The widely anticipated Bitcoin halving occurred on 19 April 2024, with the US-based spot Bitcoin ETF’s recording a net positive inflow prior to the day of the halving. The positive inflow into the ETFs reversed a five day streak of consecutive outflows and has remained positive to date. Hunter Horsley, CEO of Bitwise, recently predicted that wealth management firms would increase their holdings of spot Bitcoin ETFs, noting that major financial entities were discreetly conducting thorough assessments of the Bitcoin market.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) delayed its timeline of approval for two of the spot Ethereum ETFs proposed by Grayscale and Franklin Templeton, to June 2024. The current market consensus indicates a low probability of SEC approval for the spot Ethereum ETF applications next month. Nevertheless, most analysts remain optimistic about the eventual approval of spot Ethereum ETFs over the long term.
Crypto exchange Woo X, in partnership with London-based institutional tokenisation platform OpenTrade, launched an RWA product for retail investors called RWA Earn Vaults. It is reported as the first time a crypto exchange has offered retail customers exposure to tokenised U.S. Treasury bills.
Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA, plans to increase the use of digital currencies in its crude and fuel exports to bypass U.S. sanctions. However, USDT-issuer Tether says it will freeze addresses linked to sanctioned entities as the company respects the OFAC SDN list and is committed to working to ensure sanction addresses are frozen promptly.
Coinbase expands asset recovery tool to Polygon and BNB ChainCEO Comment
The Gap between Bitcoin and the S&P 500 has largely declined 7% to 38% from last week’s 45% difference. The recent increase in Bitcoins price is largely being attributed to the outflow from Grayscale’s GBTC ETF beginning to slow down. The consistent inflows into the competing ETFs will start to push price pressure to the upside, with a report today stating that BlackRock and Fidelity now own a combined 144,640 Bitcoin worth US $6.5 billion for their spot Bitcoin ETFs or 0.74% of the total circulating supply.
As for the shift list, which we define as the major events and announcements facilitating the broader market’s transition to Web3 financial rails or the internet of value, the top shifts for this week include:
Our Top “alts shift” list featuring shifts in our Alt universe being game changing shifts that drive our thematic approach – A second Gap where the broader digital asset market has circa 65% to close so there is a big opportunity here, we see this as a selective opportunity to select and grow our alts portfolio via our “alThematics” work.
What are our favourite thematics for 2024? We continue to like any infrastructure plays of the shift from Web2 to Web3 financial rails and any plays in the real world asset tokenisation infrastructure, data validation and decentralised storage, and scale up technologies such as ZKrollups – anything Crypto identity realty, we are closely following all the ”de’s” – DeFi, DePin, DeSoc – (want to know what that means? – message us).
