Tag: ftx

Sam Bankman-Fried Sentenced to 25 Years for Multi-Billion Dollar FTX Fraud

Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a judge on Thursday for stealing $8 billion (roughly Rs. 66,678 crore) from customers of the now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange he founded, the last step in the former billionaire wunderkind’s dramatic downfall.

US District Judge Lewis Kaplan handed down the sentence at a Manhattan court hearing after rejecting Bankman-Fried’s claim that FTX customers did not actually lose money and finding that he lied during his trial testimony. A jury found Bankman-Fried, 32, guilty on November 2 on seven fraud and conspiracy counts stemming from FTX’s 2022 collapse in what prosecutors have called one of the biggest financial frauds in US history.

Kaplan said Bankman-Fried has shown no remorse.

“He knew it was wrong,” Kaplan said. “He knew it was criminal. He regrets that he made a very bad bet about the likelihood of getting caught. But he is not going to admit a thing, as is his right.”

Bankman-Fried, wearing a beige short-sleeve jail T-shirt, acknowledged during 20 minutes of remarks to the judge that FTX customers had suffered and he offered an apology to his former FTX colleagues – but did not admit criminal wrongdoing.

He has vowed to appeal his conviction and sentence.

Bankman-Fried stood with his hands clasped before him as Kaplan read the sentence. He then spoke with his defense lawyer Marc Mukasey briefly before being led out of the courtroom by members of the US Marshals Service.

The sentence marked the culmination of Bankman-Fried’s plunge from an ultra-wealthy entrepreneur and major political donor to the biggest trophy to date in a crackdown by US authorities on malfeasance in cryptocurrency markets.

“There are serious consequences for defrauding customers and investors,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “Anyone who believes they can hide their financial crimes behind wealth and power, or behind a shiny new thing they claim no one else is smart enough to understand, should think twice.”

Kaplan found that FTX customers lost $8 billion, FTX’s equity investors lost $1.7 billion (roughly Rs. 14,169 crore), and that lenders to the Alameda Research hedge fund Bankman-Fried founded lost $1.3 billion (roughly Rs. 10,835 crore). He imposed an $11 billion (roughly Rs. 91,682 crore) forfeiture order and authorized the government to repay victims with seized assets.

Federal prosecutors had sought a sentence of 40 to 50 years. Mukasey had argued for a sentence of less than 5-1/4 years.

‘I’m sorry for that’

Addressing the judge, Bankman-Fried said, “Customers have been suffering … I didn’t at all mean to minimize that. I also think that’s something that was missing from what I’ve said over the course of this process, and I’m sorry for that.”

Referring to his FTX colleagues, Bankman-Fried added, “They put a lot of themselves into it, and I threw that all away. It haunts me every day.”

Three former close associates testified as prosecution witnesses that Bankman-Fried had directed them to use FTX customer funds to plug losses at Alameda Research. All three have pleaded guilty to fraud.

Kaplan said Bankman-Fried lied when testified that he did not know Alameda Research had spent customer deposits taken from FTX.

Mukasey sought to distance Bankman-Fried from notorious fraudsters like Bernie Madoff, saying he was “not a ruthless financial serial killer” but rather an “awkward math nerd” who tried to get customers their money back after FTX’s collapse.

“Sam Bankman-Fried doesn’t make decisions with malice in his heart,” Mukasey added. “He makes decisions with math in his head.”

Bankman-Fried’s eyes turned red as he appeared to hold back tears while Mukasey spoke.

His parents, Stanford University law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, attended the sentencing. Bankman held a green umbrella as they exited the courthouse into a rainy New York afternoon, their arms around each other.

“We are heartbroken and will continue to fight for our son,” they said in a statement.

‘Power and influence’

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, Bankman-Fried rode a boom in the values of bitcoin and other digital assets to a net worth of $26 billion (roughly Rs. 2,16,705 crore), according to Forbes magazine, before he turned 30.

Bankman-Fried became known for his mop of unkempt curly hair and commitment to a movement called effective altruism, which encourages talented young people to focus on earning money and giving it away to worthy causes.

