News
FTX, the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange once helmed by Sam Bankman-Fried, plans to begin paying its main creditors at the end of May, Bloomberg reported based on court proceedings in Delaware this week.
The company has gathered $11.4 billion in cash to distribute to thousands of parties affected by its 2022 bankruptcy, with the first payments to major creditors set for May 30.
These include institutional investors and firms that held crypto on FTX’s platform. Smaller creditors with claims below the $50,000 mark have already begun receiving distributions.
FTX’s collapse left a financial crater and a trail of frustrated creditors—many of whom expected to be repaid in crypto, not dollars. Since the bankruptcy, the price of bitcoin has more than quadrupled, intensifying frustrations among those waiting for their assets back.
The task of unwinding FTX’s balance sheet has been slowed by a large number of claims, many of them reportedly questionable. Andrew Dietderich, a bankruptcy attorney for the firm, told the court that FTX has received “27 quintillion” claims, Blloomberg reported, many of which are duplicates or outright fraudulent.
Interest payments are compounding the urgency. While FTX earns only a modest return on its cash, legitimate creditors are entitled to 9% interest annually on unpaid claims. The longer it takes to pay, the more the company could owe.
Read more: Nearly All FTX Creditors Will Get 118% of Their Funds Back in Cash, Estate Says in New Plan
Cryptocurrency prices have experienced a sharp decline over the last few hours, with bitcoin (BTC) now being down around 3% over the last 24 hours, while major altcoins including XRP, BNB, and SOL are down between 4% and 5% over the same period.
The broader cryptocurrency market, represented by the CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20), lost around 3.3% of its value over the period. The sharp drop brings BTC’s performance down 1.7% for the week, while CD20 is down nearly 5%.
Over the last 24 hours, over $300 million worth of long positions were liquidated on centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, while $38.8 million worth of shorts were liquidated on these platforms, according to CoinGlass data.
The drop appears to be part of a wider derisking move among traders, as investors are anticipating the impact of President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs that are set to come into effect on April 2. The move heightened after core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) data came in hotter than expected on Friday.
Just this week, consumer confidence data dipped further than expected, while the index for future expectations came in at a 12-year low, and well below levels associated with an incoming recession.
This confluence of factors has seen investors reduce their exposure to risk assets and triggered a flight to safety. CoinDesk Data’s latest stablecoin report shows that gold-backed cryptocurrencies have benefitted from the risk-off move, as their market capitalization climbed above $1.4 billion in March.
Gold-backed cryptocurrencies are, in fact, countering the market’s bearish trend. While the CD20 is down over 3% in the last 24-hour period, tokens including PAXG and XAUT are up 0.7% to over $3,100. These tokens are up more than 18% year-to-date, while BTC is down 12.5% and the CD20 index 28% so far this year.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped or paused over a dozen ongoing cases (and lost one) since U.S. President Donald Trump retook office just over two months ago and appointed Commissioner Mark Uyeda as acting chair.
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One left?
The narrative
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission appears to have closed almost all of its outstanding crypto-related cases — at least the publicly disclosed ones — in the last two months since Mark Uyeda took over as acting chair of the agency. In many of the court filings, the SEC argued that it needs to pull these cases while the regulator's new crypto task force reassesses how exactly it applies securities laws to digital assets, though in at least some of these cases the SEC is leaving itself no recourse to sue again should it find some cryptos from previously active suits are indeed securities.
Why it matters
TKTK
Breaking it down
Ripple: Ripple announced it had reached an agreement with the SEC to drop both the SEC's appeal of a federal judge's 2023 ruling and RIpple's cross-appeal. Ripple will receive back $75 million of the $125 million fine it was assessed by a federal judge. The agreement does not yet appear to be on the public court docket.
Coinbase: Coinbase announced last month it had reached an agreement with the SEC to drop the regulator's ongoing case against it. The SEC filed to withdraw the case with prejudice — meaning it cannot bring the same charges again — and a judge signed off on the withdrawal at the end of February. The SEC alleged that Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), Polygon (MATIC), Sandbox (SAND), Filecoin (FIL), Axie Infinity (AXS), Chiliz (CHZ), Flow (FLOW), Internet Computer (ICP), Near (NEAR), Voyager (VGX), Dash (DASH) and Nexo (NEXO) all appeared to be traded as securities in its initial lawsuit.
