The Scoop

Michelle Bond has been focused on financial regulation for decades, and a turn to crypto policy a few years ago led her to take the helm at the Association for Digital Assets Markets by the end of 2020.ADAM is a trade association for crypto markets, featuring a code of conduct that requires its members to commit to operating with certain requirements of transparency and speed."ADAM is 100% a standards-setting body," Bond said during the most recent episode of The Scoop. ADAM's membership includes such industry players as Anchorage, Paxos and Genesis and the group functions as a collective voice for its members. The group's ultimate goal is to provide for the crypto market what FINRA is to securities brokerages: an industry-spearheading body for self-regulation."We would like to, one day, become a self-regulatory organization. We believe that that is not something that is decreed, that is earned. At the current moment, we're setting the standards," said Bond.Among major issues of the day, Bond noted that industry participants are awaiting a response from the Treasury's FinCEN office on the recently closed comments on its proposal to monitor rules. Less publicized but still critical is custody. Financial regulators in Washington, Bond said, "are 1,000% asking questions and grappling with custody."As always, writing up such policies for crypto finance entails a combination of technological and legal savvy. This is where self-regulation comes in. Though Bond, like much of the industry, lamented the lack of coherent frameworks from financial watchdogs like her former workplace, the SEC, she identified the situation as fairly standard:"Regulators will never come right out and endorse anything. That will never happen. And that makes sense; that's not their job."But by presenting a code for how to operate in today's fast-moving crypto market, ADAM aims to accomplish what regulators have not. This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Bakkt and Kraken. Bakkt® unlocks the $1.2+ trillion of digital assets that is currently held in cryptocurrencies, rewards and loyalty points, gaming assets and merchant stored value. We began in 2018 with the vision to bring trust and transparency to digital assets. Through the Bakkt Warehouse and Bakkt Bitcoin Futures and Options contracts, we serve institutional clients in an end-to-end regulated market with true price transparency. For consumers, Bakkt aggregates digital assets to enable instant liquidity and to empower users to trade, transfer and pay however they want. Visit Bakkt.com for more informationWhether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today.

After much anticipation, Uniswap v3 — the latest upgrade to the Ethereum-based decentralized exchange — was announced Tuesday.On this episode of The Scoop, The Block Research's Mika Honkasalo walked through the designed upgrade, explaining the significance of Uniswap's adoption of "concentrated liquidity" which aims to make trading on the platform more capital efficient. In Honkasalo's view, this move will help with the adoption of Uniswap among traders and perhaps serve as a tailwind for the broader DeFi market. "I think this is why Uniswap really had nowhere to go in their design except move towards this sort of active liquidity provision because that’s something that works with traditional markets,” he said, adding:"I think what this unlocks next is the possibility to support just more volumes, especially in combination with the L2 launch, which hopefully comes very quickly after the L1 launch is to really start competing against centralized exchanges."Uniswap v3 — set to be implemented in May — will also include Uniswap's adoption of scaling solution Optimism, which aims to reduce gas fees.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Bakkt and KrakenBakkt® unlocks the $1.2+ trillion of digital assets that is currently held in cryptocurrencies, rewards and loyalty points, gaming assets and merchant stored value. We began in 2018 with the vision to bring trust and transparency to digital assets. Through the Bakkt Warehouse and Bakkt Bitcoin Futures and Options contracts, we serve institutional clients in an end-to-end regulated market with true price transparency. For consumers, Bakkt aggregates digital assets to enable instant liquidity and to empower users to trade, transfer and pay however they want. Visit Bakkt.com for more informationWhether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today.

Digital artist Beeple sold his collection of 5000 daily works for a whopping $69 million in a Christie's auction last week. That's the third-highest auction price on record for a living artist, but the sale was record breaking for another reason — it was sold as a non-fungible token (NFT).In recent weeks, NFTs have soared in popularity, and that's created opportunities for big and small artists alike to generate value for their work. The Block's Saniya More sat down with Cory Van Lew, an artist who's been tokenizing his work on SuperRare, with some pieces going for tens of thousands of dollars. He's taken a lot of that profit and reinvested it in the NFT market by supporting other artists, but he has even bigger aspirations — he's just started the process of creating his own NFT gallery in the physical world. On this week's episode of The Scoop, he talked about what a merged digital and reality gallery would look like, as well as: How Van Lew began his career as an artist and how that led him to tokenizing his work. The nuts and bolts of turning a creation into an NFT. Why holding NFTs creates different value than say holding a print of an artwork. His take on the energy use conversations surrounding NFTs. Why the NFT community is a supportive space for creators and collectors. This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Bakkt and KrakenBakkt® unlocks the $1.2+ trillion of digital assets that is currently held in cryptocurrencies, rewards and loyalty points, gaming assets and merchant stored value. We began in 2018 with the vision to bring trust and transparency to digital assets. Through the Bakkt Warehouse and Bakkt Bitcoin Futures and Options contracts, we serve institutional clients in an end-to-end regulated market with true price transparency. For consumers, Bakkt aggregates digital assets to enable instant liquidity and to empower users to trade, transfer and pay however they want. Visit Bakkt.com for more informationWhether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today.

