First Mover Americas: Barry Silbert Resigns as Grayscale Chairman

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Grayscale Investments, whose application to turn its Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a U.S. spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) is being considered by the Securities and Exchange Commission, said Barry Silbert resigned as chairman and will be replaced by Mark Shifke. Shikfe , chief financial officer of Grayscale owner DCG , will replace Silbert as of Jan. 1, Grayscale said in an SEC filing without giving a reason for the changes. Mark Murphy, DCG's president, also resigned from the board. The SEC has delayed several ETF applications including those of Grayscale, BlackRock, Ark 21shares, Vaneck and Hashdex, many of which have met with the regulator and filed amended documentation as year-end approaches. The agency must approve or reject Ark 21Shares, the first deadline to approach, by Jan. 10.

High funding rates, relatively low liquidity and reports of crypto exchange Mt. Gox starting repayments to victims of its 2014 hack spurred a marketwide decline in the past 24 hours, bringing losses to leveraged bullish traders. In the futures market, traders betting on higher prices lost over $190 million to liquidations as bitcoin (BTC) dropped as much as 4% before recovering early Wednesday. Some $45 million of those losses stemmed from altcoin-tracked futures in an unusual move – with bitcoin liquidations accounting for a smaller $36 million. Traders of Solana’s SOL tokens took on nearly $20 million in losses, while those of Bitcoin protocol Ordinals (ORDI) lost $8 million, data from Coinglass shows. Crypto exchange Binance saw over $97 million in liquidations, the most among counterparties.

South Korea is making crypto and other asset holdings of approximately 5,800 public officials available to the public under new legislation aimed at increasing transparency. Starting next year, public officials will be provided with an integrated asset disclosure service, South Korea's Ethics Policy Division said in a post on Wednesday. While asset disclosures are currently reported in official gazettes, under the new legislation, the information will be available through the Public Official Ethics System (PETI). New laws requiring public officials to disclose their crypto holdings were passed in May following a high-profile scandal involving a lawmaker.

Chart of The Day

• The chart shows a seven-day moving average of transaction fees paid on the Bitcoin blockchain since January.
• The average jumped to 445.59 BTC on Dec. 20, reaching the highest since 2018.
• The rising popularity of Ordinals has led to blockchain congestion, pushing fees higher.
• Source: Glassnode

- Omkar Godbole

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