While anticipation over a potential Bitcoin (BTC) spot ETF has gripped investors, an Ethereum (ETH) ETF approval may also be waiting in the wings.
Bloomberg analysts are now assigning 75% odds of one such product being approved in the United States this year.
Ethereum ETF On The Horizon
As tweeted by Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart on Friday, the organization’s approval odds are the same as those it assigned for a Bitcoin futures ETF in early September 2021.
The very first U.S.-based fund of the kind – the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) launched in late October of that year, pulling in $1 billion within two days of its launch.
At the time, many companies were vying to list the product after Gary Gensler – Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

Heather Rhiannon Morgan (aka “Razzlekhan”, 33) pled guilty to a money laundering conspiracy in connection with the 2016 Bitfinex hack on Thursday, which saw more than 119,756 Bitcoin (BTC) robbed from customers.
This came moments after her husband, Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein (35), pleaded guilty to being the man behind the hack itself.
Bitfinex Hacker Confirmed
In Washington, D.C., federal court, Lichtenstein confessed to both stealing and laundering the funds, officially clearing the air on a years-long mystery around one of the largest thefts in Bitcoin history. At the time of the hack, the exchange’s stolen BTC was worth roughly $71 million but is worth $3.4 billion today.
“Lichtenstein used a number of advanced hacking tools and techniques to gain access to Bitfinex’s

Crypto trading platform Bitstamp has introduced an XRP lending service offering a “permanent” 2% yield, shortly after relisting the asset for trading last month.
This puts XRP on an already sizable list of coins viable for 2% APY on Bitstamp, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), USD Coin (USDC), and Tether USD (USDT).
Permanent Yield On XRP?
As explained by Bitstamp in a blog post on Thursday, the company partners with Tesseract for its lending service, which “only lends to reputable institutions and undertakes rigorous risk and credit assessments for all borrowers.”
Tesseract breaks down counterparties into four tiers, with Tier 1 including “large top-tier market makers from traditional finance,” and Tier 4 including “smaller institutional borrowers.”
Per Bitstamp’s

Crypto exchange Coinbase has revealed its launch date for Base – the Ethereum layer 2 blockchain designed to make transactions faster and cheaper than the underlying network.
As of today, users can begin bridging ETH to base, with dapps “across the on-chain ecosystem” starting to enable Base support.
Base: A Bridge To Crypto
As published in a blog post from Base on Thursday, the Base mainnet will go live “for everyone and everything” on August 9.
To commemorate the launch, the firm also announced “Onchain Summer” – a month-long festival by 50 creators and developers with a daily showcase of novel things that can be done on-chain.
Participants in the festival will be open to ~100 ETH in grants from Coinbase, spread across participants in four different events: Onchain

Bloomberg ETF analysts have boosted their approval odds for a U.S. Bitcoin (BTC) spot ETF from 50% to 65%, in light of “recent events and new information.”
The analysts believe it is most likely that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will simultaneously approve all recent applications for the product after Grayscale defeats the agency in federal court.
The ETF Approval Thesis
As published by analysts James Seyffart and Eric Balcunas to Bloomberg Terminal, a flurry of new developments make the approval seem close.
These include SEC chairman Gary Gensler’s “downplaying” of his role at the agency, and the regulator’s “tacit approval” of Coinbase as a Bitcoin exchange. Coinbase has been selected by an array of new applicants – including BlackRock and Fidelity – to

Fitch Ratings – one of the world’s “Big Three” credit rating agencies – has removed the United States from its position among the very highest tier of long-term lending counterparties.
The nation’s Long-Term Foreign-Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) slid from AAA to AA+ on Tuesday, prompting criticisms against Fitch from both the U.S. Treasury Department and the White House.
Why The Downgrade?
According to Fitch, the downgrade reflects expectations of “fiscal deterioration,” the country’s “growing general government debt burden,” and an “erosion of governance” regarding how to manage that debt relative to its AA and AAA-rated peers.
Firstly, the government deficit has been rising over time and is expected to reach 6.3% by the end of 2023, versus 3.7% at the end of 2022.

