• Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein discussed the importance of a spot Bitcoin ETF in an interview on „What Bitcoin Did“.
• Grayscale filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after their application to convert GBTC to a spot Bitcoin ETF was rejected in mid 2022.
• Sonnenshein expects a decision by the fall of 2023 and oral arguments for the case will begin on 7 March.

Grayscale’s Lawsuit Against SEC

Grayscale Investments, a leading digital asset manager, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in June 2022 after their application to convert its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a spot Bitcoin exchange traded fund (ETF) was rejected by the securities regulator in mid 2022. The company is now looking for legal recourse as it believes that when an agency like the SEC treats two similar issues differently, it violates the U.S administrative procedures act.

The Importance of Spot Bitcoin ETF

In an hour-long interview on “What Bitcoin Did”, Michael Sonnenshein, CEO of Grayscale Investments, discussed various matters related to his company including the importance of having a spot Bitcoin ETF instead of GBTC which has been trading at 45% discount to its net asset value due to lack of arbitrage mechanism. According to him, converting GBTC into an ETF would ensure that its share price remains in line with its underlying asset while avoiding any discounts or premiums as seen currently with GBTC shares.

Relationship With Genesis

Michael Sonnenshein clarified that his firm did not have any operational reliance on Genesis which was undergoing chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings at press time and thus does not affect its legal proceedings against SEC either way.

Oral Arguments for Lawsuit

The oral arguments for the lawsuit will begin on 7 March this year and according to Michael Sonnenshein’s expectations there should be some sort of decision by fall 2023 – if they lose their appeal they may go for re-appeal in United States Supreme Court too..

GBTC Investors Counting On Grayscale

Speaking about why investors are counting on them despite all obstacles he said: “We have now over a million investor accounts that own GBTC, (from) all 50 states, GBTC investors all over the world, that are counting on us to do the right thing for them.“

• Solana’s key DeFi indicators showed signs of recovery in an otherwise under par February.
• The chain’s daily DEX trading volume also showed signs of a rebound after it more than doubled at the time of writing.
• SOL has come out of the FTX-induced negativity to a great extent in 2023 with its price exhibiting higher volatility.

Solana’s Key DeFi Indicators Show Signs Of Recovery

Solana’s key DeFi indicators showed signs of recovery in an otherwise under par February. According to an 18 February tweet by Kamino Finance, Solana’s decentralized exchange (DEX) activity was better than other chains if a particular metric was put into consideration. Called ‚DeFi Velocity‘, the metric basically measures the trading volume versus total value locked (TVL) on a blockchain. The report highlighted that Solana’s average DeFi velocity for January stood at 0.25, more than twice of the second-ranked Polygon [MATIC] on the list.

Solana Witnesses Uptick In Its DeFi Activity

DeFi recovery on the cards? Solana witnessed an uptick in its DeFi activity with its TVL registering a 6% jump over the last week, data from DeFiLlama pointed out. This development came even as Solana underperformed in the month of February, impacted by a waning interest in its ambitious meme coin, BONK. The chain’s daily DEX trading volume also showed signs of a rebound after it more than doubled at the time of writing, plunging to a monthly low on 11 February. Despite this, the cumulative weekly volume dropped by 2.3%, highlighting the stress Solana has been in February.

SOL Price Performance

What does SOL’s price say? SOL has come out of the FTX-induced negativity to a great extent in 2023. According to data from CoinMarketCap, the token locked gains of 112% since the start of 2023. Of late, the price has exhibited higher volatility with wild inter-day swings. At press time, it was valued at $22.99 with a 1

• Ethereum [ETH] was the largest L1 in terms of TVL and fees, with a market cap of more than $183 billion.
• Santiment’s data revealed that despite the price decline, the amount of available ETH sitting on exchanges continued to fall.
• LunarCrush’s data revealed that Ethereum’s social mentions and social dominance recently hit three-month highs.

Ethereum [ETH] Leads Cryptocurrency Market

Ethereum led the cryptocurrency market at press time, as it remained the largest L1 in terms of Total Value Locked (TVL) and fees. At the time of writing, it was trading at $1,501.74, with a market capitalization of more than $183 billion.

ETH On-Chain Performance Looks Bullish

Despite Ethereum’s price dropping by 13% since peaking on 7 February, its on-chain performance looked bullish. Santiment’s data revealed that there have been 37% fewer coins in terms of dollar valuation on exchanges since the merge.

Bullish Signals for ETH Price

Not only this but several other factors were also indicating a positive future for Ethereum [ETH]. CryptoQuant’s data showed that Ethereum’s exchange reserve was decreasing which indicated less selling pressure; Glassnode noted that ETH’s open interest in perpetual future contracts reached a three-month high; finally, LunarCrush’s data showed an increase in Ethereum’s social mentions and social dominance over the last three months.

Will ETH Experience Another Bull Run?

Overall, these updates looked favorable for Ethereum [ETH] and hence it will be interesting to see whether or not it experiences another bull run soon.

Conclusion

Ethereum continues to dominate the cryptocurrency market with its impressive performance across various metrics such as TVL and fees. Furthermore, its on-chain performance looks bullish given recent developments such as decreases in exchange reserves and increases in social activity around it. It remains to be seen if this will lead to another bull run for ETH soon or not

• Ordinals is a recent NFT project that has recently gained popularity in the Bitcoin [BTC] community, with over 81,000 Ordinals minted at the time of writing.
• This increased activity has had a positive impact on the number of active and non-zero addresses on the Bitcoin network, reaching an all-time high of over 44 million.
• Despite this, Bitcoin’s price has remained below $22,000 and has not been significantly affected by Ordinals.

