First Mover Americas: Avalanche and Near Lead Weekly Gains

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Avalanche’s AVAX token and Near Protocol’s NEAR have finished the week on top. AVAX gained almost 50% in the last seven days while NEAR added more than 18%. Some analysts are pointing to Avalanche's inclusion in the Monetary Authority of Singapore's (MAS) tokenization initiative, Project Guardian, earlier this week as a catalyst for the increase. The project includes the likes of Onyx by JPMorgan and Apollo Global. Meanwhile, NEAR likely drew strength from a series of developments announced last week at its annual Nearcon conference in Lisbon. Bitcoin lost ground on the week, dropping 3%, and ether fell 6%.

BlackRock (BLK), the world’s largest asset manager, filed an S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its iShares Ethereum Trust, a spot ether exchange-traded fund (ETF). This move follows last week's corporate registration of that name and Nasdaq's filing of a 19b-4 with the SEC seeking approval for the spot ETF. The price of ether (ETH) briefly jumped nearly 2% to $2,080 on the S-1 filing, but has since returned to roughly its price prior to the news.

Crypto asset manager CoinShares said it secured an exclusive option to buy the exchange-traded fund (ETF) unit of Valkyrie Investments, gaining a U.S. foothold amid speculation the Securities and Exchange Commission will soon approve a spot bitcoin ETF. The Saint Helier, Jersey-based company, whose shares trade on Nasdaq Stockholm, said the option expires March 31. CoinShares didn't disclose how much it paid for the option, or details of pricing for the acquisition, should it decide to go ahead. Spot crypto exchange-traded products are already available in Europe. That's not yet the case in the U.S., though speculation has swirled recently that one is coming – which could open up bitcoin investing to a broad range of people.

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- Omkar Godbole