Bitcoin (BTC) whale MicroStrategy announced on Tuesday that it has gobbled up another 420 BTC since its last announcement in June.
This brings the company’s total holdings up to 152,800 BTC worth $4.46 billion.
According to MicroStrategy’s Q2 earnings report, the firm’s 12,800 BTC acquired since Q1 was acquired for $28,233 per coin – below the asset’s current market price of $29,195.However, the company’s average purchase price for its total BTC holdings remains at $29,672, slightly above the market price.

“We efficiently raised capital through our at-the-market equity program and used cash from operations to continue to increase bitcoins on our balance sheet,” stated Andrew Kang, CFO of MicroStrategy.

The CFO added that Bitcoin has a promising backdrop of “increasing

Lawyers representing FTX’s creditors said they weren’t filled in on a recently proposed plan to revive the company’s international exchange, according to a Monday night filing. 
Creditors claimed that the proposed restructuring plan is a mere “idea” with no formal talks having taken place to actually put it into action. 
No Contact With Creditors?
The claimants’ statement accused FTX’s lawyers of breaking their promise to provide a public roadmap for the bankruptcy proceedings and to work with creditors on a successful reorganization plan. 
Instead, debtors ignored creditors’ suggestions for restructuring, which were not formally negotiated. Though the plan has been released in line with a pre-established deadline, creditors claim that what has been proposed only presents

A phishing scammer recently nabbed $20 million in USDT from an unsuspecting victim using a zero transfer phishing attack, reported blockchain security firm PeckShield on Tuesday.
The stolen funds were frozen in short order by Tether – the issuer behind USDT – raising questions about who the victim was given the speed of their response.
The Zero Transfer Phishing Attack
According to PeckShield, the victim address intended to send funds to one wallet, but was fooled into sending the USDT to a phishing address that began and ended with the same set of characters.
Days earlier, the victim had received 10 million USDT from Binance, and had sent those funds to the desired alternative address. However, at the time of that transfer, the scammer conducted a zero-value token

Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, released an assurance report on Monday covering its financials as of June 30.
The Q2 attestation showed that the issuer now holds over $3.3 billion in excess reserves to back its USDT tokens.
Tether’s Massive Surplus
As explained by Tether in an accompanying blog post, the issuer’s excess reserves stem from the profits generated by its existing reserves. These profits are not distributed to shareholders and are instead solely used as insurance to back its tokens.
USDT is designed to maintain parity with the U.S. dollar and is always convertible 1:1 for dollars within the company’s reserves.
“Tether is again demonstrating its commitment to transparency by disclosing its direct, indirect exposure (via Money Market Funds) to US

An early user of the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) just reclaimed tens of thousands of Ether (ETH) that he’d locked up in the old ENS registrar over 4 years ago.
Having appreciated substantially since that time, the value of those 39,712 ETH is now worth roughly $74 million.
Reclaiming Old Funds
According to blockchain analysts at Lookonchain, darkmarket.eth was responsible for reclaiming the funds – the largest owner of locked Ether within the old registrar until now.
After reclaiming his funds, the user sent 63,734 ETH ($119 million) to a new wallet.

After 2.7 years of dormancy, darkmarket.eth reclaimed 39,712 $ETH ($74.17M) locked in the ENS auction just now.
And transferred 63,734 $ETH($119M) out to a new wallet.https://t.co/OtXYRpcOhn
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) July

The Bank of Canada published a report on Wednesday outlining Canadian crypto ownership trends last year.
Its Bitcoin Omnibus Survey found that Bitcoin (BTC) ownership across the country declined from 13% to 10% of the population in 2022.
The report noted that the ownership decline occurred on the back of Bitcoin’s massive price decline of over 50% throughout the year and increased regulatory scrutiny after FTX’s collapse in November. Altcoin ownership also decreased in 2022.
That said, ownership still remained elevated from the 8% level observed between 2018 and 2020.
For the past five years, awareness of the term Bitcoin has remained stable at roughly 90%, but recent adopters were more likely than early adopters to get involved for investment purposes.
“Similar to the

Paul Munter – principal advisor to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on accounting and auditing matters – issued a warning on Thursday to crypto accounting firms whose work is inappropriately marketed as a substitute for “audits.”
The statement, titled “The Potential Pitfalls of Purported Crypto “Assurance” Work”, claimed that clients of such firms often promote their work as being at “parity” with a financial statement audit.

