A Delaware bankruptcy court has approved the sale of about $873 million worth of trust assets owned by FTX, a crypto exchange that collapsed in 2022. The sale will help repay the creditors who suffered losses from the exchange’s downfall.

Andrea Enria, the chair of the supervisory board at the European Central Bank (ECB), said in a recent interview that cryptocurrency firms resembling banking operations should be subject to similar regulatory scrutiny.

Mummolin announced its new cryptocurrency project, OCEAN, which is pioneering a non-custodial and permissionless Bitcoin mining approach. The firm has raised $6.2 million in seed funding in a round led by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• FTX Gets Court Approval to Liquidate $873 Million to Repay Creditors
• ECB Board Member: Crypto Services That Mimic Banks Need Similar Oversight
• Former Twitter CEO Leads Seed Round in Firm Looking to Push Decentralized Bitcoin Mining
• Digital Asset Investment Products’ AUM Surged 120% Year-to-Date

FTX Gets Court Approval to Liquidate $873 Million in Assets

A Delaware bankruptcy court has approved the sale of about $873 million worth of trust assets owned by FTX, a crypto exchange that collapsed in 2022. The sale will help repay the creditors who suffered losses from the exchange’s downfall.

The $873 million figure will come from assets FTX holds, including shares in Grayscale Investments’ trusts, valued at $807 million, and with Bitwise, a custody service provider with a value of $66 million.

The court document used the valuation date of Oct. 25, 2023, which showed a total of $744 million in assets, however, the assets have appreciated since then. The approval comes nearly a month after FTX debtors filed a motion to Judge John Dorsey requesting the sale of these assets.

FTX holds over 22 million units of Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) valued at around $691 million, as well as 6.3 million shares of its Ether trust, ETHE, valued at around $106 million. The exchange may also liquidate assets from Grayscale’s Trusts offering exposure to Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, and large-cap tokens.

After the exchange collapsed, John. J Ray III and his team of administrators have been trying to recover the assets that were taken from the customers and managed to recover around $7 billion, with the total amount of customer assets misappropriated estimated to be at $8.7 billion.

ECB Board Member: Crypto Services That Mimic Banks Need Similar Oversight

Andrea Enria, the chair of the supervisory board at the European Central Bank (ECB), said in a recent interview that cryptocurrency firms resembling banking operations should be subject to similar regulatory scrutiny.

Enria pointed out the complexity of this task, noting that some crypto services can “to a large extent, mimic the provision of bank-like services” in areas like payments and decentralized finance (DeFi).

The ECB board member also mentioned that the central bank’s proposed digital euro and private cryptocurrencies aren’t a threat to the banking sector’s role, but acknowledged there are significant challenges in supervising cryptocurrency firms over their decentralized, borderless nature.

Leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which recently reached a $4.3 billion settlement with the U.S. government in a landmark case, is known for operating globally and without set headquarters.

Enrie pointed out that the space also has an “issue of consolidation, using the FTX case to point out that regulators “cannot have a group-wide perspective of the business and of the risks that these entities take.”

Per the ECB board member’s words, there’s also a challenge in supervising cryptocurrencies without an issuer, like Bitcoin, or decentralized finance projects without a clear entity behind them.

Former Twitter CEO Leads Seed Round in Firm Looking to Push Decentralized Bitcoin Mining

Mummolin announced its new cryptocurrency project OCEAN, which is pioneering a non-custodial and permissionless Bitcoin mining approach. The firm has raised $6.2 million in seed funding in a round led by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

OCEAN’s goal is to empower miners to enhance the decentralization of the Bitcoin network. Mummolin co-founder, Luke Dashjr, a Bitcoin Core developer, has said its essence lies in transforming the role of mining pools to uphold Bitcoin’s decentralized nature.

Dashjr said he envisions OCEAN as a new kind of mining pool that gives miners more freedom by letting them get block rewards directly from Bitcoin. Unlike traditional pools, OCEAN does not hold the block rewards and transaction fees that belong to the miners.

This way, OCEAN avoids the risk of delaying or denying payments to the miners. OCEAN’s model is non-custodial, which means it does not have control over the miners’ funds.

Digital Asset Investment Products’ AUM Surged 120% Year-to-Date

In November, the assets under management (AUM) for digital asset investment products increased by 14.1%, reaching $43.3 billion.

This surge represents a notable growth of 120% so far this year, in an uptick that aligns with the expanding interest of institutional investors in ETFs and the rising probability of an approval for a spot Bitcoin ETF.

Dig deeper into the world of cryptocurrency trading with CCData’s latest Digital Asset Management Review.

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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