He was one of the biggest contributors to Democratic candidates and causes before the 2022 US midterm elections. Kaplan pointed to trial evidence showing Bankman-Fried also donated to Republicans through “straw” donors to hide his involvement.

The judge called Bankman-Fried’s efforts to present himself as a “good guy” an act, adding, “The goal was power and influence.”

Bankman-Fried has been detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since August 2023, when Kaplan revoked his bail after finding he likely tampered with witnesses at least twice. Kaplan said he would recommend Bankman-Fried be sent to a prison close to San Francisco.

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Sam Bankman-Fried Urges Lenient Sentence, Citing FTX Fund Recovery

Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyer urged a judge on Tuesday to impose a lenient sentence for the FTX founder’s conviction for stealing $8 billion (roughly Rs. 6,63,30 crore) from customers of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, arguing clients would get most of their funds back.

In a sentencing submission, Bankman-Fried’s lawyer Marc Mukasey told U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan that a guidelines range between 5-1/4 and 6-1/2 years would be an appropriate prison term.

That is far less than the maximum sentence of 110 years he faces after a jury found him guilty in November on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy, in what prosecutors have called one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.

Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty and is expected to appeal his conviction and sentence. He acknowledged making mistakes running FTX, but testified at trial that he never intended to steal customer funds.

Kaplan is set to sentence the former billionaire, who turns 32 next week, on March 28.

The lawyer’s submission was accompanied by letters of support from Bankman-Fried’s parents, psychiatrist, and others.

His parents, the Stanford law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, said their son was uninterested in material wealth and worked hard to make customers whole in the month between Bahamas-based FTX’s November 2022 collapse and his arrest on fraud charges a month later.

“Barbara and I…witnessed firsthand his single-minded focus on getting money back to depositors, long after there was any possibility he would be able to save any of his equity or wealth,” Bankman wrote.

Mukasey called a 100-year guidelines range calculated by probation officers “barbaric”, saying it was based partly on a faulty assertion that FTX’s customers lost billions.

He pointed to the bankrupt company’s recent assertion that it expected to repay all customers in full to back up the argument that Bankman-Fried did not set out to steal.

“The conviction does not address whether Sam intended to pay the money back. He did,” Mukasey wrote.

The probation officers’ calculation is not binding on Kaplan. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan is expected to make its own sentencing recommendation by March 15.

Elizabeth Holmes or Michael Milken?

A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bankman-Fried rode a boom in the values of digital assets such as bitcoin to a net worth Forbes magazine once estimated at $26 billion (roughly Rs. 21,55,31). His fortune evaporated in November 2022, when FTX declared bankruptcy after a wave of customer withdrawals.

At his month-long trial in Manhattan federal court, three former close associates testified that Bankman-Fried directed them to help loot FTX customer funds to plug losses at his Alameda Research hedge fund, even while presenting himself publicly as a responsible steward in the volatile cryptocurrency market.

Prosecutors said Bankman-Fried also used customer funds to buy luxury real estate in the Bahamas and to donate to U.S. politicians who might support cryptocurrency-friendly regulations.

Bankman-Fried testified that he did not realize how much Alameda owed to FTX until shortly before both failed.

Mukasey acknowledged Bankman-Fried’s case bore some similarities to that of Elizabeth Holmes, another young entrepreneur who was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2022 for defrauding investors in her now-defunct blood-testing startup Theranos.

But he said Holmes put patients at risk, and suggested Bankman-Fried had more in common with Michael Milken – a Wall Street financier in the 1980s known as the “junk bond king” who was released from prison after serving just two years of an initial 10-year sentence on fraud charges.

“Given the same chance, Sam would dedicate his post-prison life to charitable works,” Mukasey wrote.

Mother says she would change places

Bankman-Fried has been jailed at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center since August, when Kaplan revoked his bail after finding that he likely tampered with witnesses.

In a letter to Kaplan, Bankman-Fried’s psychiatrist George Lerner wrote that he is on the autism spectrum. Mukasey wrote that Bankman-Fried struggles to make eye contact and communicate with others, which could leave him vulnerable in a prison setting.

