This Week on Crypto Twitter: ETF Preppers and Whistleblowers

Prices rallied for the second week in a row, driven by feverish speculation on whether or not asset management titan BlackRock will launch a Bitcoin spot ETF in the U.S. soon. 

It’s looking increasingly likely that an ETF is coming. Several companies have filed recent applications with the SEC, and BlackRock is not necessarily winning the race. On Monday, The U.S. Court of Appeals issued its highly anticipated order for the SEC to review Grayscale’s application after it was previously determined that the SEC’s rejection of it was “arbitrary and capricious.”

In any case, cloud software company MicroStrategy was reaping the rewards of being crypto’s biggest institutional whale this week when its $5 billion Bitcoin war chest went back in the green. 

Bloomberg ETF expert Eric Balchunas spotted something interesting on BlackRock’s recently amended prospectus for its ETF application. Changes of note include acknowledgment of competition in the race for ETF approval and detailed explanations of the product’s pricing and reporting mechanisms. 

Public funds were also up on Monday, according to a screenshot tweeted by @PillageCapital.

That day, blockchain sleuth @ZackXBT tracked some hefty darkweb money flows.

On Tuesday, crypto journalist Joe Light noticed that a ticker for BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, IBTC, was listed by the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC)—a huge clearing and settlement company that clears NASDAQ trades. But then it was removed. Then added back to the DTCC’s ETF list.

Fallen crypto lender BlockFi, which filed for bankruptcy soon after FTX, announced its emergence from bankruptcy. 

Pro-crypto Republican and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer tweeted his unambiguous support for Trump in next year’s Presidential elections. 

An ominous video of a man explaining how a hybrid AI/crypto scam targeted him made the rounds on several social media platforms, including Twitter. 

An account claiming to act as a whistleblower uncovering “the nefarious acts of [3AC co-founders] Su Zhu, Kyle Davies & [CoinFLEX founder] Mark Lamb” hit Twitter with a laundry list of allegations on Thursday.

Finally, news broke that day that Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen had failed to convince a U.S. District Judge that they hadn’t illegally appropriated Yuga Labs’s trademarked BAYC franchise. 

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.