent interview with Yahoo Finance. "They don't want other monies to be operating or competing, because things can get out of control. So I think that it would be very likely that you will have [bitcoin], under a certain set of circumstances, outlawed the way gold was outlawed." Dalio noted India could be moving in this direction already, and that the public ledger of transactions may allow a government to track down who is holding the asset. To which a hardened bitcoiner might reply: Come and take it. Here's 6102Bitcoin, from the same podcast interview: I don't imagine that these regulations or attempts at seizure would be particularly effective for a number of reasons. Firstly, bitcoin can move at the speed of light (with a 10-minute lag). Regulations take time to develop and in most countries a vote would be needed to confiscate bitcoin. Before the vote even takes place most owners of bitcoin would have transferred ownership outside the country, beyond regulatory reach. Secondly, bitcoin can be controlled by numerous parties who operate under different regulations, making such confiscation unworkable. Finally, bitcoin can be hidden in plain sight and owners can build plausible deniability into the scheme used to hold bitcoin. For example, some hardware wallets allow creation of a "hidden account" with a second passphrase so when under duress a user could give an extortionist the primary passphrase, which can unlock only a portion of their crypto.   Perhaps fittingly, the anniversary of executive order 6102 falls just after the last night of the Jewish holiday of Passover. Even if bitcoin is never accepted at the supermarket or dry cleaners, if all it does is give individuals a bulwark against unchecked confiscation, then dayenu – that would be enough.   – Marc Hochstein A message from Bybit Bybit 7-Day Challenge: 400,000 USDT Grand Prize   Introducing Bybit 7-Day Challenge — a trading competition held every three weeks, starting this April. Unlock the weekly prize pool by being the top trader in each series - winners are ranked by Individual P&L(%).    All existing Bybit traders with Net Equity ≥ 0.01 BTC (or equivalent) are eligible to participate. Traders can trade any type of cryptocurrency pairs in this competition — as long as they are available on Bybit.   Join Now! A message from CoinDesk What are bitcoin and ether's value propositions for investors? A new report by CoinDesk Research explains how the two most popular cryptocurrencies by market capitalization behave in the market, how their infrastructure differs, and what on-chain metrics say about them.   Download "Bitcoin + Ether: An Investor's Perspective" from the CoinDesk Research Hub. The Chaser... ATTENTION: Scammers have been sending fraudulent emails with links to sites disguised to look like coindesk.com. If you are in doubt about a link, type https://www.coindesk.com directly into your browser; do not copy and paste. Remember, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. 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