The following is an excerpt from today’s Global Newsletter.
The high-stakes poker game of crypto regulation just leveled up.
Asset management behemoth BlackRock doubled down on crypto Thursday by filing an application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to launch the iShares Bitcoin Trust. Oh, and they listed Coinbase as the bitcoin custodian in the filing. Daaaaayum.
Your move, Gary.
It may have been easy for Gensler to say no to Grayscale, but BlackRock is another beast altogether.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see, “Go ahead, call our bluff,” written somewhere in the filing.
Whether BlackRock truly plans to go ahead with this plan if approved is not the most interesting aspect of this story, that would be the SEC’s response.
We’ll get our lawn chair and bag of popcorn ready.
Featured
 USA |
| BlackRock files for spot bitcoin ETF, with Coinbase as a crypto custodian By Jesse Pound The firm filed an application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to launch the iShares Bitcoin Trust. |
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- Global: AI will save us, not kill us Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz fame, the leading investor in fintech start-ups, published a long piece on how AI will save us the other day. It is well worth a read, but it is a long read (about 30 minutes), so if you don’t have the time, here is a short summary.
- USA: In Sam Bankman-Fried case, U.S. withdraws new charges They said they were willing to proceed to trial in October without pursuing charges they filed after Mr. Bankman-Fried was extradited from the Bahamas.
- USA: OCC’s Hsu says US banks strengthened liquidity, but vigilance is key The agency’s semiannual risk perspective highlighted the importance of being watchful in managing weaker portfolio segments.
- USA: Central banks successfully test over 30 CBDC use cases, including offline payments An API layer could facilitate a wide range of central bank digital currency payment scenarios, a Bank for International Settlements and Bank of England experiment has shown.
- USA: Fed, SEC probing Goldman’s role in SVB’s final days The regulators are seeking documents related to Goldman Sachs’s role in buying Silicon Valley Bank’s securities portfolio while it was working on its doomed capital raise. The Justice Department has also subpoenaed Goldman.
- USA: How the SEC could cripple crypto venture capitalists The Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuits against both Coinbase and Binance have sparked an intense debate about its effort to regulate the crypto markets. But another aspect of the SEC’s crackdown has drawn less attention—proposed rules that could make it nearly impossible for some crypto-focused venture capitalists to make fresh crypto investments and could force them to dump some of their existing holdings.
- USA: ConnectOne CEO says banks well-prepared for rough ride in 2023Loan demand slowed, deposit costs jumped, and credit quality became vulnerable, but veteran banker Frank Sorrentino sees more positives than negatives for community banks, particularly when interest rates level off.
- Europe: Revolut hit with $13bn write down after banking licence woes Revolut’s value has plunged by nearly 40% over the past year, according to a major investor in the firm.