Bankman-Fried’s mother wrote that her son had taken responsibility for the errors that led to FTX’s collapse and was remorseful, but said she feared for his life in prison.

“His father and I face the very real possibility that we will not live long enough to see him freed,” Fried wrote. “I would gladly change places with him if I could.”

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Crypto Firms in US Spent Nearly $19 Million on Lobbying in First 3 Quarters of 2023, on Track for Record Year

The cryptocurrency industry was on track to hit a new record for federal lobbying spending, after a year in which firms scrambled to repair their reputations and advance friendly legislation, according to data provided to Reuters by nonprofit research group OpenSecrets.

Crypto companies spent $18.96 million (roughly Rs. 158 crore) in the first three quarters of 2023 on lobbying, compared with $16.1 million (roughly Rs. 134 crore) during the same period in 2022. That was despite last year’s spectacular meltdown of crypto exchange FTX, which had been a top-ten spender. Last year, companies including FTX spent nearly $22 million (roughly Rs. 183 crore) on lobbying in total.

Coinbase, the largest US crypto exchange, led the pack again, spending $2.16 million (roughly Rs. 18 crore), followed by Foris DAX, which operates Crypto.com, the Blockchain Association and Binance Holdings.

“Our goal is to engage directly with policymakers, build relationships and bridge the education gap to build a commonsense regulatory framework,” said Kristin Smith, CEO of the Blockchain Association, in a statement.

Crypto companies have been expanding in Washington, in part to try to mend their reputations following a string of scandals last year, including the collapse of FTX, whose former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried had been a familiar presence in Washington. He was found guilty of fraud last month by a jury in a Manhattan federal court.

Crypto firms have also been trying to combat growing regulatory scrutiny, especially from the US Securities and Exchange Commission which says the industry has been flouting its rules. Lobbying escalated after the SEC sued Coinbase and Binance in June for allegedly failing to register tokens, claims they deny.

The industry has also been pushing the SEC to approve a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF), which would open up the world’s largest cryptocurrency to millions more investors. Optimism that the agency will green-light the product after losing to a key court on the matter in the summer helped drive bitcoin to a 20-month high on Monday.

Crypto companies have also been trying to advance friendly legislation in the House of Representatives and scored a victory in July when a congressional committee in that chamber passed two major bills that lobbyists say would help provide clarity over which existing financial rules apply to crypto companies.

Although those bills have yet to advance further, crypto lobbyists are not letting up. Coinbase, which in September launched a grassroots advocacy campaign, is continuing its push with more lawmaker meetings in coming weeks, a spokesperson said.

Binance and Crypto.com did not respond to requests for comment.

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More Crypto Safeguards Needed to Prevent FTX Fallout Situation, Says Financial Stability Board

More measures may be needed to stop blow-ups at complex crypto firms like FTX from destabilising the wider financial system, the global Financial Stability Board (FSB) said on Tuesday.

The FSB, which groups regulators, central banks and treasury officials from the G20 economies, said turmoil in crypto markets last year when FTX collapsed highlighted how “multifunction” crypto firms, that combine trading and other activities, can exacerbate vulnerabilities.

The vulnerabilities are similar to those found in traditional finance, including leverage, liquidity mismatches, technology and operational vulnerabilities, the FSB said in a report.

“These vulnerabilities are further amplified by a lack of effective controls and operational transparency, poor or no disclosures, and conflicts of interest,” it said.

Evidence suggests that the threat to wider financial stability and the economy is limited at present, it added.

The FSB and IOSCO, a global body of securities watchdogs, have already published this year high level recommendations for supervising crypto activities.

Regulators, however, should assess whether these measures adequately stop risks from crypto being amplified across the financial system, the report said.

“Further work may be needed to enhance cross-border cooperation and information sharing and to address information gaps identified in the report,” the FSB said.

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FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted of Multi-Billion Dollar Fraud

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty on Thursday of stealing from customers of his now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange in one of the biggest financial frauds on record, a verdict that cemented the 31-year-old former billionaire’s fall from grace.

A 12-member jury in Manhattan federal court convicted Bankman-Fried on all seven counts he faced after a monthlong trial in which prosecutors made the case that he looted $8 billion (roughly Rs. 6,66,00 crore) from the exchange’s users out of sheer greed.