“Such suggestions are false,” he asserted. “Non-audit arrangements are neither as rigorous nor as comprehensive as a financial statement audit, and may not provide any reasonable assurance to investors.”

The advisor referenced a March report from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), which warned investors of accounting

Grayscale wrote a letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday calling for the agency to simultaneously approve any qualifying Bitcoin spot ETF applications, so as to not “pick winners and losers.”
However, the firm also argued that Coinbase shouldn’t qualify as a surveillance partner to launch such a product, under the SEC’s pre-established rules.
Why Coinbase Isn’t Good Enough
Per the comment letter, the SEC has already questioned the pricing data produced by ‘unregulated’ Bitcoin trading venues for years.
Grayscale referenced the SEC’s explicit denial of the GraniteShares ETP Trust in 2018, which intended to form a surveillance-sharing agreement (SSA)with Gemini’s exchange. The SEC determined that Gemini did not represent a regulated market

Crypto investor and Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz told followers on Wednesday to “Buy BTC” in response to the United States government’s rapidly growing interest expense on its sovereign debt.
To some analysts, the trend suggests that the Federal Reserve will be forced to lower its benchmark interest rate again if the Federal government can no longer keep up.
The US Debt Problem
According to market analyst Joe Consorti, the U.S. government is now paying $970 billion per year in interest payments – up $41 billion from Q2. That’s the highest interest expense of all time by a wide margin, with annual payments only reaching $600 billion as recently as Q1 2022.
Consorti expects interest costs to reach $1 trillion soon. That’s over 20% of the government’s $4.7 trillion

The House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) failed to reach an agreement for stablecoin legislation on Thursday due to a number of disagreements Democrats had with its existing text.
Committee Chair Patrick McHenry (R-NC) blamed the White House for holding up the bill, while Democrats alleged that Republicans were attempting to rush incomplete legislation.
No Compromise For Stablecoin Bill
The bill, titled the Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act of 2023, would allow the Federal Reserve to write requirements for stablecoin issuers, but still preserve the authority of state-level payment stablecoin regulators while outlining other requirements.
After 15 months of negotiations, McHenry claimed the committee was “closer than we’d ever been” to a bipartisan deal aside from a

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey pressed Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on Wednesday over his alleged refusal to acknowledge the power of Bitcoin’s lightning network – a layer-2 scaling solution designed to make BTC easier to spend.
His question sparked an online debate about the benefits and limitations of lightning in the payments realm, compared to other cryptocurrencies such as stablecoins.
Why Not Bitcoin?
In a tweet on Wednesday, Armstrong claimed that crypto’s next step was to make payments “instant and free globally,” through collective work on layer 2 solutions and user onboarding. He referenced a coffee shop that now accepted gas-free USDC payments using Coinbase Wallet, which integrated messaging this month.
The CEO acknowledged that crypto was still “stuck on layer

U.S. Congress undertook its first-ever markup for digital asset legislation on Wednesday, attempting to establish clear jurisdiction for the nation’s chief market regulators.
The bill was not well received by Democrats, however, many of whom find it overly friendly to the crypto industry, and similar to what disgraced FTX boss Sam Bankman-Fried had advocated for.
Democrats Blast Crypto Bill
During the hearing, House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) Chair Patrick McHenry (R-NC) said that the bill – titled the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act –will clarify how the Supreme Court’s Howey Test applies to digital assets, focusing on “decentralization” and “functionality.”
Specifically, the act describes how digital assets may be offered as part of

