BitDigest October 15 · Issue #763

• Crypto prices slide for second day
• The Mt. Gox Trustee needs more time and will only release the rehabilitation plan in December
• NY DFS Calls for regulation and the “Systematically Important” designation to be given to top social media sites

Weekly Stock Review

Highlights from the North American listed crypto, blockchain and mining stocks:

• Grayscale’s Bitcoin Cash Trust (OTCQX: BCHG) was the top performing asset of the week returning 68.9%
• Ebang Holdings (NASDAQ: EBON) announced it has issued a tender offer to acquire a regulated New Zealand wealth management firm.
• Grayscale announced average weekly investments over the past 12 months include $39.5 million into the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (OTCQX: GBTC), $9 million into the Grayscale Ethereum Trust (OTCQX: ETHE), $1.1 million into the Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund (OTCQX: GDLC), and $2 million into its other three offerings.
• Marathon Patent Group (NASDAQ: MARA) announced the formation of a JV with Beowulf Energy to locate 1.265 EH/s in new mining equipment to Montana and access lower cost (>$0.3/kWh) energy.
• Hut 8 Mining (TSX: HUT) has completed the TSX Sandbox Program solidifying its status on the senior market exchange
• Bitfarms (TSXV: BITF) has entered into an equipment lease agreement to aqcuire an additional 1,000 WhatsMiner M21S rigs adding 72 PH to the company’s installed computing power
• Galaxy Digital Holdings (TSX: GLXY) reported assets under management of $407.4 million as of the end of Q3
• The premium to NAV for Grayscale’s Ethereum Classic Trust (OTCQX: ETCG) turned negative and is posting at -2.44%. It was also the worst performing stock on the weekly chart, dropping -1.6%
• Bitcoin returned 7% over the past 7-days

The Headlines

New York Calls for Social Media Oversight

www.bloomberg.com

n response to July’s Twitter hack, New York’s Department of Financial Services is calling for top social media companies to be regulated with a “systemically important” designation concluding that crypto companies under state regulation acted quickly to address the hack while Twitter was not adequately prepared.

WEF Issues Overview of Blockchain Protocols

www.www3.weforum.org

The World Economic Forum and Global Blockchain Business Council jointly released a whitepaper reviewing different technical standards developed by the leading blockchain protocols in hope of serving as a comprehensive resource for the blockchain community to assess the current landscape and evaluate where gaps, overlaps, inconsistencies and conflicts may exist.

Mt. Gox Trustee Delays Plan by Two Months

www.mtgox.com

The Mt. Gox Trustee announced that “matters [in the case] require close examination” and has once again extended the submission deadline for the expected rehabilitation plan; this time to December 15th.

Ebang Looking to Buy Licensed New Zealand Wealth Manager

www.finance.yahoo.com

Ebang Holdings (NASDAQ: EBON) is continuing efforts to expand away from crypto mining and announced a tender offer to acquire an un-named New Zealand based broker and wealth management company.

Ethereum Getting New "Fee" Programming Language

www.snakecharmers.ethereum.org

The Ethereum Foundation has introduced a new Rust-based smart contract programming language for the Ethereum ecosystem called Fe (pronounced “fee”).

Trezor Releases Desktop Application

www.blog.trezor.io

Cold wallet Trezor has introduced a beta of a desktop application that will allowing users to manage their portfolio and wallet based holdings.

DeFi Pulse Introduces Risk Grading System

www.twitter.com

DeFi marketcap website DeFi Pulse has announced a new safety grading system that allows users to easily quantify and compare the risk they associated with on-chain protocols by focusing insolvency risk.

Market Data

Investors Give Grayscale $1 Billion in Q3

www.grayscale.co

Grayscale announced the total invested into Grayscale Products during the third quarter was $1.05 Billion with average weekly investments of over $80 million driven by institutional investors and hedge funds (80%).

Number of Crypto Deals Fall in H1

www.bloomberg.com

PwC reports that $600 million was invested in crypto related deals during the first half of 2020 with the number of deals dropping 52% during the period of COVID-19 outbreak and isolation; this includes Binance’s $400 million acquisition of Coinmarketcap.com

Five Exchanges Hold 10% of All Bitcoin

www.cointelegraph.com

Five digital currencies exchanges (Coinbase, Huobi, Binance, OKEx and Kraken) hold over 1.96 million (10.5%) bitcoin with Coinbase holding the most with ≈945 thousand BTC followed by Huobi with 323k and Binance with 289k.

Exchange, Custody and Product News

Gemini Adding Filecoin

www.gemini.com

Gemini announced it is adding trading and custody support for decentralized storage protocol Filecoin (FIL).

FIL, UNI and YFI Trading Coming to Kraken

www.blog.kraken.com

Kraken is also adding support for Filecoin (FIL) and is adding leading DeFi protocols Uniswap (UNI) and yearn.finance (YFI).

Thoughts on the Ecosystem

CFTC Chairman Sees DeFi Potentially Reducing Systematic Risks

www.coindesk.com

CFTC Chair Heath Tarbert considers the DeFi system “revolutionary” and believes it “could potentially even reduce systemic risk … because we don’t have the finance system concentrated in these large globally, systemically important institutions.”

JPMorgan Sees BTC Trading Above Intrinsic Value

www.bloombergquint.com

JP Morgan analysts are expecting a “modest headwind” facing bitcoin with their researchers showing BTC is still trading 13% higher than their price estimate.