ConsenSys: The SEC said it would drop its case against ConsenSys over the MetaMask wallet, CEO Joe Lubin said last month, and a joint stipulation dismissing the case with prejudice was filed on March 27. A court docket entry dated March 28 said the civil case was terminated.
Kraken: The SEC told Kraken it would drop its case against the exchange alleging it violated securities laws and commingled customer and corporate funds earlier this month. A joint stipulation dismissing the case was filed on March 27, though a judge does not appear to have signed off just yet.
Cumberland DRW: The SEC told Cumberland DRW it would drop its case alleging it was acting as an unregistered securities dealer earlier this month. The SEC and Cumberland filed a motion to stay proceedings on March 18, saying "the parties have agreed in principle to dismiss this litigation with prejudice" but needed three weeks to work out the details. The judge overseeing the case granted the motion, ordering the parties to file a joint status report by April 8 unless the dismissal filing is on the docket by then.
Pulsechain: A federal judge dismissed the SEC's suit against Pulsechain and HEX, saying the agency did not plausibly show that the project targeted U.S. investors and that it had jurisdiction over the case. The SEC has until April 21 to file an amended complaint.
Immutable: The SEC told Immutable Labs it closed its investigation into the Web3 gaming firm, it said earlier this week.
Yuga Labs: The SEC closed its investigation into Yuga Labs, the NFT firm said earlier this month.
Robinhood: The SEC told trading platform Robinhood it closed its investigation into the company, it said late last month.
OpenSea: The SEC closed its investigation into OpenSea, the NFT marketplace's CEO said late last month.
Uniswap: The SEC closed its investigation into Uniswap Labs, the firm announced last month.
Gemini: The SEC closed its investigation into Gemini, co-founder Cameron Winklevoss said last month.
Binance: The SEC and Binance (alongside the various affiliated parties/co-defendants) filed to pause the regulator's case for 60 days in early February. The judge overseeing the case paused the case until April 14, ordering the parties to file a joint status report by then. The SEC alleged commingling violations alongside securities law violations, as well as allowing U.S. persons to trade on the global platform.
Tron Foundation: The SEC and the Tron Foundation (alongside the various affiliated parties/co-defendants named) filed to pause the SEC's case for 60 days in late February. The judge overseeing the case granted the motion, which should bring the new deadline to around April 27 (a Sunday). The SEC alleged market manipulation and fraud, alongside securities law-related registration violations.
Crypto.com: Crypto.com announced on March 27 that the SEC had closed its case into the crypto exchange and would not take any enforcement action. Trump Media, the company behind Truth Social, is also partnering with the exchange to issue exchange-traded products.
Unicoin: Unicoin appears to be the only publicly-disclosed ongoing investigation by the SEC, though its CEO has asked the agency to close that investigation as well.
HAWK: On Thursday, Haliey Welch, whose "HAWK" token appeared to pump and dump (falling from a $491 million market cap to under $100 million within minutes) when it launched last year, told TMZ that the SEC had closed its investigation into her as well.
Stories you may have missed
Trump-Backed World Liberty Financial Confirms Dollar Stablecoin Plans With BitGo: World Liberty Financial is launching USD1, a stablecoin, on the Ethereum and BNB Chain networks.
Trump Media Wants to Partner with Crypto.Com for ETP Issuance: Trump Media, the company behind the Truth Social social network, wants to launch crypto exchange-traded products with Crypto.com.
U.S. House Stablecoin Bill Poised to Go Public, Lawmaker Atop Crypto Panel Says: The House's latest stablecoin bill draft more closely aligns with the Senate's GENIUS Bill, which passed out of committee already, Rep. Bryan Steil said at the Digital Chamber's annual conference.
Trump-Tied World Liberty Financial Pitches Its Stablecoin in Washington With Don Jr.: Donald Trump Jr. and other World Liberty Financial leaders promoted its new stablecoin at the Chamber event.
SEC Drops Investigation into Web3 Gaming Firm Immutable: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped another investigation, this time into Immutable.