Blockchain security company Quantstamp has agreed to pay ~$3.5 million in fines to settle charges against it from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday – without confirming or denying allegations.
The settlement marks another successful crackdown from the agency against a crypto company for violating securities laws, which industry leaders say lack clarity regarding how they apply to digital assets.
Another SEC Legal Attack
The SEC’s charges – announced on Friday – accused Quantstamp of conducting an “unregistered initial coin offering (ICO)” in the form of its QSP tokens in late 2017.
QSP allows investors to purchase automated smart contract scans through Quantstamp’s protocol. However, the SEC claimed that the manner in which it was first

The Federal Reserve rose its target interest rate by 25 basis points on Wednesday, in line with market expectations.
This brings the central bank’s rate to over 5.25% – one of its highest levels since the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis.
The latest hike marks the Federal Reserve’s 11th rate hike over its last 12 policy meetings dating back to March 2022.
The central bank’s mission over the past year has been to quell once rampant inflation, which peaked at 9.1% in June 2022. The latest CPI figures showed that the central bank has been successful thus far, bringing inflation back down to 3% as of last month.
That said, PCE inflation – one of the Fed’s preferred metrics for rising prices – has proven more difficult to address. This casts doubt on whether the Fed is

While Twitter’s sudden rebranding to X has caught many by surprise, it seems Elon Musk has had a radical transformation for the platform in mind for a while.
Here’s what we know about how he plans to change the old “Twitter” – and what it might mean for crypto.
Baking In Financial Services
In a tweet published on Tuesday, Musk said that Twitter was acquired by X Corp. both to accelerate X’s growth and to “ensure freedom of speech,” one of the billionaire’s primary commitments upon buying the platform last year.
According to the billionaire, Twitter’s name made sense “when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting.” However, given the variety of new features on the platform (ex. Long form video) and many others to come, he has chosen to

Dogecoin (DOGE) shot up another 10% on Tuesday on greater excitement surrounding Elon Musk’s rebranding of Twitter to “X”.
Tuesday’s rise follows a related post on Musk’s Twitter, where the tech mogul appeared to link X to the famous dog meme.
Dogecoin and X
Musk reposted a nine-second animated graphic of the platform’s new “X” logo. The animation itself was sourced from DogeDesigner – the UX/UI & Graphic Designer at Dogecoin & MyDoge Inc.

pic.twitter.com/dxbsqwcYv7
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2023

Musk also added the Dogecoin symbol to the location field of his Twitter bio, right next to the X logo.

After publishing the tweet at 12:32 pm on Tuesday, DOGE shot from $0.077 to $0.083 within just 2 hours. It trades for $0.082 at writing time – up 10% over the past 24

Bitcoin (BTC)’s supply and demand dynamics suggest that the asset could surge as high as $180,000 by April 2024, according to a research note from Fundstrat on Monday.
The forecast – which precedes the U.S. central bank’s next meeting – largely rests on a Bitcoin spot ETF being approved in the United States, which the markets research firm suspects will blow apart BTC’s current price equilibrium.
The Impact Of A Bitcoin ETF
At present, Fundstrat finds that Bitcoin experiences roughly $25 million in daily demand – about the same value of new coins brought into circulation by miners each day.
“This [bitcoin ETF launch] would bring daily demand to $125 million, while daily supply is only $25 million,” wrote Tom Lee, Fundstrat’s Head of Research. “The implied equilibrium price

The world’s largest country by landmass is set to roll out a digital ruble next week after Russian President Vladimir Putin greenlighted the project on Thursday.
The text of the bill amends Russia’s Civil Code to allow the digital ruble to be used for payments, while empowering Russia’s central bank to let real citizens use the currency starting August 1.
Accounts for the digital ruble will be managed directly by the central bank, rather than commercial banks.In a statement shared by Russian media central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina clarified that the use of the currency is purely optional.

“We really hope that it will be more convenient, and cheaper for both people and businesses, and they will start using it,” she said. “This is a new opportunity.”