The verdict came just shy of one year after FTX filed for bankruptcy in a swift corporate meltdown that shocked financial markets and erased his estimated $26 billion (roughly Rs. 2,16,450 crore) personal fortune.

The jury reached the verdict after just over four hours of deliberations. Bankman-Fried, who had pleaded not guilty to two counts of fraud and five counts of conspiracy, stood facing the jury with his hands clasped in front of him as the verdict was read.

The conviction was a victory for the US Justice Department and Damian Williams, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, who made rooting out corruption in financial markets one of his top priorities.

“The crypto industry might be new, the players like Sam Bankman-Fried may be new, but this kind of fraud is as old as time and we have no patience for it,” Williams told reporters outside the courthouse.

Once the darling of the crypto world, Bankman-Fried – who was known for his mop of unkempt curly hair and for wearing shorts and T-shirts rather than business attire – joins the likes of admitted Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff and “Wolf of Wall Street” fraudster Jordan Belfort as notable people convicted of major US financial crimes.

US District Judge Lewis Kaplan set Bankman-Fried’s sentencing for March 28, 2024. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate could face decades in prison.

His defence lawyer Mark Cohen said in a statement that he was “disappointed” but respected the jury’s decision.

“Mr. Bankman-Fried maintains his innocence and will continue to vigorously fight the charges against him,” he said.

After Kaplan left the courtroom, Cohen put his arm around Bankman-Fried as they spoke at the defence table.

As Bankman-Fried was led away by members of the US Marshals service, he turned around and nodded at his parents, the Stanford Law School professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, who were seated in the courtroom audience’s front row. Fried looked toward him and crossed her arm across her chest.

Bankman-Fried is set to go on trial next March on a second set of charges brought by prosecutors earlier this year, including for alleged foreign bribery and bank fraud conspiracies.

Bankman-Fried testified in own defence

Bankman-Fried’s was the first of several blockbuster cases Williams brought against former high-flying cryptocurrency executives to go to trial. Several crypto companies went bankrupt last year after the prices of bitcoin and other digital assets collapsed following a years-long boom.

Prosecutors argued during the trial that Bankman-Fried siphoned money from FTX to his crypto-focused hedge fund, Alameda Research, despite proclaiming on social media and in television advertisements that the exchange prioritized the safety of customer funds.

Alameda used the money to pay its lenders and to make loans to Bankman-Fried and other executives – who in turn made speculative venture investments and donated upwards of $100 million (roughly Rs. 832 crore) to US political campaigns in a bid to promote cryptocurrency legislation the defendant viewed as favorable to his business, according to prosecutors.

Bankman-Fried took the calculated risk of testifying in his own defense over three days near the close of trial after three former members of his inner circle testified against him. He faced aggressive cross-examination by the prosecution, often avoiding direct answers to the most probing questions.

He testified that while he made mistakes running FTX, such as not formulating a risk-management team, he did not steal customer funds. He said he thought Alameda’s borrowing from FTX was allowed and did not realize how large its debts had grown until shortly before both companies collapsed.

“We thought that we might be able to build the best product on the market,” Bankman-Fried testified. “It turned out basically the opposite of that.”

‘He thought the rules did not reply’

Prosecutors had a different view.

“He didn’t bargain for his three loyal deputies taking that stand and telling you the truth: that he was the one with the plan, the motive and the greed to raid FTX customer deposits – billions and billions of dollars – to give himself money, power, influence. He thought the rules did not apply to him. He thought that he could get away with it,” prosecutor Danielle Sassoon told the jury on Thursday.

The jury heard 15 days of testimony. Former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison and former FTX executives Gary Wang and Nishad Singh, testifying for the prosecution after entering guilty pleas, said he directed them to commit crimes, including helping Alameda loot FTX and lying to lenders and investors about the companies’ finances.

The defense argued the three, who have not yet been sentenced, falsely implicated Bankman-Fried in a bid to win leniency at sentencing. Prosecutors may ask Kaplan to take their cooperation into account in deciding their punishment.

