Coinbase’s highly anticipated public debut has been pushed back to April after its plans for this month “slipped,” according to a report citing people familiar with the matter.

Latin America’s first bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) has been approved in Brazil. The ETF was launched by QR Asset Management and is expected to list on the country’s main stock exchange B3.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has ordered Coinbase to pay a $6.5 million settlement over allegations the exchange “self-traded” digital assets between January 2015 and September 2018 through two of its automated trading programs.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Coinbase’s Anticipated Direct Listing Delayed Until April
• Latin America’s First Bitcoin ETF Approved in Brazil
• CFTC Orders Coinbase to Pay $6.5 Million to Settle Trading Investigation
• Daily Movers – ONE, THETA, BTT

Coinbase’s Anticipated Direct Listing Delayed Until April

Coinbase’s highly anticipated public debut has been pushed back to April after its plans for this month “slipped,” according to a report citing people familiar with the matter.

While no reason for the delay was given, Bloomberg reports the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been reviewing Coinbase’s plan for a direct listing, an alternative to an initial public offering (IPO).

Coinbase’s investors have registered for as many as 114.9 million shares to trade when the stock lists. Investors would be able to start selling their holdings as soon as the company starts holding, as through a direct listing there’s no lockup period they would have to wait out.

Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz are among those whose shares could trade, according to regulatory filings. In private transactions, Coinbase shares have been traded between $200 and $375, with the volume-weighted average price per share for transactions being $343.5.

The price would give Coinbase a public market valuation of around $67.6 billion. Its fully diluted value could be significantly higher. Coinbase’s financial statements reveal it has been making money, swinging from a loss to a $322 million profit last year.

Latin America’s First Bitcoin ETF Approved in Brazil

Latin America’s first bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) has been approved in Brazil. The ETF was launched by QR Asset Management and is expected to list on the country’s main stock exchange B3.

The listing date is yet to be disclosed, but Reuters reports that it will take place by June. The ETF which will trade under the QBTC11 ticker, has been approved by Brazil’s Securities and Exchange Commission, the Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (CVM).

QBTC11 is the fourth bitcoin ETF to receive approval in the Western Hemisphere, after three bitcoin ETFs were approved in Canada. The approval of QBTC11 could, according to QR Capital, speed the approval of a similar product in the United States, as the CVM and the SEC are affiliated members of the International Organization of Securities Commissions.

There are currently four bitcoin ETFs applications pending review by the SEC.

CFTC Orders Coinbase to Pay $6.5 Million to Settle Trading Investigation

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has ordered Coinbase to pay a $6.5 million settlement over allegations the exchange “self-traded” digital assets between January 2015 and September 2018 through two of its automated trading programs.

The automated trading programs, Hedger and Replicator, “generated orders that at times matched with one another” on Coinbase’s GDAX exchange, which has since rebranded to Coinbase Pro. The data from these transactions was reported through reporting services, which are used by “market participants for price discovery related to trading or owning digital assets.”

The automated trading programs issuing orders that matched with one another “potentially resulted in a perceived volume and level of liquidity of digital assets, including Bitcoin, that was false, misleading, or inaccurate,” the CFTC wrote.

It’s important to note that the CFTC described the action as reckless but not intentional. The regulator did not suggest any Coinbase customers were harmed or that any wrongdoing occurred. The activity is no longer occurring.

It added that over a six-week period in 2016, a now-former Coinbase employee reportedly used a “manipulative or deceptive device by intentionally placing buy and sell orders in the Litecoin/Bitcoin trading pair on GDAX that matched each other as wash trades.” This, the CFTC adds, created a “misleading appearance of liquidity and trading interest in Litecoin.”

Daily Movers – ONE, THETA, BTT

Several tokens are leading the charge in the last 24-hour period. Some of these are well-known cryptocurrencies with more liquid trading pairs, so we’ll be focusing on these over low-cap cryptos that may have higher percentage changes.

Harmony (ONE) - Harmony provides a high-throughput, low-latency and low-fee consensus platform designed to power the decentralized economy of the future. It plans to address the issues faced in other blockchain ecosystems through the use of the best research and engineering practices in an optimally tuned system.

Theta Token (THETA) – Theta is a decentralized video delivery network similar to Twitch, but powered by its users. Its mainnet was launched in 2019 with a swap from ERC20 Theta tokens to native THETA on its own blockchain.

BitTorrent (BTT) - The BitTorrent Protocol is a decentralized protocol with over 1 billion users. While there are many implementations of the BitTorrent software, BitTorrent and µTorrent (often called “utorrent”) remain two of the most popular. BitTorrent (BTT) the token is a TRC-10 utility token based on the TRON blockchain to foster faster speed on the world’s largest decentralized application

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