Shuttered Russian Crypto Exchange Garantex Rebrands as Grinex, Global Ledger Finds: Garantex is an exchange sanctioned by the U.S. and seized by international law enforcement officials. That does not appear to have stopped some of its operators from rebranding it as Grinex and launching anew, based on on-chain and off-chain data.
Crypto Bill to Combat Illicit Activity Gets New Push After Passing U.S. House in 2024: Reps. Zach Nunn and Jim Himes have reintroduced the Financial Technology Protection Act.
President Trump Pardons Arthur Hayes, 2 Other BitMEX Co-Founders: U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo and Sam Reed, the co-founders of BitMEX. The three had all previously pleaded guilty to Bank Secrecy Act violations and were sentenced to parole.
Sei Foundation Explores Buying 23andMe to Put Genetic Data on Blockchain: This headline is self-explanatory, though I would love to know more about what it would mean to put individuals' genetic data on an immutable public ledger.
This week
Thursday
14:00 UTC (10:00 a.m. ET) Paul Atkins and Jonathan Gould (among others) faced the Senate Banking Committee for their confirmation hearing. Outside of Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) asking questions about Sam Bankman-Fried's parents (and a few other passing references to FTX's collapse), there were no crypto-related questions.
Elsewhere:
(The Atlantic) Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, said he was inadvertently added to a Signal group chat by National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, which contained other key figures in the Trump Administration and where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared details about an imminent strike on Yemen hours before it occurred. Middle East envoy (and World Liberty Financial investor) Steve Witkoff confirmed that he was part of the group through one of his "personal devices," rather than his government-issued secure phone. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence and John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, said the messages were not classified, and The Atlantic published them.
(Wired) A Venmo account named "Michael Waltz" that Wired reports was "connected to accounts bearing the names of people closely associated with him" left its transactions public until after the news organization reached out about it.
(The Verge) U.S. President Donald Trump fired Federal Trade Commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter, both Democrats, reportedly in violation of a Supreme Court precedent. Both have since sued Trump contesting the firings.
(The Washington Post) The IRS is projecting it will collect $500 billion less in 2025 than 2024, the Post reported.
(The New York Times) "SpaceX is positioning itself to see billions of dollars in new federal contracts or other support," the Times reported.
(The Washington Post) Plainclothes officers arrested Tufts University Ph.D student Rumeysa Ozturk and relocated her to a Louisiana facility. The Department of Homeland Security said she "engaged in activities in support of Hamas," but has not published any evidence supporting the claim. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he canceled Ozturk's visa because she was "creating a ruckus," but does not appear to allege she committed any crimes.
If you’ve got thoughts or questions on what I should discuss next week or any other feedback you’d like to share, feel free to email me at nik@coindesk.com or find me on Bluesky @nikhileshde.bsky.social.
You can also join the group conversation on Telegram.
See ya’ll next week!
Hopes for the crypto recovery to continue vanished on Friday, as a market-wide rout erased virtually all gains from earlier this week.
Bitcoin (BTC), hovering just below $88,000 a day ago, tumbled to $83,800 recently and is down 3.8% over the past 24 hours. The broad-market benchmark CoinDesk 20 Index declined 5.7%, with native cryptos Avalanche (AVAX), Polygon (POL), Near (NEAR), and Uniswap (UNI) all nursing almost 10% losses during the same period. Today's sell-off wiped out $115 billion of the total market value of cryptocurrencies, TradingView data shows.
Ethereum's ether (ETH) declined over 6% to extend its downtrend against BTC, falling to its weakest relative price to the largest cryptocurrency since May 2020. Underscoring the bearish trend, spot ETH exchange-traded funds failed to attract any net inflows since early March, while their BTC counterparts saw over $1 billion of inflows in the past two weeks, according to Farside Investors data.
The ugly crypto price action coincided with U.S. stocks selling off during the day on poor economic data, with the S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq index down 2% and 2.8%, respectively. Crypto-focused stocks also suffered heavy losses: Strategy (MSTR), the largest corporate BTC holder, closed the day 10% lower, while crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) dropped 7.7%.
The February PCE inflation report, released this morning, showed a 2.5% year-over-year increase in the price index, with core inflation at 2.8%, slightly above expectations. Consumer spending showed a modest 0.4% rise, though inflation-adjusted figures indicate minimal growth, suggesting potential headwinds for economic growth. The Federal Reserve of Atlanta's GDPNow model now projects the U.S. economy to contract 2.8% in the first quarter, 0.5% adjusted for gold imports and exports, spurring stagflationary fears.
