Here are some of the major developments from the world of crypto over the past few days
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is seeking comments from the public on proposed changes that would restrict or allow the listing and trading of Ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs). In separate notices published on April 2, 2024, the SEC said that the public will have 21 days to respond to ETH ETF proposals from asset managers Bitwise, Fidelity, and Grayscale once they are posted on the public record.
Bitwise and Grayscale’s ETF proposal to list and trade on NYSE Arca and Fidelity on the Cboe BZX market comes ahead of the commission’s final decision on the investment vehicle, expected in May this year.
The Ether ETF spot offered by investment management firm VanEck, with a May 23, 2024 deadline, will likely be the first spot offered by the SEC. Several other asset managers, including those from Hashdex and ARK 21Shares, have similar filings on the way.
Crypto exchange Binance is facing more issues in Nigeria, as authorities in Abuja have pressed more charges against Binance’s United States-based executives, Tigran Gambaryan, who is in detention, and Nadeem Anjarwalla, who escaped detention and fled using a fake passport.
Binance has now asked regulators in Nigeria to let go of Gambaryan even as authorities are on the lookout for Anjarwalla.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Binance has been actively working with authorities in Nigeria since local regulators blamed the crypto exchange for helping crash its fiat currency, the naira, in February 2024. Bayo Onanuga, the presidential adviser on information and strategy, suggested banning platforms like Binance in Nigeria.
In response to the threat of the ban, Gambaryan and Anjarwalla came to Nigeria to attempt to find a dialogue with local authorities. However, both were detained even after Binance urgently delisted all naira transactions and stopped peer-to-peer naira transactions in February. The exchange argued that the executive had decision-making power at the company and should not be held responsible while discussions were ongoing between Binance and Nigerian government officials.
While Gambaryan remains detained in Nigeria, Anjarwalla reportedly fled using a fake passport in March 2024. According to local reports, Anjarwalla fled detention on March 22, 2024 after he was taken to a nearby mosque for prayers. Nigeria’s law enforcement authority, the Economic Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), is preparing to charge Gambaryan and Anjarwalla with five counts of money laundering of over $35.4 million, local online newspaper Nairametrics reported.
Ethereum’s layer 2 scaling networks will hit a $1 trillion market capitalization in six years and will be made up of thousands of use case-specific chains, analysts at investment manager Van Eck have said.
“Layer-2 Blockchains are set to capitalise on Ethereum’s “primary challenge” — its “limited capacity to process, store, and compute data,” Van Eck’s senior digital assets investment analyst Patrick Bush and digital assets research head Matthew Sigel said in a report on April 3, 2024. Bush and Sigel reached their $1 trillion market cap prediction by estimating that Ethereum would take up 60 per cent of the market share across all public Blockchains and then estimating the volume of assets within the Ethereum ecosystem.
There are currently 46 Ethereum L2s with $39 billion total value locked, the largest being Arbirtum with $18 billion. “Ethereum’s dominance in smart contracts faces a critical hurdle: scalability. While the network offers unparalleled security and decentralization, transaction fees and processing times soar when usage intensifies,” they wrote in their report.