Credit-ratings giant Moody’s is working on a scoring system for stablecoins as the asset class keeps growing. The system will include an analysis of up to 20 stablecoins based on the quality of attestations on the reserves backing them.

FTX’s bankruptcy lawyers are seeking permission to subpoena the exchange’s former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, as well as his family and top lieutenants.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has rejected a proposal to launch a Bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) from Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest and global crypto ETF provider 21Shares.

 Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Moody’s Working on Stablecoin Scoring System
• FTX Seeks Permission to Subpoena Former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and Insiders
• SEC Rejects Spot Bitcoin ETF Bid from ARK and 21Shares
• Crypto Market Movers – APT, T, OP

Moody's Working on Stablecoin Scoring System

Credit-ratings giant Moody’s is working on a scoring system for stablecoins as the asset class keeps growing. The system will include an analysis of up to 20 stablecoins based on the quality of attestations on the reserves backing them.

That’s according to Bloomberg, which cites people familiar with the firm’s plans in a report that details the project is still in its early stages and won’t represent an official credit rating.

Moody’s provides credit ratings for publicly traded cryptocurrency companies like Coinbase, while its research arm issues broader analysis reports on the space.

Recently, there has been increased scrutiny of stablecoin reserve attestations as the use of these tokens has grown. This has led to questions about the assets backing the largest stablecoin, Tether's USDT. In 2021, Tether, which has $67 billion of dollar-pegged stablecoins in circulation, was fined by US authorities for lying about its reserves.

CryptoCompare’s latest stablecoins report details that in January, Tether's USDT reached its highest market share in the stablecoin market since October 2021. The market share of USDT rose by 0.82% to $66.7 billion, increasing its overall market share to 48.7%. Out of all stablecoins, only USD Coin, Binance USD, and Gemini Dollar experienced a decline in market capitalization during that month.

The overall market capitalization of the stablecoin market dropped by 0.62% this month to $137 billion, which is the lowest level it has seen since September 2021. This marks the tenth consecutive month of decline in market capitalization for stablecoins. Trading volume, however, increased 9.46% to $397 billion.

FTX Seeks Permission to Subpoena Former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and Insiders

FTX’s bankruptcy lawyers are seeking permission to subpoena the exchange’s former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, as well as his family and top lieutenants.

Lawyers for FTX’s debtors and the official creditors’ committee wrote in a joint motion:

“Certain insiders are currently cooperating with the debtors to provide important information. But others are not, and thus authorization to issue subpoenas to those with the missing information is critical to the debtors’ and committee’s recovery efforts.”

The lawyers are looking for information and documents related to FTX's assets and business operations, as well as the personal assets of FTX insiders. The new CEO of FTX, John Ray III, has previously stated that FTX executives did not keep proper business records, which has made it difficult for him to retrieve assets during the bankruptcy process.

Lawyers representing the U.S. government in the bankruptcy proceedings have called for the appointment of an independent examiner to examine the finances of all companies involved in the case, to guarantee a full accounting.

Representatives for FTX and its affiliated pushed back, claiming the examiner would repeat their investigative efforts while costing millions of dollars that are available to repay customers.

SEC Rejects Spot Bitcoin ETF Bid from ARK and 21Shares

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has rejected a proposal to launch a Bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) from Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest and global crypto ETF provider 21Shares.

This was the second time both firms joined forces to try and launch the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF. It was initially filed last year on May 13, a month after ARK’s first attempt to list the product was rejected.

The SEC cited the same reason for their decision: ARK has not been able to show that the rules of its exchange are sufficient to protect investors from "fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices."

While the SEC hasn’t approved a spot Bitcoin ETF, it allowed multiple futures Bitcoin ETFs to launch last year. The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, which was the first one to be introduced to the market, experienced one of the busiest opening days in the history of the NYSE.

Crypto Market Movers – APT, T, OP

Several tokens are leading the charge in the last 7-day 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.

Aptos (APT) - Aptos is a Layer 1 Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain that employs a novel smart contract programming language called Move, a Rust-based programming language that was independently developed by Meta (formerly Facebook)’s Diem blockchain engineers, envisioning a blockchain that brings mainstream adoption to web3 and empowers an ecosystem of DApps to solve real-world user problems.

Threshold Network (T) – The Threshold Network is an on-chain merger between two existing networks, NU and KEEP. It is the only decentralized bridging protocol and has been audited by reputable companies in the field. The platform is designed to safeguard privacy on public blockchains.

Optimism (OP) - Optimism (OP) is a layer-two platform built on top of the Ethereum blockchain that aims to improve the scalability and accessibility of decentralized applications (dApps). It does this by using a technique called "optimistic rollups," which allow dApps to offload some of their computation and data storage onto a separate layer, while still remaining secure and decentralized.

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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