The Russian

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a blog post on Monday discussing “decentralized proof-of-personhood” – an ambitious concept at the center of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s newly launched “Worldcoin” (WLD) project.
While noting benefits the benefits of the concept at large, the developer highlighted four potential flaws in Worldcoin’s approach that have popular voices in crypto shaking their heads: privacy, accessibility, centralization, and security.
Worldcoin Not Bad On Privacy, Says Vitalik
According to Vitalik, proof of personhood schemes naturally include two important privacy-threatening risks. The first is to possibly link someone’s every action to their actual identity, while the second lies in the existence of a registry of biometric scan data.

Caroline Ellison – former CEO of the fallen crypto trading desk Alameda Research – felt “unhappy and overwhelmed” with her job, and strongly doubted that she was well suited to the role, according to newly leaked excerpts from her online diary.
The excerpts shed light on many of her inner thoughts heading preceding FTX’s demise, including her troubled relationship with Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF).
Boyfriend Pressure and Imposter Syndrome
As reported by The New York Times on Thursday, the 27-year-old crypto executive told SBF in an April 2022 writing that her previous breakup with SBF had “significantly decreased my excitement about Alameda,” due to the job’s association with the exchange founder.
Bankman-Fried founded Alameda in 2017 and promoted Ellison to a co-CEO position

Bonds issued by El Salvador, the first country in the world to establish Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender, are up 60% in value this year – rivaling Bitcoin’s 80% gains.
The sudden demand for the country’s national debt represents a massive sentiment shift around its financial position. Yields for El Salvador’s 10-year debt ran as high as 24% just 12 months ago, in line with distressed economies like Ukraine and Argentina.
However, the country successfully repaid $800 million of short-term debt in January, alongside interest, proving both media and credit rating agencies wrong.
Last year, Morgan Stanley anticipated that it was a good time to buy Salvadoran bonds, believing the government could “muddle through” its interest payments in the short term.
Aaron Stern, Chief

With a swath of Bitcoin spot ETF applications knocking at the regulators’ doorsteps, it’s only a matter of time before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is forced to issue a decision on whether or not to approve them.
Estimates show that the agency may approve the first application as early as August.
First Deadline Incoming
According to Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart, the ARK 21shares Bitcoin ETF – which has been denied alongside other spot ETFs in past applications – is first in line to receive an approval/ denial among a new wave of applicants.
The analyst said that the SEC’s first deadline to issue a response to ARK is August 8. However, this deadline can be delayed – an outcome that Bloomberg expects.
Seyffart published a table last week with

The “BITCOIN” cryptocurrency has skyrocketed by over 300% in value over the past week – gains the world’s largest cryptocurrency could only hope to gain through a massive influx of investor capital.
That said, a closer look shows that’s not exactly what happened.
“BITCOIN” is actually the ticker symbol for a relatively new meme token, called HarryPotterObamaSonic10Inu (ERC-20).
Data from CoinMarketCap shows that the token is suddenly generating over $14 million in daily volume, mostly on UniswapV2 on Ethereum.

“HarryPotterObamaSonic10Inu (Ticker: BITCOIN) is an endgame of crypto-assets (0 Tax),” reads the token’s description. “BITCOIN incentivizes the creation of novel and entertaining meme content.”

The token’s value suddenly began to rise starting last week, from just

On-chain analysts at CryptoQuant have confirmed previous rumors that the United States government has sold another large batch of Bitcoin (BTC) connected to the defunct darknet marketplace, Silk Road. 
In a report shared with CryptoPotato, the firm said that the firm sold 8,200 BTC from Silk Road hacker James Zhong on July 12.
This was slightly under previous estimates, indicating that the government had moved roughly 9,826 from its known wallets. It’s also less than the government’s first confirmed sale of 9,861 BTC for $216 million in March. 
Most of the coins were moved in a single transaction of 9,319 BTC, which sent 8200 BTC to one address, and 1119 BTC to another. 
The former address “ forwarded the 8,200 Bitcoin to different addresses, [and] each address received 79