Bankman-Fried has been jailed since August after Kaplan revoked his bail, having concluded he likely tampered with witnesses.

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BlockFi to Shut Operations, Return Crypto Assets to Customers

BlockFi emerged from bankruptcy on Tuesday, saying it will wind down operations and begin returning crypto assets to customers 11 months after it was swept away by the turbulence in thecryptocurrency industry following FTX‘s collapse. 

Jersey City, New Jersey-Based BlockFi will continue to pursue additional payments through the bankruptcies of other crypto companies including FTX and Three Arrows Capital under a bankruptcy plan approved in court last month. 

Success in that litigation could increase client recoveries, BlockFi said on Tuesday. 

BlockFi estimated in court filings that customers who had interest-bearing Earn accounts will receive between 39.4 percent and 100 percent of the value in their accounts. 

In its bankruptcy filing in November 2022, BlockFi had cited its loans to FTX’s sister firm Alameda as one of the reasons for its collapse.

Separately, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is currently on trial for fraud in Manhattan. 

BlockFi said withdrawals are currently available to nearly all of its Wallet customers. Those with BlockFi Interest Accounts and Retail Loans will be repaid over the coming months, but the amounts they receive could vary based on the outcome of the FTX bankruptcy, BlockFi said.

Crypto lenders, the de facto banks of the crypto world, boomed during the pandemic, attracting retail customers with double-digit rates in return for their crypto deposits.

Such companies are not required to hold capital or liquidity buffers like traditional lenders and some found themselves exposed when a shortage of collateral forced them — and their customers — to shoulder large losses.

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PayPal to Stop Sale of Cryptocurrencies in the UK Until 2024: Details

Payments giant PayPal will stop allowing UK customers to buy cryptocurrencies through its platform from October as it works to comply with new rules on crypto promotions.

Britain’s financial regulator is due to bring in tougher rules to limit how crypto is advertised to British consumers, including requiring crypto firms to carry warnings about the risk and scrapping “refer a friend” bonuses.

PayPal will “temporarily pause” the ability for customers to buy crypto on its platform from October 1 as it works to satisfy the new regulations, which come into effect on October 8, it said in an email to customers on Tuesday. It said it expects to re-start in “early 2024”.

“PayPal consistently works closely with regulators around the world to adhere to applicable rules and regulations in the markets in which we operate,” it told customers in the email, a copy of which it shared with Reuters. 

It said customers could hold and sell their crypto “at any time.”

The news was earlier reported by crypto media outlets including CoinJournal.

PayPal first launched crypto buying and selling in the UK in 2021.

Regulators around the world are increasingly seeking to regulate crypto assets, after the collapse of several crypto firms including FTX last year left amateur investors with large losses.

After token prices slumped dramatically last year, the price of top cryptocurrency bitcoin has gradually recovered, up around 76 percent so far this year. Still, its price is at less than half of the all-time high reached in November 2021.

Earlier this month, PayPal’s shares got a boost when it announced that it has launched a US dollar stablecoin – a kind of cryptocurrency designed to keep a constant price by being pegged to a stable asset.

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FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Denies Witness Tampering, Seeks to Avoid Jailtime

Sam Bankman-Fried, the indicted founder of the bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange, on Tuesday, said he never sought to intimidate witnesses at his scheduled October fraud trial, and there is no reason to jail him.

In a letter to US District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan, Bankman-Fried said prosecutors mischaracterised his intentions in giving a New York Times reporter the writings of former romantic partner Caroline Ellison, who is expected to testify against him.

“Mr. Bankman-Fried’s contact with the New York Times reporter was not an attempt to intimidate Ms. Ellison or taint the jury pool,” his lawyer, Mark Cohen, wrote in the letter. “It was a proper exercise of his rights to make fair comment on an article already in progress.”Bankman-Fried, 31, has pleaded not guilty to stealing billions of dollars in FTX customer funds to plug losses at his hedge fund Alameda Research, where Ellison was chief executive.

He has been largely confined to his parents’ Palo Alto, California home on a $250 million (roughly Rs. 2,100 crore) bond since his December 2022 arrest.