The implementation of broad-scale U.S. tariffs next week—the so-called "Liberation Day' on April 2, as the Trump administration refers to—also compounded investor concerns across markets.
CME gapfill or another leg lower?
Bitcoin has closely correlated with the Nasdaq lately, so U.S. equities rolling over for another leg down could weigh on the broader crypto market. However, on a more optimistic note, today's decline could be BTC filling the price gap at around $84,000-$85,000 between Monday's open and the previous week's close on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange futures market. Historically, BTC usually revisited similar CME gaps and a drop to $84,000 was in the cards, CoinDesk senior analyst James Van Straten noted earlier this week.
Read more: Bitcoin's Weekend Surge Forms Another CME Gap, Signaling Possible Drop Back
"At this stage it’s difficult to determine if we have already seen a bottom in 2025," Joel Kruger, market strategist at LMAX Group, said in a market note. Despite the on-going correction, he noted several positive trends such as crypto-friendly policies in the U.S. and more traditional financial firms entering the industry or expanding crypto offerings, which could bode well for digital assets later in the year.
"Any additional setbacks that we might see should be exceptionally well supported into the $70-75k area," he added.
Arthur Hayes, the former CEO of crypto exchange BitMEX, has been granted a pardon by U.S. President Donald Trump, a White House official confirmed Friday.
Trump also pardoned Hayes’ co-founders at BitMEX, Samuel Reed and Benjamin Delo, as well as senior employee Greg Dwyer and BitMEX's operating entity, HDR Global Trading, a BitMEX spokesperson said. CNBC first reported the pardons, which the White House said were signed on Thursday.
In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) brought charges against BitMEX, its three co-founders, and its first employee, Dwyer, accusing them of violating the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). Prosecutors alleged BitMEX advertised itself as a place where customers could use its platform virtually anonymously, without providing basic know-your-customer (KYC) information. All four individuals eventually pleaded guilty and were sentenced to fines and probationary sentences. The exchange itself pleaded guilty to violating the BSA last year.
Hayes faced two years of probation; Delo spent 30 months on probation and Reed 18 months on probation. Dwyer got 12 months of probation.
In a statement, Delo said he and his colleagues had been "wrongfully targeted."
"This full and unconditional pardon by President Trump is a vindication of the position we have always held — that BitMEX, my co-founders and I should never have been charged with a criminal offense through an obscure, antiquated law," he said. "As the most successful crypto exchange of its kind, we were wrongfully made to serve as an example, sacrificed for political reasons and used to send inconsistent regulatory signals. I’m sincerely grateful to the President for granting this pardon to me and my co-founders."
Hayes just said "thank you" on X (formerly known as Twitter).
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered BitMEX to pay $100 million for violating the Commodity Exchange Act and other CFTC regulations in 2021, separately from its DOJ settlements.
Attorneys representing Hayes, Delo and Reed did not immediately return requests for comment.
The reported pardons come just a day after Trump granted a pardon to Trevor Milton, the former CEO of Nikola Motors who was previously convicted of fraud in 2022. In January, Trump made good on long-standing promises to pardon Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht, who was 11 years into a draconian sentence of double life in prison plus 40 years, with no possibility of parole. Since Ulbricht’s pardon, former FTX CEO and convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried has been angling for his own pardon, attempting to curry favor with the Trump administration and appearing on Tucker Carlson in an unauthorized jailhouse interview that landed him in solitary confinement.
Former Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, who pleaded guilty to the same charge as Hayes and served four months in prison last year — making him not only the richest person to ever go to prison in the U.S., but also the only person to ever serve jail time for violating the BSA — has denied reports that he, too, is seeking a pardon from President Trump.
But, Zhao admitted in a recent X post that “no felon would mind a pardon, especially being the only one in US history who was ever sentenced to prison for a single BSA charge.”
UPDATE (March 28, 2025, 20:40 UTC): Adds Delo statement and White House official.
UPDATE (March 28, 21:06 UTC): Adds Hayes.
