Grayscale wins lawsuit against SEC, while the agency settles first NFT case and Friend.tech hype crashes

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In the event you’ve been dreaming about bitcoin spot ETFs, it’s time to speak to somebody exterior of the crypto world. That is coming from somebody who actually had a dream about them this week. Pray for me.

There have been cheers all through the crypto group this week as Grayscale gained its lawsuit towards the SEC with reference to its bitcoin spot ETF software. Whereas there’s nonetheless a 45-day overview interval, many imagine this can be a step in the proper path.

Though this was a win for the digital asset agency, the SEC was additionally making headlines individually for its swimsuit towards an NFT challenge, which was fined $6 million.

In the meantime, in decentralized social media land, the Pal.tech hype — which I covered and highlighted community skepticism about — has fallen as each day transactions plummeted. Particulars under.

This week in web3

The most recent pod

For this week’s new episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Craig Salm, chief authorized officer at Grayscale Investments.

Grayscale is a digital asset funding agency that goals to supply services, like its Grayscale Bitcoin Belief (GBTC), to institutional and particular person traders. The corporate was based in 2014 and is without doubt one of the world’s largest digital asset forex managers. It presently owns 3.4% of excellent bitcoin, “value tens of billions of {dollars},” in keeping with a latest authorized filing.

As talked about above, the agency was making headlines this week after the D.C. Circuit Courtroom of Appeals dominated in favor of Grayscale in a lawsuit towards the U.S. Securities and Alternate Fee (SEC) on the matter of a bitcoin ETF. This ruling is in response to the SEC denying Grayscale’s software to transform its GBTC product right into a bitcoin spot ETF in June 2022.

We mentioned why the ruling issues for Grayscale and its GBTC funding car; in addition to what it might imply for the crypto ecosystem and different corporations like BlackRock and Constancy that additionally filed functions for bitcoin spot ETFs.

We additionally talked concerning the SEC’s argued distinction between bitcoin futures ETFs, which have been accepted by the company, and bitcoin spot ETFs, which haven’t been accepted by the company.

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Comply with the cash

NFT-focused startup FirstMate raised $3.75 million in a spherical led by Dragonfly Capital
Web3 engagement platform Raleon raised $3.8 million in a seed spherical
Coral Finance obtained $500,000 in capital from Momentum Capital
Web3 infrastructure startup Ironmill raised $2.6 million in funding
Builder DAO raised $2 million in a spherical led by Sequoia China and Seven X Ventures

This record was compiled with data from Messari in addition to TechCrunch’s personal reporting.