News Roundup — US SEC Approves Bitcoin ETFs in Watershed Moment for Industry

Major news stories this week;

1. US SEC approves bitcoin ETFs in watershed for crypto market
2. Spot bitcoin ETFs surpass $1B in trade volumes after first 30 minutes
3. Wintermute’s Weekly OTC Trade Volume Peaked at $2B in 2023
4. In-person businesses accepting bitcoin nearly tripled in 2023
5. Stablecoin Issuer Circle Internet Files for IPO

Story Summaries;

1. The U.S. securities regulator on Wednesday approved the first U.S.-listed exchange traded funds (ETFs) to track bitcoin, in a watershed for the world's largest cryptocurrency and the broader crypto industry. The Securities and Exchange Commission said it approved 11 applications, including from BlackRock (BLK.N), Ark Investments/21Shares (ABTC.S), Fidelity, Invesco (IVZ.N) and VanEck, despite warnings from some officials and investor advocates that the products carried risks.
2. Total trading volumes for BlackRock, Fidelity and Grayscale products exceeded $1 billion in the first 30 minutes of trade, according to market data crunched by Blockworks. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) led trading volumes with roughly 10 million shares traded in the first 15 minutes after the bell, according to Yahoo Finance data. Investors had traded about 13.5 million of IBIT by 10 am ET.
3. On January 9, the company published its “Wintermute OTC: 2023 in Review” report, highlighting its over-the-counter volume, which increased 400% throughout last year as volumes moved off-exchanges. According to the report, despite the overall slower and sometimes stagnant markets, “the past year of 2023 at Wintermute OTC desk was marked with significant growth” as the company witnessed a 4x increase in total OTC trading volume from H1 to H2 2023.
4. That total is nearly three times more than the number of vendors who accepted bitcoin at the end of 2022 — only 2,200, according to BTC Map's data. While some vendors have almost certainly been missed by the volunteers contributing data, the trend seems to indicate that bitcoin adoption is on the rise, despite its volatile swings in price throughout 2023.
5. The company filed a confidential draft S-1 document to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), it said in a statement. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined, according to the filing. USDC is the second-largest stablecoin, with a market cap of about $25 billion. Tether, the largest, has a market cap around $95 billion, CoinMarketCap data show.

‍

And that’s all for last week’s news! Wishing you a great week ahead!

‍