Weekly Recap, March 25th – 29th

BTC hits $72,000

Last Week

 VanEck doubles down on their spot Bitcoin strategy, offering investment into their ETF with no fees for the next year.

• VanEct manages the VanEck Bitcoin Trust HODL.
• Investors can invest in HODL with no fees up until March 31, 2025.
• This could be a strategic move to bring in new customers and stay competitive against other spot Bitcoin ETFs.

Monday, March 25, 2024

Binance hits $100 billion assets under management, up from $40 billion earlier this year.

• Some of this growth is due to the surge in prices of digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Coinbase attempts to combat system downtime.  High demand for crypto products and the steep spike in bitcoin’s price caused surges on the Coinbase system led to widespread outages.  In response, the exchange plans to invest in its infrastructure and hopes to reduce these outages in the future.

• The surge in Bitcoin price at new all-time highs sparked more than 10 times the surge in traffic to the company’s site.
• Coinbase CEO says that their internal expectations underestimated just how quickly the surges could hit.

Wednesday, March 27 2024

The Department of Justice charged KuCoin, one of the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchanges, with failing to comply with the government’s anti-money laundering program.

• The DoJ claims KuCoin failed to properly vet customers and wasn’t registered as a money transmitter as required by FinCen regulations.  The SEC is also
• The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a separate lawsuit against the exchange.  This suit alleges that KuCoin failed to follow regulation requiring the exchange to register futures and swaps trading.

Thursday, March 28 2024

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of FTX, was sentenced to 25 years of prison following the FTX collapse.

• The judge in the court required SBF to forfeit $11 billion.
• Although SBF can appeal the sentencing, he will not be able to seek parole.