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CI Global Asset Manager filed a preliminary prospectus for its CI Galaxy Bitcoin ETF Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) with the Ontario Securities Commission. The ETF, if approved, would be Canada's third after Evolve and Purpose launched their own this week. Purpose's ETF launched yesterday on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Fidelity has filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission informing them of a new fund dedicated to bitcoin. The Wise Origin Bitcoin Index Fund I, LP was incorporated this year and is being run from the Fidelity's Boston headquarters. The early documentation provides little in the way of details about the fund, and shows that zero investors have currently participated. But the minimum investment to join the pooled investment fund is $100,000, indicating this is likely only for institutional and accredited investors.

Crypto fund manager Grayscale Investments is accumulating Bitcoin at a rate equivalent to 150% of the new coins created by miners since the May 11 block reward halving. According to data published by independent crypto researcher Kevin Rooke, Grayscale has added 18,910 BTC to its Bitcoin Investment Trust since the halving, while only 12,337 Bitcoins have been mined since May 11.

A Fidelity survey of 774 institutional investors found that more than one-third of firms worldwide have invested in digital assets or derivatives. While 36% of institutions own crypto globally, multinational financial services company Fidelity found that only 27% of the 441 U.S. institutions surveyed are exposed to crypto - although that's up from 22% last year. Close to half of European institutions are long on virtual assets.

Price discrepancies between the same assets on different exchanges, which have long been arbitraged away in stock and bond markets but still exist in crypto, also offer traders a way to make money. But achieving those returns has often proved a bumpy ride for hedge fund investors. A 39 per cent drop in the price of bitcoin on March 12 caught many funds by surprise, leading to large losses and some fund closures, particularly among those running high levels of risk.

New York-based Signature Bank announced a new client service - a blockchain-based digital payments platform called Signet, with Fireblocks. Fireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform that settles digital security transfers between members and exchanges. Fireblocks serves digital asset exchanges, custodians, banks, trading desks and hedge funds like SWIFT serves the currency markets. Signature Bank can now enable their commercial clients to access its blockchain-based, real-time payments platform through the Fireblocks network.

Guggenheim Funds Trust filed an amendment with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to allow its $5 billion Macro Opportunities Fund gain exposure to bitcoin by investing up to 10% of the fund's net asset value in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). The Macro Opportunities Fund is part of Guggenheim Investments, the global asset management and investment advisory division of Guggenheim Partners, and has more than $233 billion in total assets across fixed income, equity and alternative strategies.

Coinmetrics analysis seems to confirm that bitcoin's upward price movements since late October have mostly happened during US market hours, when the traditional equity markets were open. This potentially suggests that price rises are being driven by a new wave of institutional buyers who are active during the day and relatively inactive on nights and weekends. The Thanksgiving weekend down spike seems consistent with this story. Prices plummeted on the night of Wednesday the 25th and over Thanksgiving (potentially related to a large CME bitcoin futures gap to close the month) and then bounced back again on Monday, November 30th once markets re-opened.

S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&P DJI) is launching global crypto-asset index capabilities with Lukka, a New York City-based crypto asset software and data company. S&P DJI will provide S&P DJI-branded and customized indexing and benchmarking solutions supported by Lukka's proprietary crypto asset pricing data.

Trading in Bitwise Asset Management's 10 Crypto Index Fund is live. It tracks the 10 largest crypto-assets and allows investors to buy shares that represent them. It is billed as the first publicly traded crypto index fund in the United States. The Fund debuted with $120 million in assets under management. 75% of the assets are Bitcoin, 13% in Ether and the remaining 12% split between XRP, Litecoin, Chainlink, Tezos, Bitcoin Cash, Stellar, and EOS.

Business intelligence firm MicroStrategy ended up issuing $650 million of 0.750% five-year convertible senior notes to qualified institutional buyers. It intends to invest the net proceeds from the sale of the notes in bitcoin in accordance with its Treasury Reserve Policy pending identification of working capital needs and other general corporate purposes. The conversion rate will initially be 2.5126 shares of MicroStrategy class A common stock per $1,000 principal amount of notes, which is equivalent to an initial conversion price of approximately $397.99 per share, roughly a 37.5% premium over the current market price.