UPDATE (March 29, 04:15 UTC): Adds Dwyer and HDR.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will no longer instruct banks to get prior sign-off before they engage in crypto activities — a standard that was set in 2022 and that effectively severed institutions from the digital assets sector as they waited for approvals that never came.
The FDIC, which is the chief federal supervisor of thousands of typically smaller banks and runs the banking industry's government backstop, had occupied a significant role in the crypto debanking saga. A courtroom fight with crypto exchange Coinbase had recently unveiled dozens of letters between the regulator and banks it supervised. In that 2022 correspondence, the FDIC had instructed them to steer clear of new crypto matters while it hashed out policies, though the agency never developed any and left bankers hanging.
The new industry guidance issued on Friday comes after President Donald Trump elevated a crypto-friendly leadership at the FDIC and other financial regulators and has directed his administration to open doors for the industry.
“With today’s action, the FDIC is turning the page on the flawed approach of the past three years,” said FDIC Acting Chairman Travis Hill, in a statement. “I expect this to be one of several steps the FDIC will take to lay out a new approach for how banks can engage in crypto- and blockchain-related activities in accordance with safety and soundness standards.”
Read More: Trump's FDIC Chief Rethinks Crypto Guidance as U.S. Senators Probe Debanking
Banks that were once expected to get pre-approvals on crypto matters can now forge ahead, as long as they're appropriately considering the risks.
Bo Hines, the White House's director of its council of digital assets advisers cheered the FDIC's move in a social media post, calling it a "huge step forward."
The guidance to seek pre-approvals was a common stance across all three U.S. banking agencies, including the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The OCC also acted recently to rescind its similar 2022 guidance, which had emerged as the digital assets sector was beset by failure and high-profile fraud, and global exchange FTX was steering toward disaster.
Read More: OCC Says Banks Can Engage in Crypto Custody and Certain Stablecoin Activities
UPDATE (March 28, 2025, 18:42 UTC): Adds comment from a White House official.
Shares of CoreWeave (CRWV) opened at $39 apiece during the company’s debut on Nasdaq on Friday afternoon, just under its initial public offering which closed Thursday evening.
The cloud computing firm had sold roughly 37.5 million shares at $40 each, raising about $1.5 billion for its initial public offering (IPO), making it the largest tech offering since 2021. It had, however, initially planned to file the offering at $47 to $55 a share at a much higher valuation than it ultimately saw.
Nvidia, an early investor in the company, placed a $250 million order in the offering.
Some experts speculated that the stock’s debut wouldn’t see the success it had hoped for. Bloomberg Opinion US technology columnist Dave Lee, for example, pointed out the company’s large debt, reliance on just a few big customers and lack of diversity in revenue may be an issue.
“CoreWeave stands to be a bellwether for the AI industry as a whole — a must-watch stock as questions about return on investment grow ever louder,” Lee wrote in an op-ed on Friday. “Even the slightest indication of shakiness in the belief of AI sends investors into a tailspin.”
The current risk-off environment caused by the overall macro situation in the U.S., mainly due to recent tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump, which has caused a sell off in tech stocks, could also have weighed on CoreWeave’s IPO.
Baanx, a cryptocurrency debit card enabler for the likes of MetaMask and 1inch, has introduced a rewards wallet combining on-chain finance with traditional loyalty perks and discounts, using underlying technology from Circle, the provider of the USDC stablecoin.
Built on Circle’s programmable wallet tech, the Baanx platform allows crypto holders access to cashback, fee discounts, subscription perks and exclusive gated experiences, according to a press release.
An ongoing convergence between traditional card networks and the on-chain world of stablecoins and decentralized finance (DeFi) has seen Mastercard partner with Web3 wallet MetaMask, and more recently reports of Visa in talks with Sam Altman’s World Network.
The rewards wallet offering helps bridge the gap between blockchain and everyday financial needs, said Baanx Chief Commercial Officer Simon Jones.
“We've built the Rewards Wallet using Circle to offer rewards on a crypto debit card that are unprecedented, and so incentivizing users to go down the route of non-custodial spend,” Jones said in an interview. “For instance, if you look at the MataMask card, it’s up to 6% cash-back for the first month.”
Circle, famous as the creator of the $60 billion stablecoin USDC, offers programmable wallet infrastructure that allows for adding features to multiple crypto projects without having to change the user interface, Jones said.