Introduction

Ordinals is a recent NFT project that has recently gained popularity in the Bitcoin [BTC] community, with over 81,000 Ordinals minted at the time of writing. This new initiative to integrate NFTs into the Bitcoin ecosystem was introduced last month and saw its peak on 9th February 2023 with more than 20,800 inscriptions for that day alone.

Impact on Active Addresses

The increased activity from Ordinals have had a positive impact on the number of active and non-zero addresses on the Bitcoin network, reaching an all-time high of over 44 million as observed by Glassnode data. Furthermore Santiment’s metric showed a downward trend in January but an upward trend setting in during February resulting in a measure higher than what was seen in the better parts of January.

Price Impact

Despite this increased activity from Ordinal projects, it hasn’t been able to significantly affect BTC’s price which currently stands at about $21,700 despite being around $22k just weeks ago.

Conclusion

Overall there have been positive signs for Bitcoin as seen by its increasing active address count along with other metrics being positively impacted by new NFT projects such as Ordinals which have added more use cases to the king coin beyond peer-to-peer payments for first time since its inception 14 years ago. Despite this however BTC’s price still remains relatively low and hasn’t been significantly affected yet though this may likely change soon enough if more projects like these keep popping up regularly within crypto space.

FAQs

Q: How much are 1 10 100 BTCs worth today?
A: Currently 1 10 100 BTCs is worth about 21 700 USD as per current market prices.

• South Korea’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) has issued a set of guidelines outlining which types of digital assets will be considered and regulated as securities in the country.
• The FSC will also permit security token offerings (STOs) through the amendment of its Electronic Securities Act.
• Cryptocurrencies that meet the definition of security tokens will be governed by the Capital Markets Law, while digital assets that do not meet the definition of securities will be subject to new regulations.

South Korea’s Financial Regulatory Guidelines for Digital Assets

Definition of Securities

The Financial Services Commission (FSC) of South Korea has issued a set of guidelines outlining which types of digital assets will be considered and regulated as securities in the country. It emphasized that digital assets that meet the requirements outlined in the country’s Capital Markets Act will be treated as securities. Securities are defined by law as financial investments in which investors are not required to make additional payments after their initial investment.

Examples

The FSC also gave examples of digital assets that are likely to be classified as securities, such as tokens that give holders a stake in business operations, rights to dividends or residual assets, or profit to investors. Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH), crypto tokens with no centralized issuer, will not be considered securities.

Security Token Offerings Permitted

By amending its Electronic Securities Act, the FSC will also permit security token offerings (STOs). Cryptocurrencies that meet the definition of security tokens will be governed by the Capital Markets Law of the country. Meanwhile, digital assets that do not meet the definition of securities will be subject to new regulations. According to the FSC, token issuers and brokers such as crypto exchanges will use these regulations to determine which crypto is classified as a security. The evaluation process for this classification is done on a case-by-case basis according to FSC criteria.

Tracking System Implemented

South Korea has been an active participant in cryptocurrency for quite some time now and recently announced plans for establishing a decentralized digital commodities exchange in Busan city with government officials saying it should go live this year.. On 29 January 2021 ,the South Korean government announced implementation tracking system to combat money laundering and recover funds associated with criminal activities .

Global Crypto Center

The financial regulator also stated that these new guidance is part South Korea’s preparation for legalization ,issuance ,and distribution Security Tokens . This would make South korea one global crypto center leading technology market globally .

• PancakeSwap [CAKE] broke into the top five of daily active users (DAU) with 127,790.
• Despite the upturn in usage, CAKE failed to register a price increase and experienced a 2.56% loss in 24 hours.
• Investors may be taking profits due to an overbought RSI and continually hitting the upper Bollinger Bands (BB).

PancakeSwap’s DAU Surge

PancakeSwap saw a significant surge in Daily Active Users (DAU), breaking into the top five with 127,790 according to Token Terminal. This 12.1% increase in 24 hours indicated a surge in address interaction and transactions, being only behind Binance Coin [BNB], Polygon [MATIC], and Ethereum [ETH].

CAKE Price Not Keeping Up

Despite this strong performance, CAKE has yet to register an increase in its price. At press time, it had lost 2.56% of its value in the last 24 hours, with similar losses over seven days but gains of 26.53% over 30 days according to CoinMarketCap. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) indicates that selling pressure could be increasing due to the token being overbought as it was around 70 on 24 – 29 January before slipping back down currently at 62.75 on the daily chart according to TradingView.

Proposed Changes To Emissions

PancakeSwap is looking to make changes to its emissions by streamlining activity and voting started on 30 January which will end within 24 hours of its start date. This proposal aims to alternate distribution between staking, farming, and trading without changing total emissions overall.

Price Reversal On The Horizon?

Due to various metrics such as RSI and BB indicating an overbought status for CAKE combined with investors potentially taking profits, there might be an impending price reversal lower than what was seen recently for CAKE if these trends continue according to TradingView data analysis..

Conclusion

Overall PancakeSwap’s DAU surged significantly enough for them break into the top five however their token [CAKE] has not seen any real gains from this despite having some losses more recently due potential profit-taking by investors combined with metrics such as RSI suggesting it has become overbought