Monday November 6, 2023
◾ Elon Musk’s xAI released a beta version of a chatbot to rival ChatGPT called Grok. (X)
◾ Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission is assessing whether to allow spot bitcoin ETFs. (Bloomberg)
◾ The US Supreme Court agreed to hear a case by Coinbase (COIN) over its customer terms and whether the company properly disclosed users could enter a ‘sweepstakes’ without buying or selling the cryptocurrency. (Bloomberg)
Government & NGO Actions
◾ Former President Barack Obama has been advising the White House on its strategy to address AI. (CNBC)
◾ The US Attorney in the State of New Jersey filed to seize $54 million in crypto assets related to an illegal narcotics distribution scheme. (Justice.gov)
◾ The Treasury Department sanctioned Russian national, Ekaterina Zhdanova, for her role in laundering and moving funds using virtual currency on behalf of Russian elites. (Treasury.gov)
◾ Singapore’s Police Force issued a public warning about phishing scams on WhatsApp websites. (SingaporePolice)
Public Company Releases
◾ Grayscale released a form 10-Q for the Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC) reporting $16.8 billion in total assets and $9.7 billion in unrealized appreciation on the original BTC investment. (SECfilings)
◾ Hut 8 (HUT) announced that the Ontario Superior Court of Justice approved its stalking horse bid for select assets of Validus Power Corp potentially giving the crypto miner 310 MW at four natural gas power plants in Ontario. (PRnewswire)
◾ Marathon Digital (MARA) produced 1,202 bitcoin with an average operational hashrate of 17.2 EH/s in October. (Marathon)
Restructuring, Losses and Legal News
◾ FTX is seeking approval from the bankruptcy court to sell off its Grayscale investments worth $692 million, encompassing positions in GBTC, ETHE, ETCG, LTCN, and GDLC, along with a $53 million stake in the Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund (BITW). (CourtFilings)
◾ Management restructuring firm Alvarez and Marshal acknowledged sharing FTX’s customer data and transaction history with the FBI. (Bloomberg)
◾ $460,000 in Monero (XMR) was stolen from the Monero communities crowdfunding wallet. (Github)
◾ The trial accusing Avraham Eisenberg of engaging in a scheme to steal $116 million in crypto assets from the Mango Markets platform has been delayed until April 8th. (CourtFiling)
◾ NFT marketplace OpenSea announced salary cuts as part of its 2.0 release. (X)
AI Announcements
◾ China’s Ant Group received government approval to release products powered by its "Bailing" artificial intelligence (AI) large language model to the public. (Reuters)
◾ Polish Rum company Dictador announced the appointment of the first AI powered robot CEO. (FoxBusiness)
Protocols, Applications & Business News
◾ BitGo in partnering with Copper to provide institutions with direct access to spot and derivative exchanges from regulated cold storage. (MarketWatch)
◾ Decentralized NFT market place Magic Eden is partnering with Bored Apes parent Yuga Labs to launch the first major ETH marketplace to honor creator royalties for all ETH NFT collections. (X)
◾ Germany’s DZ Bank launched its own digital asset custody platform. (DZbank)
◾ The London Stock Exchange (LSEG) is looking to hire a Director, Digital Asset Lead. (LinkedIn)
◾ A community warning was posted identifying a fake Ledger Live app “Ledger Live Web3” on the Microsoft App Store which has so far resulted in the loss of $588k. (X)
Market Data
◾ Bitcoin’s hashrate achieved a new all-time-high of 526.7 EH/s. (BitInfoCharts)
◾ Over the past two years, Nike-RTFKT non-fungible token collections have generated nearly $1.4 billion in trading volume and $170 million in earnings. (TheBlock)
Thoughts on the Ecosystems
◾ Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) Vice Chairman Charlie Munger reiterated his negative thoughts on bitcoin explaining “when you start creating an artificial currency… you’re throwing your stink ball into a recipe that’s been around for a long time.” (X)