Monthly Archives: February 2021

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The dollar headed for its first losing week in three as new signs of weakness in the U.S. jobs market dented investor expectations about the pace of economic recovery from the pandemic.

Bitcoin hit a new all-time high of $49,000 on Friday after BNY Mellon became the latest firm to embrace cryptocurrencies, saying it will form a new unit to help clients hold, transfer and issue digital assets.

"With names like BONY getting in, it's going to lay the groundwork for even more mainstream adoption of bitcoin," said Jeffrey Wang, head of Americas at crypto finance service provider Amber Group.

"Medium term, the momentum is very strong and the market is going to want to test $50,000."

The dollar remained on the back foot on Friday in Asia, pinned near two-week lows, after the release of weaker-than-expected weekly U.S. jobless claims data the previous day.

That added to recent concerns that the dollar's previous rally had priced in too fast a pace of rebound for the U.S. economy.

The dollar index edged up less than 0.1% to 90.49 in holiday-thinned trade due to the Lunar New Year, and was on track to fall 0.6% for the week.

There has been a divergence in views among traders this year over just how U.S. President Joe Biden's planned $1.9 trillion fiscal stimulus package will affect the dollar.

Some see it as bolstering the currency as it should speed a U.S. recovery relative to other countries, while others reckoned it would feed a global reflation narrative that should lift riskier assets at the dollar's expense.

"The U.S. economy will outperform most thanks to fiscal stimulus and faster vaccine deployment, but ongoing reflationary fiscal and monetary policy will leave DXY on a sustained medium term bear trend," Westpac strategists wrote of the dollar index in a client note.

The euro slipped less than 0.1% to $1.2122, consolidating for a third day near that level as it headed for a 0.6% weekly advance.

The dollar was mostly flat at 104.795 yen , down 0.5% from the end of last week.

Bitcoin last traded 1.7% weaker at $47,170 after trading at a record high of exactly $49,000.00 on Bitstamp.

The world's most popular cryptocurrency is on course for a nearly 22% weekly advance, its biggest since the period ended Jan. 3.

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Dollar headed for weekly loss, bitcoin hits record $49,000 - CNBC

Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Stefan Qin was just 19 when he claimed to have the secret to cryptocurrency trading.Buoyed with youthful confidence, Qin, a self-proclaimed math prodigy from Australia, dropped out of college in 2016 to start a hedge fund in New York he called Virgil Capital. He told potential clients he had developed an algorithm called Tenjin to monitor cryptocurrency exchanges around the world to seize on price fluctuations. A little more than a year after it started, he bragged the fund had returned 500%, a claim that produced a flurry of new money from investors.He became so flush with cash, Qin signed a lease in September 2019 for a $23,000-a-month apartment in 50 West, a 64-story luxury condo building in the financial district with expansive views of lower Manhattan as well as a pool, sauna, steam room, hot tub and golf simulator.In reality, federal prosecutors said, the operation was a lie, essentially a Ponzi scheme that stole about $90 million from more than 100 investors to help pay for Qins lavish lifestyle and personal investments in such high-risk bets as initial coin offerings. At one point, facing client demands for their money, he variously blamed poor cash flow management and loan sharks in China for his troubles. Last week, Qin, now 24 and expressing remorse, pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan to a single count of securities fraud.I knew that what I was doing was wrong and illegal, he told U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni, who could sentence him to more than 15 years in prison. I deeply regret my actions and will spend the rest of my life atoning for what I did. I am profoundly sorry for the harm my selfish behavior has caused to my investors who trusted in me, my employees and my family.Eager InvestorsThe case echoes similar cryptocurrency frauds, such as that of BitConnect, promising people double-and triple-digit returns and costing investors billions. Ponzi schemes like that show how investors eager to cash in on a hot market can easily be led astray by promises of large returns. Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX collapsed in 2019 as a result of fraud, causing at least $125 million in losses for 76,000 investors.While regulatory oversight of the cryptocurrency industry is tightening, the sector is littered with inexperienced participants. A number of the 800 or so crypto funds worldwide are run by people with no knowledge of Wall Street or finance, including some college students and recent graduates who launched funds a few years ago.Qins path started in college, too. He had been a math whiz who planned on becoming a physicist, he told a website, DigFin, in a profile published in December, just a week before regulators closed in on him. He described himself on his LinkedIn page as a quant with a deep interest and understanding in blockchain technology.In 2016, he won acceptance into a program for high-potential entrepreneurs at the University of New South Wales in Sydney with a proposal to use blockchain technology to speed up foreign exchange transactions. He also attended the Minerva Schools, a mostly online college based in San Francisco, from August 2016 through December 2017, the school confirmed.Crypto BugHe got the crypto bug after an internship with a firm in China, he told DigFin. His task had been to build a platform between two venues, one in China and the other in the U.S., to allow the firm to arbitrage cryptocurrencies.Convinced he had happened upon a business, Qin moved to New York to found Virgil Capital. His strategy, he told investors, would be to exploit the tendency of cryptocurrencies to trade at different prices at various exchanges. He would be market-neutral, meaning that the firms funds wouldnt be exposed to price movements.And unlike other hedge funds, he told DigFin, Virgil wouldnt charge management fees, taking only fees based on the firms performance. We never try to make easy money, Qin said.By his telling, Virgil got off to a fast start, claiming 500% returns in 2017, which brought in more investors eager to participate. A marketing brochure boasted of 10% monthly returns -- or 2,811% over a three-year period ending in August 2019, legal filings show.His assets got an extra jolt after the Wall Street Journal profiled him in a February 2018 story that touted his skill at arbitraging cryptocurrency. Virgil experienced substantial growth as new investors flocked to the fund, prosecutors said.Missing AssetsThe first cracks appeared last summer. Some investors were becoming increasingly upset about missing assets and incomplete transfers, the former head of investor relations, Melissa Fox Murphy, said in a court declaration. (She left the firm in December.) The complaints grew.It is now MID DECEMBER and my MILLION DOLLARS IS NOWHERE TO BE SEEN, wrote one investor, whose name was blacked out in court documents. Its a disgrace the way you guys are treating one of your earliest and largest investors.Around the same time, nine investors with $3.5 million in funds asked for redemptions from the firms flagship Virgil Sigma Fund LP, according to prosecutors. But there was no money to transfer. Qin had drained the Sigma Fund of its assets. The funds balances were fabricated.Instead of trading at 39 exchanges around the world, as he had claimed, Qin spent investor money on personal expenses and to invest in other undisclosed high-risk investments, including initial coin offerings, prosecutors said.So Qin tried to stall. He convinced investors instead to transfer their interests into his VQR Multistrategy Fund, another cryptocurrency fund he started in February 2020 that used a variety of trading strategies -- and still had assets.Loan SharksHe also sought to withdraw $1.7 million from the VQR fund, but that aroused suspicions from the head trader, Antonio Hallak. In a phone call Hallak recorded in December, Qin said he needed the money to repay loan sharks in China that he had borrowed from to start his business, according to court filings in a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. He said the loan sharks might do anything to collect on the debt and that he had a liquidity issue that prevented him from repaying them.I just had such poor cash flow management to be honest with you, Qin told Hallak. I dont have money right now dude. Its so sad.When the trader balked at the withdrawal, Qin attempted to take over the reins of VQRs accounts. But by now the SEC was involved. It got cryptocurrency exchanges to put a hold on VQRs remaining assets and, a week later, filed suit.Asset RecoveryBy the end, Qin had drained virtually all of the money that was in the Sigma Fund. A court-appointed receiver who is overseeing the fund is looking to recover assets for investors, said Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss. About $24 million in assets in the VQR fund was frozen and should be available to disperse, he said.Stefan He Qin drained almost all of the assets from the $90 million cryptocurrency fund he owned, stealing investors money, spending it on indulgences and speculative personal investments, and lying to investors about the performance of the fund and what he had done with their money, Strauss said in a statement.In South Korea when he learned of the probe, Qin agreed to fly back to the U.S., prosecutors said. He surrendered to authorities on Feb. 4, pleaded guilty the same day before Caproni, and was freed on a $50,000 bond pending his sentencing, scheduled for May 20. While the maximum statutory penalty calls for 20 years in prison, as part of a plea deal, prosecutors agreed that he should get 151 to 188 months behind bars under federal sentencing guidelines and a fine of up to $350,000.That fate is a far cry from the career his parents had envisioned for him -- a physicist, he had told DigFin. They werent too happy when I told them I had quit uni to do this crypto thing. Who knows, maybe someday Ill complete my degree. But what I really want to do is trade crypto.The case is U.S. v Qin, 21-cr-75, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan)(Updates with comment from prosecutor and case caption)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Originally posted here:
7 public companies with exposure to bitcoin - Yahoo Finance

Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Stefan Qin was just 19 when he claimed to have the secret to cryptocurrency trading.Buoyed with youthful confidence, Qin, a self-proclaimed math prodigy from Australia, dropped out of college in 2016 to start a hedge fund in New York he called Virgil Capital. He told potential clients he had developed an algorithm called Tenjin to monitor cryptocurrency exchanges around the world to seize on price fluctuations. A little more than a year after it started, he bragged the fund had returned 500%, a claim that produced a flurry of new money from investors.He became so flush with cash, Qin signed a lease in September 2019 for a $23,000-a-month apartment in 50 West, a 64-story luxury condo building in the financial district with expansive views of lower Manhattan as well as a pool, sauna, steam room, hot tub and golf simulator.In reality, federal prosecutors said, the operation was a lie, essentially a Ponzi scheme that stole about $90 million from more than 100 investors to help pay for Qins lavish lifestyle and personal investments in such high-risk bets as initial coin offerings. At one point, facing client demands for their money, he variously blamed poor cash flow management and loan sharks in China for his troubles. Last week, Qin, now 24 and expressing remorse, pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan to a single count of securities fraud.I knew that what I was doing was wrong and illegal, he told U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni, who could sentence him to more than 15 years in prison. I deeply regret my actions and will spend the rest of my life atoning for what I did. I am profoundly sorry for the harm my selfish behavior has caused to my investors who trusted in me, my employees and my family.Eager InvestorsThe case echoes similar cryptocurrency frauds, such as that of BitConnect, promising people double-and triple-digit returns and costing investors billions. Ponzi schemes like that show how investors eager to cash in on a hot market can easily be led astray by promises of large returns. Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX collapsed in 2019 as a result of fraud, causing at least $125 million in losses for 76,000 investors.While regulatory oversight of the cryptocurrency industry is tightening, the sector is littered with inexperienced participants. A number of the 800 or so crypto funds worldwide are run by people with no knowledge of Wall Street or finance, including some college students and recent graduates who launched funds a few years ago.Qins path started in college, too. He had been a math whiz who planned on becoming a physicist, he told a website, DigFin, in a profile published in December, just a week before regulators closed in on him. He described himself on his LinkedIn page as a quant with a deep interest and understanding in blockchain technology.In 2016, he won acceptance into a program for high-potential entrepreneurs at the University of New South Wales in Sydney with a proposal to use blockchain technology to speed up foreign exchange transactions. He also attended the Minerva Schools, a mostly online college based in San Francisco, from August 2016 through December 2017, the school confirmed.Crypto BugHe got the crypto bug after an internship with a firm in China, he told DigFin. His task had been to build a platform between two venues, one in China and the other in the U.S., to allow the firm to arbitrage cryptocurrencies.Convinced he had happened upon a business, Qin moved to New York to found Virgil Capital. His strategy, he told investors, would be to exploit the tendency of cryptocurrencies to trade at different prices at various exchanges. He would be market-neutral, meaning that the firms funds wouldnt be exposed to price movements.And unlike other hedge funds, he told DigFin, Virgil wouldnt charge management fees, taking only fees based on the firms performance. We never try to make easy money, Qin said.By his telling, Virgil got off to a fast start, claiming 500% returns in 2017, which brought in more investors eager to participate. A marketing brochure boasted of 10% monthly returns -- or 2,811% over a three-year period ending in August 2019, legal filings show.His assets got an extra jolt after the Wall Street Journal profiled him in a February 2018 story that touted his skill at arbitraging cryptocurrency. Virgil experienced substantial growth as new investors flocked to the fund, prosecutors said.Missing AssetsThe first cracks appeared last summer. Some investors were becoming increasingly upset about missing assets and incomplete transfers, the former head of investor relations, Melissa Fox Murphy, said in a court declaration. (She left the firm in December.) The complaints grew.It is now MID DECEMBER and my MILLION DOLLARS IS NOWHERE TO BE SEEN, wrote one investor, whose name was blacked out in court documents. Its a disgrace the way you guys are treating one of your earliest and largest investors.Around the same time, nine investors with $3.5 million in funds asked for redemptions from the firms flagship Virgil Sigma Fund LP, according to prosecutors. But there was no money to transfer. Qin had drained the Sigma Fund of its assets. The funds balances were fabricated.Instead of trading at 39 exchanges around the world, as he had claimed, Qin spent investor money on personal expenses and to invest in other undisclosed high-risk investments, including initial coin offerings, prosecutors said.So Qin tried to stall. He convinced investors instead to transfer their interests into his VQR Multistrategy Fund, another cryptocurrency fund he started in February 2020 that used a variety of trading strategies -- and still had assets.Loan SharksHe also sought to withdraw $1.7 million from the VQR fund, but that aroused suspicions from the head trader, Antonio Hallak. In a phone call Hallak recorded in December, Qin said he needed the money to repay loan sharks in China that he had borrowed from to start his business, according to court filings in a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. He said the loan sharks might do anything to collect on the debt and that he had a liquidity issue that prevented him from repaying them.I just had such poor cash flow management to be honest with you, Qin told Hallak. I dont have money right now dude. Its so sad.When the trader balked at the withdrawal, Qin attempted to take over the reins of VQRs accounts. But by now the SEC was involved. It got cryptocurrency exchanges to put a hold on VQRs remaining assets and, a week later, filed suit.Asset RecoveryBy the end, Qin had drained virtually all of the money that was in the Sigma Fund. A court-appointed receiver who is overseeing the fund is looking to recover assets for investors, said Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss. About $24 million in assets in the VQR fund was frozen and should be available to disperse, he said.Stefan He Qin drained almost all of the assets from the $90 million cryptocurrency fund he owned, stealing investors money, spending it on indulgences and speculative personal investments, and lying to investors about the performance of the fund and what he had done with their money, Strauss said in a statement.In South Korea when he learned of the probe, Qin agreed to fly back to the U.S., prosecutors said. He surrendered to authorities on Feb. 4, pleaded guilty the same day before Caproni, and was freed on a $50,000 bond pending his sentencing, scheduled for May 20. While the maximum statutory penalty calls for 20 years in prison, as part of a plea deal, prosecutors agreed that he should get 151 to 188 months behind bars under federal sentencing guidelines and a fine of up to $350,000.That fate is a far cry from the career his parents had envisioned for him -- a physicist, he had told DigFin. They werent too happy when I told them I had quit uni to do this crypto thing. Who knows, maybe someday Ill complete my degree. But what I really want to do is trade crypto.The case is U.S. v Qin, 21-cr-75, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan)(Updates with comment from prosecutor and case caption)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.2021 Bloomberg L.P.

