Leading cryptocurrency asset manager Grayscale is reportedly in discussions with major financial firms, including JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, regarding their potential involvement in key roles for its planned spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).

China’s Legal Daily website, the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Commission for Political and Legal Affairs, has published a call to crackdown on bribery using cryptocurrencies and other forms of electronic payment.

Data from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis has shown that one of the largest online communities centered around a Solana wallet drainer kit now boasts over 6,000 members.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Grayscale Eyes JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs for Bitcoin ETF Role
• China’s Legal Daly Calls for Crypto Crackdown to Fight Bribery and Corruption
• Solana Wallet Draners on the Rise as One Group Surpasses 6,000 Members
• Chart of the Week: Bitcoin’s Price and Open Interest, 2024 YTD

Grayscale Eyes JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs for Bitcoin ETF Role

Leading cryptocurrency asset manager Grayscale is reportedly in discussions with major financial firms, including JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, regarding their potential involvement in key roles for its planned spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).

Both JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are said to be under consideration to be authorized participants, which would give them power to both create and redeem shares of the fund.

An essential task of authorized participants involves ensuring that the share price of the ETF matches that fund’s underlying assets, as is offering a vital source of liquidity for the fund.

Goldman Sachs was in discussions with Grayscale and BlackRock about their Bitcoin ETF plans. BlackRock had already designated JPMorgan Securities and Jane Street Capital as authorized participants for its proposed fund

China’s Legal Daily Calls for Crypto Crackdown to Fight Bribery and Corruption

China’s Legal Daily website, the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Commission for Political and Legal Affairs, has published a call to crack down on bribery using cryptocurrencies and other forms of electronic payment.

The platform published the insights of Zhao Xuejun, an associate professor at Hebei University Law School, who identified virtual currencies and electronic gift cards as “hidden channels” for bribery, as these can be carried abroad for redemption in “cold storage.”

Mo Hongxian, a professor at Wuhan University Law School, specifically named Bitcoin and raised concerns about the anonymity and traceability challenges posed by virtual currencies in the publication.

Hongxian noted that although these assets aren’t recognized in China, digital currency transactions require legal scrutiny due to their potential role in unlawful and criminal activities.

China’s Legal Daily concluded that the country’s legal and regulatory system needs to be improved to punish “new types of corruption, expand the scope of bribery crimes,” and strengthen supervision to deter new types of corruption.

Solana Wallet Draners on the Rise as One Group Surpasses 6,000 Members

Data from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis has shown that one of the largest online communities centered around a Solana wallet drainer kit now boasts over 6,000 members.

The data comes at a time in which concerns surrounding the number of malicious decentralized applications targeting users with Solana-based drainers have been growing.

Brian Carter, a senior intelligence analyst at Chainalysis, noted that the most effective draining kits are flexible and target various assets with different methods, and pointed to the Russian origins of this small but active group of developers selling these drainer kits, with much of the documentation being in Russian.

To combat the threat, Carter recommended the use of protective tools like Wallet Guard, and added that malicious links are often an attack vector used as the attackers exploit people’s fear of missing out.

Crypto drainer kits are used to steal funds from cryptocurrency wallets, and mainly rely on phishing scams to lure victims into entering their wallet details on counterfeit websites.

Chart of the Week: Bitcoin’s Price and Open Interest, 2024 YTD

In this week’s Chart of the Week we highlight a significant surge in open interest for Bitcoin ($BTC), reaching a peak of $14.6 billion on January 2.

High leverage and funding rates tend to increase the market’s susceptibility to volatile swings, as was evident when BTC saw a sharp decline in open interest, losing $1.28 billion within just two hours after reports related to proposed spot Bitcoin ETFs.

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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