Regulation
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler cautioned about scams and regulatory non-compliance in an X thread, as the SEC appears ready to begin approvals for spot bitcoin ETFs.
Bitcoin
As the crypto industry prepares for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s decision on spot bitcoin ETFs, major financial players have revealed extremely competitive fee structures to attract early market share.
BlackRock, ARK Invest and several other potential issuers filed amended SEC filings on Friday that would put in place stock exchange rule changes needed for the spot Bitcoin ETFs to be approved.
For at least the next ten years, VanEck will donate 5% of its profits from its yet-to-be-approved spot BTC ETF to Bitcoin-focused nonprofit Brink.
DeFi
The surge in Arbitrum’s daily volume likely stems from the upcoming Ethereum upgrade dubbed Dencun, not the memecoin frenzy experienced by other blockchain networks.
Even if the SEC approves spot Bitcoin ETFs in the coming weeks, DeFi must make some effort to gain mass acceptance of crypto overall, writes Ramon Recuero.
After taking a beating post-FTX, Bitcoin liquidity could “see a real recovery” with the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs, research firm Kaiko concluded in its Q4 report.
As anticipation of SEC approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF heats up, a new survey reveals surprising pessimism among U.S. financial advisers.
Ethereum
Starknet’s upgrade aims to substantially reduce transaction fees and lays the groundwork for users to pay for their gas consumption with the zero-knowledge rollup’s native token STRK.
EigenLayer increased its restaking capacity in the middle of December, and since then the number of liquid staking tokens (LSTs) and ETH deposited into the protocol’s smart contracts has increased more than fivefold from about $250 million.
