It’s Friday, May 31st. As the ongoing week comes to a close, we can reflect on the industry highlights over the past few days.
U.S. SEC clears the ground for Spot Ether ETF
It was the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets, not the commissioners themselves, that decided to approve spot ether ETFs. SEC chief Gary Gensler din’t give a green light to the filings.
While the financial watchdog has approved the listing of spot ether ETFs on exchanges, issuers need their S-1 registration statements to come into effect before trading can begin. Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, emphasized that it could take several weeks for the S-1 documents to be validated.
According to digital asset lawyer Justin Browder, the approval of spot ether ETFs means that the cryptocurrency in question, like ‘a lot’ of other altcoins, is not considered a security.
Brian Kelly, a CEO of BKCM, which is a digital currency investment firm, previously speculated that if the Commission gives the thumbs-up to spot Ethereum ETF, a Solana (SOL) ETF would come next in line.
Study: 60% of US investors miss the point of crypto and blockchain
Roughly 35% of Gen Z investors don’t feel confident in their expertise in cryptocurrency. Such inexperience is even more pronounced among Millennials (35%) and Gen Xers (32%).
At the same time, those in Gen X account by far for the highest percentage (57%) of individuals who are eager to learn more about virtual assets. In contrast, only 41% of Zoomers are willing to explore blockchain technology.
The authors of the study claim that the level of interest in digital assets other than crypto also varies from generation to generation.
In fact, 12% of Millennials surveyed invested in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) at least once, compared to just 4% of the older generation, baby boomers, who did so.
$PEPE makes it to the top 20 by market cap
Based on data provided by CoinMarketCap, the world’s most-referenced price-tracking website for cryptoassets, the market capitalization of the meme coin $PEPE hit the $7 billion mark, surging past that of Uniswap. As of now, the crypto asset takes the 19th place in the ranking.
Such a dramatic shift in ratings is a sign of the mounting popularity and adoption of meme coins across the crypto market.
Earlier this week, the coin value updated its all-time high (ATH) and reached $0.00001161. As per TradingView data, $PEPE skyrocketed by more than 81% over the past week.
Due to this upsurge, a number of traders are enjoying substantial profits. For example, back in mid-May, one trader managed to earn nearly $47M by pumping in the meme coin over the course of 2024.
Defunct Mt. Gox starts large-scale bitcoin transfers
As early as May 28, a series of huge transactions took place in which the once-largest exchange Mt. Gox tranferred almost all of its $9.3 billion worth of Bitcoin (137,892 BTC) to a new address.
Trustee of the now-bankrupt stock exchange Nobuaki Kobayashi said creditors are to receive basic, interim and early lump sum payments by Oct. 31 this year.
Traders fear Mt. Gox will thus affect the entire bitcoin market, with another dump looming. It seems the rumors were for a reason: once news of the enormous bitcoin transfer surfaced, the alpha cryptocurrency plummeted in value – at one point, its exchange rate dipped to $67,000 after soaring to $70,000 shortly before.
Prior to that, the team at K33 Research suggested that distributing 142,000 BTC belonging to Mt. Gox could shake up the market and get crypto investors frightened.