Fidelity Digital Assets — the cryptocurrency division of multi-trillion asset manager Fidelity — is among the several firms riding the institutional bitcoin wave. FDA, which launched amid a bitcoin bear market in 2018, offers trading and custody services to a wide range of institutional firms. On this episode of The Scoop, Fidelity's Christine Sandler — a veteran of the trading world — walked through the breakneck growth of the crypto market in the past six months and explained how Fidelity has positioned itself during this period. Sandler, who previously held positions at Coinbase, New York Stock Exchange, and Barclays, said Fidelity's crypto unit experienced 4x growth during 2020 and is currently working with hedge funds, corporates, family offices, and registered investment advisers."Our overall account growth was absolutely phenomenal," Sandler said. "We saw participation across all segments. So whether it was corporations adopting it and putting assets on their balance sheet, or hedge funds beginning to approach this from a strategic perspective, registered investment advisors, family offices, ultra-high net worth individuals."Fidelity also works with large banks on sub-custody, according to Sandler. She said that these banks have sought out partners as they look to enter the market."They’re starting to see more of their core customers adopt either strategies or maybe think about launching an asset management business in the space and perhaps this creates this opportunity that it’s not this fledgling business anymore," she said. "It is potentially much more viable."Sandler also discusses the growth of the crypto credit market, women in the crypto market, and rich crypto valuations during this episode of The Scoop.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Bakkt and KrakenBakkt® unlocks the $1.2+ trillion of digital assets that is currently held in cryptocurrencies, rewards and loyalty points, gaming assets and merchant stored value. We began in 2018 with the vision to bring trust and transparency to digital assets. Through the Bakkt Warehouse and Bakkt Bitcoin Futures and Options contracts, we serve institutional clients in an end-to-end regulated market with true price transparency. For consumers, Bakkt aggregates digital assets to enable instant liquidity and to empower users to trade, transfer and pay however they want. Visit Bakkt.com for more informationWhether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today.

The market for non-fungible tokens, digital collectibles, and tokenized music is hitting the mainstream. On Thursday, Beeple's NFT-powered suite of 5,000 images sold for a staggering $69 million, making it the third-highest figure paid for work by a living artist. Indeed, the sale sent shockwaves across the broader press, cementing NFT's place in the mainstream consciousness.The market has been growing at a fast clip, with weekly users on NFT platforms soaring from around 20,000 at the beginning of the year to nearly 200,000 this week, according to data from The Block. On this episode of The Scoop, The Block's Frank Chaparro and Ryan Todd unpack the market's recent headlines with DJ and music producer 3Lau.Performing artist 3Lau has long been focused on the intersection of music and crypto. Recently, he tokenized an album in a move that netted the Long Island native more than $11 million.In this episode of The Scoop, the group discusses how tokenization will usurp record labels and put more money in the pockets of artists, his plans for helping more artists get involved in NFTs, and what makes this current crypto boom cycle different from the initial coin offering rally. "You have these middlemen that have capitalized on artists' emotions and their lack of financial savviness," he said, describing the record labels and managing companies that capture much of the value from a musician's work.Through NFTs, artists can now engage directly with their audiences. "Beeple is an example of that as someone who makes amazing stuff. Will there be speculation in the short term? Yes. Will there be innovation in the long term? Yes," he said, adding:"But in the end, just like with any market, there is a period of price discovery and that's what we're going through right now. The difference between this and what happened with the ICO boom in 2017: back then, people were buying ideas that could barely be delivered upon. Now people are buying things that give them emotions."This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Bakkt and KrakenBakkt® unlocks the $1.2+ trillion of digital assets that is currently held in cryptocurrencies, rewards and loyalty points, gaming assets and merchant stored value. We began in 2018 with the vision to bring trust and transparency to digital assets. Through the Bakkt Warehouse and Bakkt Bitcoin Futures and Options contracts, we serve institutional clients in an end-to-end regulated market with true price transparency. For consumers, Bakkt aggregates digital assets to enable instant liquidity and to empower users to trade, transfer and pay however they want. Visit Bakkt.com for more informationWhether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today.

The market for non-fungible tokens and digital collectibles has been growing at a breakneck pace, with projects like Dapper Lab's NBA Top Shot seeing user activity and transaction volumes soar.Since the beginning of the year, the burgeoning market — which runs the gamut of sports collectibles to digital cats — has seen more than half a billion in weekly trade volumes, according to data compiled by The Block. On this episode of The Scoop, Gary Vaynerchuk — the Internet personality, entrepreneur, and CEO of VaynerMedia—broke down what's taking place beyond the hype and why he thinks NFTs are going to be the internet's next big thing after the development of social media.Vaynerchuk is best known for his angel investments in tech giants like Facebook, Twitter, Venmo, and Uber. This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Bakkt and KrakenBakkt® unlocks the $1.2+ trillion of digital assets that is currently held in cryptocurrencies, rewards and loyalty points, gaming assets and merchant stored value. We began in 2018 with the vision to bring trust and transparency to digital assets. Through the Bakkt Warehouse and Bakkt Bitcoin Futures and Options contracts, we serve institutional clients in an end-to-end regulated market with true price transparency. For consumers, Bakkt aggregates digital assets to enable instant liquidity and to empower users to trade, transfer and pay however they want. Visit Bakkt.com for more informationWhether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today. 

