Competing Institutions, Exchange Downtime, and More Spot BTC ETFs.

Crypto Weekly Recap

BTC hits $64,000.

Monday, February 26

In a milestone for iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), daily trading volume crossed the $1 billion threshold on Monday, February 26, 2024. 

• IBIT is Blackrock’s spot bitcoin ETF.  It currently has $6.65B AUM, making it the second largest spot Bitcoin ETF.
  • AUM stands for Assets Under Management, and in this case refers to the total market value of Bitcoin managed by Blackrock on behalf of its clients through IBIT. 
  • IBIT is second to GBTC, which has $23.76B AUM. 

Tuesday, February 27

Kraken targets institutional investors in a move that could curb Coinbase dominance.

• Coinbase has largely been the go-to for American Institutional investors, acting as custodian for 8 spot bitcoin ETFs.  This move by Kraken will likely seek to grab some of that market share for themselves.
• The new service, called Kraken Institutional, seeks to be a one-stop point of contact for institutions seeking access to crypto.
  • An institutional investor is a company or organization that manages money for clients.  Examples of this could include hedge funds, endowments, insurance companies, etc.
  • In contrast, a retail investor is usually an individual who invests for their own benefit and not on behalf of others.

Wednesday, February 28

Coinbase, the second largest crypto exchange, experienced significant errors that caused users accounts to reflect a $0 balance and even prevented some from logging in at all. 

• During this period BTC dropped below $60,000 on the exchange.
• The CEO of Coinbase pointed to large traffic surges that exceeded the company’s expected traffic to their site as the cause of the outages.

Thursday, February 29

Wells Fargo has jumped into crypto by joining the spot Bitcoin ETF train this week. 

• The service is only available to certain eligible clients upon request.
• Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch has also jumped on the bandwagon and now offers investors exposure to BTC through a spot Bitcoin ETF.

Friday, March 1

Bitcoin becomes the 14^th largest currency, beating out the Russian RUB.