📣Morgan Stanley discloses US spot bitcoin ETF holdings worth over $270 million in filing
Multinational investment bank and financial services company Morgan Stanley disclosed U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund holdings worth over $270 million as of March 31 in a quarterly 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.
Morgan Stanley disclosed holding $269.9 million worth of Grayscale’s converted spot bitcoin ETF — making it the third-largest holder of GBTC shares behind Susquehanna’s $1.1 billion and Horizon Kinetics’s $946 million, according to Fintel data.
In Q1 2024, crypto startups raised $2.4bn across 518 deals, a 40.3% increase in capital raised and a 44.7% increase in deal volume from the previous quarter.
Bankrupt crypto lender Genesis Global Capital won court approval of its plan to distribute billions of dollars in digital assets and cash to creditors, defeating a legal challenge brought by its corporate parent DCG.
Notcoin, a Telegram mini-app, reached 35m active users in a few months. Recently, Notcoin was minted on the TON blockchain and listed on major exchanges, allowing users to convert in-game currency into real money.
Notcoin quickly became a top-10 cryptocurrency by trading volume, with a market cap near $700m. This highlights the power of the Telegram and TON ecosystems for app developers.
Telegram’s Pavel Durov was gifted $6.8m worth of Notcoin from half a million Notcoin users and shared plans to hold until it reaches $680m to buy more servers for Telegram.
Crypto industry donors have contributed $94m to federal political committees since 2023, surpassing the previous election cycle's $83m.
Key donors include:
⚫️Jeffrey Yass: American billionaire businessman ⚫️Group Marc Andreessen: Venture Capitalist ⚫️Ben Horowitz: General partner of Andreessen Horowitz ⚫️Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss: Gemini Founders ⚫️Brian Armstrong: Coinbase CEO
Hong Kong users can now set up personal e-CNY wallets for cross-border payments to Mainland China using their mobile numbers, allowing top-ups via 17 retail banks.
JP Morgan analysts reportedly estimated BTC production costs at $45k currently and $42k medium-term, predicting limited price growth due to low inflows into US and HK spot Bitcoin ETFs.
Arkham has studied over 100 celebrities with more than 1m followers on X and highlighted their crypto holdings.
Top 6 by X followers with their crypto holdings in $: 1. Justin Bieber (singer): $450k 2. Donald Trump (politician): $6.9m 3. Neymar Jr. (footballer): $55k 4. Jimmy Fallon (comedian): $11k 5. Kevin Hart (actor): $40k 6. MrBeast (YouYuber): $478k
A whale mistakenly transferred and lost 1,155 BTC ($71m) due to a fatal copy-paste error.
1. Hacker closely monitored the whale’s activity on the blockchain and obtained an address similar to the one generated by the whale.
2. Hacker then transferred 0 ETH to the whale’s wallet address to create a transaction history containing the phishing address.
3. In the transaction history, the whale found an address with the same numbers before and after as their target address and mistakenly copied and pasted the phishing address.
Active users of South Korea’s registered exchanges increased by 390,000 to 6.45m (about 10% of the population) by the end of 2023.
Other key findings by the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit (KOFIU) include:
⚫99% of investors were identified as "individuals" ⚫About 60% of investors were in their 30s-40s ⚫Daily average trading volume increased by 24%, reaching 3.6tr won ($2.6bn) ⚫Total crypto holdings by exchanges surged by 53%, reaching 43.6tr won ($32.4bn)
U.S. President Joe Biden issued an order banning MineOne Partners Limited, a Chinese-controlled cryptocurrency mining company, from owning property near an Air Force base in Wyoming, citing national security risks.
CFTC charged Falcon Labs, a crypto prime brokerage firm, with $1.8m for illegally allowing U.S. customers to access digital asset derivatives trading platforms.
iFinex, the parent of Bitfinex, has partnered with El Salvador to develop cryptocurrency regulations and launch a $6.25m hotel securitization project at the international airport.