Ellison is one of three former members of Bankman-Fried’s inner circle who pleaded guilty to fraud charges and agreed to cooperate with the US Attorney’s office in Manhattan.

Kaplan barred Bankman-Fried from speaking about the case and asked both sides to submit written arguments about possible jail.

In an affidavit submitted by the defence, Laurence Tribe, a Harvard University constitutional law professor, said Bankman-Fried had a right to “avoid projecting a false image of someone who is media-shy or, worse, someone whose consciousness of guilt makes him shun the media.”

Bankman-Fried’s lawyers also argued that restricted internet access at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he would be held, would leave him unable to prepare for trial.

Prosecutors may respond to Bankman-Fried’s letter by Thursday. It is not known when Kaplan will rule.

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s Worldcoin Crypto Under European Regulators Scrutiny

Less than a week after its launch, the Worldcoin crypto project of OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman is already under scrutiny by European regulators over its reliance on an eye scan to verify a user’s identity, France’s data protection agency said Friday.

Worldcoin’s launch on Monday comes as the cryptocurrency industry is suffering hard times after the spectacular collapse of FTX and various legal cases against the sector’s biggest players.

Using eye scans, it tries to solve one of the main challenges facing the crypto industry: a level of anonymity so high that makes it vulnerable to scams and spam bots — which AI threatens to make exponentially worse. 

But Worldcoin’s collection of biometric data could run afoul of strict data privacy rules in Europe.

“Worldcoin has begun to collect data in France… which seems questionable as does the conservation of biometric data,” France’s CNIL data regulator told AFP.

After conducting an initial review, CNIL said it identified its counterpart in the German state of Bavaria as the lead agency in Europe to conduct a probe into Worldcoin, and said it supports their investigation.

Worldcoin in fact began operating in June in Germany, which is the home country of co-founder Alex Blania.

Bavaria’s data protection agency had no immediate comment when contacted by AFP on Friday.

With its cryptocurrency and identification system Worldcoin aims to create the “world’s largest identity and financial public network,” according to its website.

Altman and Blania said earlier this week in a letter posted to Twitter, which is being renamed X, that the Worldcoin offers “a reliable solution for distinguishing humans from AI online while preserving privacy”.

This will in turn enable Worldcoin as a blockchain-based technology to drastically increase economic opportunity and enable democratic processes.

Blockchains are distributed databases that facilitate the verification and traceability of transactions. 

They can offer lower costs and faster data transfer while ensuring secure transactions, although the most famous blockchain that powers the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, is notorious for being slow and expensive as it requires huge computer processing power to validate transactions as part of its system to reward processors with new bitcoins.

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US SEC Said to Have Raised Concerns About Bitcoin ETF to Asset Managers

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has said recent applications by asset managers to launch spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were not sufficiently clear and comprehensive, a source familiar with the matter said.

The SEC has communicated its concerns to the exchanges Nasdaq and Cboe Global Markets which filed the applications on behalf of asset managers including BlackRock and Fidelity, the source added on Friday.

Bitcoin, which has jumped since BlackRock filed its application on June 15, fell after the Wall Street Journal first reported the SEC rejection on Friday. The world’s largest cryptocurrency was last down 1 percent at $30.142 (nearly Rs. 2,500).

The SEC, Fidelity, BlackRock and Nasdaq declined to comment on the report, while Cboe was not immediately available.

The ETF filings by such major firms had sparked renewed investor hopes that a bitcoin ETF would finally be approved by the SEC, and revived interest in cyptocurrencies, which have been hit by a series of crypto company meltdowns including the sudden collapse of exchange FTX late last year.

The SEC has rejected dozens of spot bitcoin ETF applications in recent years, including one from Fidelity in January 2022.

In all the cases, it said the filings did not meet the standards designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative practices and protect investors and the public interest.

In a bid to address these concerns, the BlackRock and Fidelity filings proposed a surveillance mechanism aimed at preventing manipulation, but the applicants did not name which bitcoin exchange would be involved.

Blockchain-related stocks fell following the SEC’s decision, with Coinbase, Riot Platforms and Marathon Digital between 3 percent and 3.7 percent lower.

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