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⚡Advisers Drive AUM to $12.8 Million Milestone👣

Croxroad

06 Feb 2024 — 4 min read

☕️ GM Dear Plebs!

Here is Crox Road, your daily dose of orange pill that will turn you into a Bitcoin Maxi.

The menu for today:

💕 WisdomTree's Bitcoin ETF Hits $12.8 Million AUM

WisdomTree, as one of the key players in the realm of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), foresees a surge in success for its WisdomTree Bitcoin Fund (BTCW) in the latter half of the year. Will Peck, the head of digital assets at WisdomTree, expressed confidence in the product's appeal to financial advisers. Despite initially lacking a substantial balance sheet compared to some competitors, Peck highlighted the fund's recent robust trading activity, aligning with the company's expectations.

While WisdomTree's BTCW currently holds the smallest amount of assets under management (AUM) among the ten bitcoin ETFs, standing at approximately $12.8 million, Peck remains positive about the future. He points to ongoing discussions with financial advisers and platforms, emphasising the early stage of the competition. Peck believes that in about six months, more advisory platforms will permit trading of these ETFs, providing WisdomTree a strategic advantage over other issuers.

In the broader context of the market, giants like BlackRock and Fidelity lead in AUM, each managing over $3 billion and $2.7 billion, respectively. Despite the challenges, Peck is encouraged by the increasing comfort among platforms with bitcoin as an asset class. He envisions a time when these ETFs will be more widely accessible, fostering a competitive landscape where WisdomTree can flourish.

🎵 Genesis Capital's Bold Move

Bankrupt crypto lender Genesis has requested approval from a U.S. judge to sell assets exceeding $1.6 billion in bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), and ethereum classic (ETC) held in Grayscale's trust products. If granted, this move could introduce significant selling pressure on the bitcoin market, reminiscent of FTX's $1 billion GBTC holdings sale in January, coinciding with a drop in bitcoin's price from $49,000 to $39,000. Genesis had substantial assets, with nearly $1.4 billion in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), now converted to a spot ETF, along with holdings in Grayscale Ethereum Trust and Grayscale Ethereum Classic Trust.

The filing also revealed that some GBTC shares were collateral for Genesis in the Gemini Earn program, with an additional request for 31 million pledged GBTC shares not yet transferred to Gemini. Genesis and Grayscale were integral components of Digital Currency Group's crypto empire, facing challenges and losses amid the 2022 industry downturn, leading to Genesis declaring bankruptcy. Gemini emerges as Genesis' primary creditor, estimating over 100,000 affected users owed between $1 billion and $10 billion. Genesis owes a total of over $3.5 billion to its top 50 creditors, including entities like Cumberland, Mirana, MoonAlpha Finance, and VanEck's New Finance Income Fund.

⛏️ Proof-of-Work and Mining

So, you know how Bitcoin works, right? People make transactions, and those transactions need to be added to the Bitcoin blockchain, which is like a public ledger. Now, imagine a bunch of miners who are like digital bookkeepers trying to add these transactions to the official record.

To make things fair and secure, there's this thing called Proof-of-Work (PoW). It's like a puzzle that miners have to solve before they can add a new block of transactions to the blockchain. This puzzle involves doing a lot of calculations to create a special code called a hash. The miners compete to be the first one to solve this puzzle.

Here's the cool part: the first miner to solve the puzzle gets to add their block of transactions to the blockchain. They also get rewarded with new bitcoins and transaction fees. So, it's kind of like a race among miners to solve the puzzle and be the first to add a new block to the blockchain.

This whole process ensures that adding new blocks to the blockchain is not too easy. It requires real computational effort, making it secure and trustworthy. And that's how Proof-of-Work and mining are connected in the world of Bitcoin!