Happy Wednesday! In today’s newsletter, we’ll cover FTX assets preparing to sell locked Worldcoin tokens at a discount, Bitwise filing for a spot XRP ETF, and Australia’s “Operation Kraken” seizing over $6 million from hardware wallets.
Meanwhile, EigenLayer responds to community concerns about early investor staking transparency.
Let’s get started.
FTX Real Estate is preparing to sell locked Worldcoin tokens at a discounted price.
FTX Real Estate plans to auction off all 22.3 million locked Worldcoin tokens worth about $37.7 million, offering a “significant discount,” three sources with direct knowledge of the matter told The Block.
- The sale is part of the estate’s ongoing efforts to recover funds for creditors.
- Bids for the tokens must be submitted by 8pm ET on Wednesday and are offered at a discount of 40% to 75% from the current spot market price of $1.69 per WLD token, the two sources said.
- If the bid is approved, the parties will be notified by Thursday.
- Tokens will be unlocked daily until 2028. From December 1, 2024 to July 24, 2026, 20,539 WLD tokens were added per day, and from July 25, 2026 to July 24, 2028, 13,689 WLD tokens were added per day. Earlier this week, Grim Markets CEO Mike Cagney also commented:
- It mentioned the possibility of raising funds to participate, similar to how it participated in the sale of FTX Real Estate’s discounted Solana (SOL) holdings earlier this year.
- FTX Assets appears to have sold most of its cryptocurrencies, and currently holds $594 million in crypto assets, according to Arkham. This includes $541 million in illiquid FTT tokens that are not likely to be sold and are already marked as zero.
Bit-by-bit file for spot XRP ETF
Crypto asset manager Bitwise filed a registration statement for its spot XRP exchange-traded fund with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.
- “The trust’s investment objective is to provide exposure to the value of XRP held by the trust, net of trust operating and other debt expenses,” the company said in its S-1 filing.
- BNY serves as administrator of the trust, and Coinbase Custody Trust Company serves as custodian of the ETF.
- Bitwise has also argued that XRP is not a security, contradicting the SEC’s position in the past.
- “XRP is a decentralized digital asset and its ownership is reflected in a distributed ledger. Additionally, XRP is not a security and therefore not protected by U.S. federal securities laws,” it said.
- The SEC has never approved a spot XRP ETF and could face difficulties due to its ongoing legal battle with Ripple over the sale of $1.3 billion of XRP, which is considered an unregistered security.
- If a court finds that XRP is a security, the ETF could be liquidated under the Investment Company Act of 1940, Bitwise warned.
- Bitwise’s registration statement comes after the company filed Monday with Delaware’s Division of Corporations for an entity called the Bitwise XRP ETF.
Australian police seize more than $6 million in cryptocurrency after decoding seed phrases from organized crime wallets
Australian Federal Police have seized $6.4 million in cryptocurrency after investigating those suspected to be behind encrypted messaging platform Ghost as part of the “Operation Kraken” scheme.
- Ghost was an encrypted messaging service used by criminal organizations to coordinate illegal activities, including drug trafficking and money laundering.
- Analysts from the AFP-led Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce have seized cryptocurrency assets after analyzing a hardware wallet device found in the suspect’s home and decoding his seed phrase, the AFP said on Wednesday.
- Cryptocurrency hardware wallets increase the security of your assets by keeping your private keys offline, but a skilled individual with physical access to the device can potentially extract the seed phrase and access your funds.
- The work is not related to the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken.
Cryptocurrencies face a ‘hangover’ from venture capital ‘glut’ in previous bull markets.
In a fireside chat at the Messari Mainnet Conference, Tushar Jain said the cryptocurrency venture capital market has not fully adapted to the reality of the post-pandemic downturn.
- Excessive valuations and stagnant token prices are major challenges for the cryptocurrency sector, according to Multicoin Capital Managing Partner. “I would say the market still has a hangover to deal with.”
- However, long-time cryptocurrency investors have not completely lost faith.
- “I still fundamentally believe in the core principles that underpin the industry, and we’ve been through these cycles before,” Jain said. “This is the most cyclical industry in the history of capitalism, and in many cases people’s emotions follow prices.”
Crypto trader Ansem said there is an ‘incentive mismatch’ with certain celebrity memecoins.
On the Messari Mainnet stage, Ansem, a single-name cryptocurrency trading figure, acknowledged his past mistakes of supporting certain celebrity memecoins after controversy over an apparent rugpull to the detriment of high-profile and retail traders.
- However, despite the overall memecoin craze cooling off recently, Ansem believes this trend is still in effect.
- In addition to Memecoin, Ansem said he is also interested in emerging chains including Monad, Berachain, and Movement, as well as “alt-VMs” (as opposed to the Ethereum virtual machine) such as Move-VM and Solana’s SVM.
within the next 24 hours
- Eurozone PPI figures will be released at 5am ET on Thursday. U.S. unemployment claims data comes out at 8:30 a.m.
- U.S. FOMC member Raphael Bostic is scheduled to speak at 10:40 a.m.
Don’t miss The Block’s daily digest of the most impactful events happening across the digital asset ecosystem.
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