“We are pushing USDC as the main treasury token and incentive program within these products, as opposed to Tether [USDT],” he said.
Sanja Kon, VP of partnerships & business development, Europe at Circle said in a statement: “Circle Wallets provide a fantastic foundation for the Rewards Wallet. By integrating this technology, Baanx is bringing real-world value to crypto users in new and exciting ways.”
It was a bad week for crypto prices, with BTC and ETH both falling and the CoinDesk 20, which covers 80% of the market, losing 7% since Monday.
But less speculative assets showed plenty of volume. Stablecoins, in particular, were the name of the game this week.
The U.S. House introduced a stablecoin bill, following up on the Senate version that was approved by committee last week. Jesse Hamilton reported. Wyoming (aka “The Blockchain State”) wants its own stablecoin and it’s testing the idea on Avalanche, Solana and Ethereum, Kris Sandor reported.
World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the financial protocol backed by Donald Trump and his family, confirmed the launch of its stablecoin (USD1) this week. And Don Trump Jr. trumpeted the news at the DC Blockchain Summit.
Meanwhile, Fidelity Investment, an early TradFi innovator in crypto, is in the advanced stages of launching its own stablecoin. The venture is part of a strategy to enter the tokenized bond market, Jamie Crawley reported.
Meanwhile, Circle, the issuer of the second biggest stablecoin (USDC), has finally secured a license to operate in Japan in partnership with local heavyweight SBI Holdings, Sam Reynolds reported.
In news from our Europe team, Ian Allison had a scoop about Sam Altman's World Network holding talks with Visa on linking on-chain card features to a self-custody crypto wallet.
Will Canny heard from a source that Sam Hill, Zodia Custody's COO had left and was returning to a role in TradFi. He was able to persuade the Standard Chartered-backed company to confirm the move and we beat the competition with the story.
Canny followed up the next day with a story, unreported elsewhere, on the wave of senior staff losses at crypto prime broker FalconX. (BlackRock, by contrast, was adding talent to its digital assets team in the U.S.)
We continued to report on Strategy (MicroStrategy), pioneer of the corporate bitcoin treasury. Christine Lee had a two-hour interview with executive chairman Michael Saylor, where he mused about bitcoin as a $200 trillion asset and promised to burn bitcoin in the name of immortality.
Strategy has invested about $33 billion in bitcoin so far through various stock offerings, both common and preferred. And James Van Straten explained the differences between the company's fund-raising instruments for bitcoin purchases. Tom Carreras followed up later with a nice piece showing how MSTR stockholders might be at risk from Saylor’s buy-every-bitcoin strategy.
Meanwhile, the SEC continued to drop enforcement actions against crypto companies (Immutable was the latest, as Cheyenne Ligon reported). But, strangely, one involving Unicoin stayed open, much to the CEO’s chagrin.
It almost felt like a normal sort of week — more incremental than monumental. But then the president’s own media company announced that it was launching its own ETFs and ETPs with Crypto.com. Thankfully, crypto still has the power to surprise.
An investment firm with ties to U.S. President Donald Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., is putting some of its excess cash into a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) — an unusual twist on the increasingly popular strategy of holding bitcoin as a corporate reserve.
Dominari Holdings (DOMH), located in the Trump Tower in New York City, made headlines last month after the Trump brothers joined its 58-year-old board of advisors and became investors.
In an earnings report on Friday, it announced that it would adopt a bitcoin reserve strategy and invest a portion of its cash reserves into BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), the largest spot bitcoin ETF on the market.
According to the report, Dominari has committed $2 million to buy shares of IBIT as of now. The stock has a market cap of about $70 million and has fallen more than 9% on Friday's trading.
Most companies that adopt a bitcoin reserve strategy buy the cryptocurrency outright and self-custody it or use a custodian. Dominari is instead gaining exposure through a regulated exchange-traded fund, a move that may appeal to firms looking for easier compliance and cleaner accounting.
The move isn’t surprising, given Donald Trump Jr.’s interest in crypto. The president’s son is involved in many crypto projects and has become an unofficial spokesperson for his father’s enthusiasm.
Just earlier this week, World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the financial protocol backed by President Donald Trump and his family, pitched its own stablecoin at a crypto event in Washington.