ARK Invest has had quite the 2021. Since the beginning of the year—underpinned by unprecedented trading volumes and retail activity—ARK has seen its assets under management soar, buoyed by its bets high-growth tech stocks. Many of the names ARK has backed overlap with the stocks that have become darlings among the Wall Street Bets crowd. Indeed, ARK has grown into a heavy-hitter on Wall Street, with the Wall Street Journal referring to founder Cathie Wood as having on of "Wall Street's hottest hands."The latest few trading sessions, whoever, the firm has experienced a reckoning. The firm's Ark Innovation fund—which includes Tesla, Square, and Silvergate—has fallen sharply past the overall market, as The Journal noted. The $23 billion fund is down more than 30% off its highs. On this episode of The Scoop, Brett Winton—the firm's head of research—breaks down the firm's insurmountable rise, the recent market volatility and macro backdrop, Wall Street Bets and the explosion in retail trading, and the big ideas within the crypto and bitcoin that ARK finds interesting. This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Bakkt and KrakenBakkt® unlocks the $1.2+ trillion of digital assets that is currently held in cryptocurrencies, rewards and loyalty points, gaming assets and merchant stored value. We began in 2018 with the vision to bring trust and transparency to digital assets. Through the Bakkt Warehouse and Bakkt Bitcoin Futures and Options contracts, we serve institutional clients in an end-to-end regulated market with true price transparency. For consumers, Bakkt aggregates digital assets to enable instant liquidity and to empower users to trade, transfer and pay however they want. Visit Bakkt.com for more informationWhether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today.

Led by Ethereum 2.0 developer and Prysmatic Labs founder Preston Van Loon and Joe Sticco, Cryptex is set to launch the mainnet of its token TCAP in the next few weeks. Already, the firm has lined up 500 users for its testnet, including a number of liquidity providers in the US.On this episode of The Scoop, Sticco and Van Loon breakdown the launch of their token, which offers investors a way to buy the entire crypto market, how DeFi can offer an alternative to indexes popular on Wall Street, and the scaling solutions being explored in Ethereum. This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Bakkt and KrakenBakktBakkt® unlocks the $1.2+ trillion of digital assets that is currently held in cryptocurrencies, rewards and loyalty points, gaming assets and merchant stored value. We began in 2018 with the vision to bring trust and transparency to digital assets. Through the Bakkt Warehouse and Bakkt Bitcoin Futures and Options contracts, we serve institutional clients in an end-to-end regulated market with true price transparency. For consumers, Bakkt aggregates digital assets to enable instant liquidity and to empower users to trade, transfer and pay however they want. Visit Bakkt.com for more informationKrakenWhether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today.

Regulators in Canada approved two bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in recent days, marking the first approvals of their kind for North America.Since launch, the products have seen considerable inflows. With the demand for a bitcoin ETF now proven, many wonder what a Canadian approval could mean for a U.S. offering. The Scoop spoke with Eric Balchunas, a senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, about what an approved bitcoin ETF means for the landscape. During this week's episode Balchunas broke down the winding road to approval and why Canada was always likely to be a first.Now that Canada has its BTC ETFs, he argued that an approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is just around the corner."I think it's just a matter of the SEC coming around, and then once they come around mentally, I imagine it will happen pretty quickly," he said. "But again, I'm not in that bubble. I'm not a regulatory analyst. That's just my sense from talking to people." How Canada has historically been a proving ground for novel financial products. The differences and similarities in the Canadian and U.S. approval processes. Why Balchunas thinks 2021 will be the year of a U.S. BTC ETF approval. Why it's only a matter of time before a meme ETF launches. This episode is brought to you by KrakenWhether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today. 

Thursday morning, Coinbase's S-1 filing went public, revealing for the first time details about its financials, cap table, and its pitch to the investment world ahead of a planned direct listing on Nasdaq.In this episode of The Scoop, The Block's director of news Frank Chaparro and director of research Larry Cermak unpack the S-1 filing's headline-grabbing sections and the broader implications of Coinbase's plan on the broader bitcoin market. Coinbase has been preparing to go public for several months. For the past several weeks, the firm's shares have been changing hands on Nasdaq Private Market, with the most recent secondary shares clearing at an average of $373 — implying a valuation of $100 billion. In this episode of The Scoop, Chaparro and Cermak explore Coinbase's revenues, how the firm's institutional business has surged in lockstep with bitcoin's price run-up, and how Coinbase's position as a public company will impact the firm and wider market.