ARK Launches Auction for Space Ether ETF, Miners Adapt After Halving, and More
In a surprise decision, investment firm 21Shares filed a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday afternoon, May 31, to designate the space ether (ETH) exchange-traded fund (ETF) and remove ARK Invest from the firm. Application.
A spokesperson for ARK Invest later confirmed that the company had decided not to move forward with its crypto product, citing the need to reassess its investment strategy. The move raised concerns among the crypto community about the short-term viability of the newly approved ETFs.
In an interview on June 5, US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler suggested delaying final approvals for asset managers. EFAs “take some time,” Gensler said. The SEC has yet to sign the S-1 registration statements from the applicants.
ARK Invest and 21Shares remain partners in the Bitcoin (BTC) ETF launched in January.
This week's CryptoBiz also explores Galaxy's digital token loan to Animoka Brands, Avail's fundraising, Toposware's acquisition, and initial reports after Bitcoin miners halved.
Galaxy uses historical violin NFT to secure digital credit
Yat Siu, founder of Michael Novogratz's Galaxy Digital and Animoka Brands, has listed a Stradivarius violin from 1708 as collateral for a multi-million dollar loan. On June 4, Galaxy loaned an undisclosed amount of money to Siu, who used the 316-year-old violin as collateral. The digital assets firm converted the violin into a non-fungible token (NFT) and will hold the NFT and physical copy until Siu settles the loan. The violin once belonged to Catherine the Great of Russia.
Polygon Labs acquisition of Toposware pushes total ZK investment to $1 billion
Polygon Labs has secured its third zero knowledge (ZK) startup investment in three years, blockchain research and engineering company Toposware. Toposware, working with Polygon on the Type 1 Prover, enabled Ethereum-compatible blockchains to use zero-knowledge proofs with minimal modifications. Following the $650 million acquisitions of Mir and Hermes in 2021, Polygon's ZK team added 11 toposware engineers, bringing Polygon's total investment in ZK technology to over $1 billion.
Despite the new facility, Bitcoin's decline has impacted 43 percent of mining Ryot's revenue.
Bitcoin miner Riot Platform produced 215 BTC in May, a 43% decrease from the previous month despite expanding its fleet. The reduction is the direct impact of the Bitcoin halving on the mining industry, which has halved mining rewards to 3.125 BTC. Riot is making infrastructure improvements to maintain post-halving production at a new facility in Corsicana, Texas, which has added 3.1 hashes per second to its total mining head – a 17 percent increase from last month. Also, after adjusting its operations after the decline event, Marathon Digital sold 63% of its BTC production in May.
Avail raises $43 million in Series A for Web3 integration.
Avail, a modular blockchain base layer, recently completed an oversubscribed $43 million Series A round. The Series A funding was attended by several venture capital firms and angel investors, including Altos Ventures, Alliance DAO, Hashkey, Elixir Capital, Spark Digital Capital and RW3 Ventures, among others. In total, the company has raised $75 million in various funding rounds. Avail is led by Arjun, co-founder of Polygon, and aims to solve three major challenges in the Web3 ecosystem: blockchain fragmentation, insufficient data availability, and limited scalability.
Before you go: Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson believes that we are still in the early days of the Bitcoin investment cycle and that large institutional funds are not yet fully deployed in the asset class.
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