First Mover Americas: FTX Wants to Sell Its GBTC

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Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX and its debtors have asked the U.S. bankruptcy court of Delaware to approve the sale of some trust assets, funds of Grayscale and Bitwise valued at an estimated $744 million, through an investment adviser, according to a Friday court filing. “The Debtors’ proposed sale(s) or transfer(s) of the Trust Assets will help allow the estates to prepare for forthcoming dollarized distributions to creditors and allow the Debtors to act quickly to sell the Trust Assets at the opportune time,” the filing said. “Additionally, because the Debtors may sell the Trust Assets to one or more buyers in one or more sales, sales pursuant to the Sale Procedures will alleviate the cost and delay of filing a separate motion for each proposed sale.” The “trust assets” are held in five Grayscale Trusts, totaling an estimated $691 million, and one trust managed by Bitwise, amounting to $53 million, based on the market value as of Oct. 25. Grayscale and CoinDesk are part of the same parent company, Digital Currency Group (DCG).

XRP has spiked in the past 24 hours to become the top-performing crypto major as bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) held steady. Prices rose over 11% before slightly retreating on Monday, with trading volume jumping to $2 billion from Sunday’s $1 billion, CoinGecko data shows. At the time of writing, XRP traded at 69 cents and had replaced BNB as the fourth-largest token by market capitalization. Data suggests the gains were largely spot-driven as liquidations on XRP-tracked futures breached just over $4.4 million. A large liquidation amount may suggest that the use of high leverage may have boosted prices.

The Bank of England (BOE) will regulate “systemic stablecoins” that are in wide enough circulation to potentially disturb financial stability, while the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will oversee the wider crypto sector according to discussion papers published by the two regulators Monday. The proposals followed broader plans for overseeing the crypto sector published by the U.K. government last week. Proposals from Big Tech companies like Facebook, now Meta (META), and PayPal (PYPL) to issue stablecoins and last year's collapse of stablecoin empire Terraform Labs have propelled related regulation worldwide, with major jurisdictions such as the European Union and Japan recently finalizing regimes.

- Omkar Godbole