Scenius Sync (Issue #70)

SEC Won't Appeal Grayscale Loss, Ardoino In as Tether CEO, JPMorgan's Blockchain-Based Collateral Settlement Application Goes Live, & Ferrari Starts Accepting Crypto But Wen Lambo?

Scenius: The intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. The communal form of the concept of genius.

Welcome to The Scenius Sync.

Our mission with this concise publication is twofold:

1. Share the essential stories driving the crypto industry and markets.

2. Highlight innovative applications and mainstream adoption of crypto and blockchain technology.

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Essential News 🗞

1. SEC Won’t Appeal Loss in Grayscale Case, Boosting the Odds GBTC Can Become a Bitcoin ETF

   • The SEC won’t appeal a court’s scathing reversal of its decision not to let Grayscale convert its bitcoin trust into a more investor-friendly exchange-traded fund, according to a person familiar with the matter, possibly clearing the way for the first bitcoin ETF in the U.S. The markets regulator had until midnight Friday to decide on challenging the court’s decision, but the SEC will let that deadline come and go without appealing, the person said.

2. Binance Crypto Exchange Will Stop Onboarding UK Customers

   • In a Monday announcement, the world's biggest digital asset company said that at 5 p.m. U.K. time, no new British customers will be able to sign up to the exchange. Britain's financial watchdog the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) dropped new rules last week which require crypto firms to register with the financial regulator and have their marketing approved by an FCA-authorized firm. Exchanges also have to provide fair warnings to customers about the risks involved in crypto investments. Binance used Rebuildingsociety.com to have its promos and ads approved in the U.K. but the FCA last week added the firm to its list of regulated companies banned from promoting crypto services in Britain.

3. Voyager Ex-CEO Charged by U.S. Regulators With Fraud, Making False Claims

   • U.S. regulators have targeted former Voyager Digital CEO Steve Ehrlich with lawsuits claiming he engaged in fraud and deliberately misrepresented his customers’ government protections. The CFTC and FTC announced related actions against Ehrlich on Thursday, with the CFTC also including in its court filing that Circle's USDC stablecoin and bitcoin as commodities. The CFTC accused Ehrlich of defrauding customers by misleading them about the strength of the company and doing business without proper registrations. The FTC said he lied about customers’ funds being protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

4. Tether stablecoin firm appoints CTO Paolo Ardoino as CEO

   • Tether, the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin by market capitalization, is replacing its CEO as the company works to expand its areas of focus.

     Paolo Ardoino, who has been serving as Tether’s chief technology officer since 2017, will become the new CEO of the firm in December 2023. Ardoino will replace Jean-Louis van der Velde, who will transition to an advisory role for Tether while retaining his position as CEO of Tether’s sister company, Bitfinex. Ardoino will continue in his roles as chief technology officer for Bitfinex and chief strategy officer for the Bitcoin layer-2 solution Holepunch.

     Tether said the change in leadership reflects the company’s commitment to actively exploring new business operations, including peer-to-peer communications, renewable energy, resilient data storage and Bitcoin mining.

5. MetaMask Crypto Wallet Briefly Pulled from Apple App Store

   • MetaMask, one of the most popular cryptocurrency wallet applications, was removed from Apple's App Store in the United States on Saturday but was restored within a few hours. The app was removed due to "an internal operational error on our end," a MetaMask spokesperson told Decrypt, rather than an action taken by Apple.

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Innovation & Adoption 💡📈

1. JPMorgan's blockchain-based collateral settlement application goes live

   • JPMorgan's Tokenized Collateral Network (TCN), a blockchain-based collateral settlement application, has reportedly gone live by completing its first transaction involving the clients BlackRock and Barclays.

     BlackRock used TCN to convert shares in one of its money market funds into digital tokens, which were then transferred to Barclays as collateral for an over-the-counter derivatives trade between the two institutions, Bloomberg reported, citing an interview with Tyrone Lobban, head of Onyx Digital Assets at JPMorgan.

2. Uniswap to charge 0.15% to swap certain tokens on web interface and wallet

   • Uniswap will add a new fee starting on Oct. 17 for certain swaps on its web interface and wallet. The 0.15% fee will affect ETH, USDC, WETH, USDT, DAI, WBTC, agEUR, GUSD, LUSD, EUROC and XSGD. "This is separate from the Uniswap Protocol fee switch, which is voted on by UNI token governance," Uniswap founder Hayden Adams wrote on X. The new fee follows liquidity pool fees of 0.3% and a protocol fee expected to rise from 0% after after a governance vote. The Block Research estimates that, at Uniswap's current volumes, the new token fee will generate around $1 million a day. The above specific pairs bring in roughly $580 million in daily trading volume, which will result in about $870,000 in swap fees, according to data from Flipside.

   • In related news, KYC hook for Uniswap v4 stirs community controversy.

3. BlackRock's Larry Fink says bitcoin rumor rally shows 'pent up interest in crypto'

   • BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said Monday that a rally in the price of bitcoin triggered by a false news report about the approval of a spot ETF served as an example of the "pent up interest in crypto." Fink, who said that he couldn't comment on the specifics of his own firm's pending application for a spot bitcoin ETF, said he'd been hearing "from clients from around the world about the need for crypto." 

4. Ferrari to Start Accepting Crypto Payments in U.S, Europe to Follow

   • Ferrari will start accepting cryptocurrency as a payment method in the U.S., with a view to extending the scheme to Europe. The Maranello, Italy-based luxury sports car manufacturer is responding to demand from its wealthy customers, Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer Enrico Galliera said in an interview with Reuters. Ferrari will use crypto payments provider BitPay to process transactions in bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and stablecoin USD coin (USDC) in the initial rollout in the U.S.

5. Mastercard announces successful wrapped CBDC trial results

   • Mastercard has completed a trial involving wrapping central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) on different blockchains, similar to wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) and wrapped Ether (wETH). According to the Oct. 12 announcement, the trial was conducted with the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the country’s Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre CBDC, along with participation from Cuscal and Mintable. In a live environment, Mastercard said the solution allowed a CBDC owner to purchase a nonfungible token (NFT) listed on Ethereum in a live environment. “The process ‘locked’ the required amount of a pilot CBDC on the RBA’s pilot CBDC platform and minted an equivalent amount of wrapped pilot CBDC tokens on Ethereum,” the payment processor wrote.