According to Caitlin Long, three factors will contribute to a meaningful increase in institutional investment in cryptoassets in 2021. The first is the post-"halving" Bitcoin bull market, which happens every four years after Bitcoin's inflation rate is cut in half, according to its pre-set algorithms. Another factor is the continued significant investment in institutional custody infrastructure to digital assets of all types. The third factor is the explosion of velocity of US dollar stablecoins as financial transactions went increasingly digital around the world, which will continue in 2021 when bank-issued versions will come into the market.

State Street will provide crypto-asset fund administration capabilities for the firm's private funds clients" in partnership with Lukka. Specifically, State Street will leverage Lukka's product suite, which includes a proprietary middle and back-office data management solution, Reference Data, and Prime Pricing Data.

The IMF published a paper that analyzes the relationships between crypto prices and global equity markets and US monetary policy. It identifies a single price component it labels the "crypto factor" that explains 80% of variation in crypto prices, and shows that its increasing correlation with equity markets coincided with the entry of institutional investors into crypto markets. As for equities, US Fed tightening reduces the crypto factor through the risk-taking channel-in contrast to claims that crypto assets provide a hedge against market risk.

The Oliver Wyman Forum, in partnership with DBS, JP Morgan's Onyx, and SBI, published a paper that makes the case for "institutional DeFi" , a system that combines the power and efficiency of decentralized finance (DeFi) software protocols with a level of protections and controls that regulators demand and customers expect. These include identity solutions to enable financial institutions to comply with anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) regulations, strong cybersecurity to minimize the threat of hacking incidents, and recourse mechanisms to make investors whole if something goes wrong.

Investment manager BlackRock has formed a partnership with Coinbase to make crypto-assets directly available to institutional investors. Mutual customers of Coinbase and BlackRock's investment management platform. The access will be granted through Coinbase Prime, an existing integrated trading platform for institutional crypto investors. Aladdin users will be able allow to manage their crypto-asset exposures directly in their existing portfolio management and trading workflows for a whole portfolio view of risk across asset classes. The platform integration and functions will be rolled in phases.

Nasdaq is launching "Nasdaq Digital Assets" which "will initially develop an advanced custody solution that will incorporate liquidity and execution services to address industry challenges around connectivity, availability, and efficiency. Nasdaq's custody solution will bring together attributes of hot and cold crypto wallets which will provide a high degree of accessibility and scalability without compromising security.

Coin Telegraph published a paper on the institutional demand for crypto-assets, based on a survey of more than 6,000 registered professional investors from 11 countries. See also: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/grossjonas_cryptocurrencies-survey-investors-activity-7008681163875622913-1S1w/

A group of former Citigroup executives is starting to offer bitcoin-backed securities that they say don't need the blessing of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Receipts Depositary Corporation (RDC) plans to issue the bitcoin depositary receipts (BTC DRs) to Qualified Institutional Buyers (QIBs) in transactions exempt from registration under the Securities Act of 1933. BTC DRs follow the same construction as American Depositary Receipts (ADRs), and like ADRs, they operate within U.S.-regulated market infrastructure and are cleared through the Depository Trust Company (DTC). BTC DRs have been issued a CUSIP number and an ISIN. https://www.marketsmedia.com/first-bitcoin-depositary-receipt-launches/

The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will not object to requests from Recognized Investment Exchanges (RIEs) to create a UK listed market segment for crypto-asset-backed Exchange Traded Notes (cETNs). These products will be available for professional investors, such as investment firms and credit institutions authorized or regulated to operate in financial markets only. However, the ban on the sale of cETNs (and crypto derivatives) to retail consumers remains in place. On the same day as the FCA announcement (March 11, 2024) the London Stock Exchange confirmed it will accept applications for the admission of Bitcoin and Ethereum cETNs in Q2 2024. https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/n0224-admission-of-bitcoin-and-ethereum-etns-66tuep2iac04hnc.html