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Not Just Bitcoin, Paypal's Vision Involves Central Bank Digital Currencies Too: What You Need To Know - Yahoo Finance

Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Stefan Qin was just 19 when he claimed to have the secret to cryptocurrency trading.Buoyed with youthful confidence, Qin, a self-proclaimed math prodigy from Australia, dropped out of college in 2016 to start a hedge fund in New York he called Virgil Capital. He told potential clients he had developed an algorithm called Tenjin to monitor cryptocurrency exchanges around the world to seize on price fluctuations. A little more than a year after it started, he bragged the fund had returned 500%, a claim that produced a flurry of new money from investors.He became so flush with cash, Qin signed a lease in September 2019 for a $23,000-a-month apartment in 50 West, a 64-story luxury condo building in the financial district with expansive views of lower Manhattan as well as a pool, sauna, steam room, hot tub and golf simulator.In reality, federal prosecutors said, the operation was a lie, essentially a Ponzi scheme that stole about $90 million from more than 100 investors to help pay for Qins lavish lifestyle and personal investments in such high-risk bets as initial coin offerings. At one point, facing client demands for their money, he variously blamed poor cash flow management and loan sharks in China for his troubles. Last week, Qin, now 24 and expressing remorse, pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan to a single count of securities fraud.I knew that what I was doing was wrong and illegal, he told U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni, who could sentence him to more than 15 years in prison. I deeply regret my actions and will spend the rest of my life atoning for what I did. I am profoundly sorry for the harm my selfish behavior has caused to my investors who trusted in me, my employees and my family.Eager InvestorsThe case echoes similar cryptocurrency frauds, such as that of BitConnect, promising people double-and triple-digit returns and costing investors billions. Ponzi schemes like that show how investors eager to cash in on a hot market can easily be led astray by promises of large returns. Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX collapsed in 2019 as a result of fraud, causing at least $125 million in losses for 76,000 investors.While regulatory oversight of the cryptocurrency industry is tightening, the sector is littered with inexperienced participants. A number of the 800 or so crypto funds worldwide are run by people with no knowledge of Wall Street or finance, including some college students and recent graduates who launched funds a few years ago.Qins path started in college, too. He had been a math whiz who planned on becoming a physicist, he told a website, DigFin, in a profile published in December, just a week before regulators closed in on him. He described himself on his LinkedIn page as a quant with a deep interest and understanding in blockchain technology.In 2016, he won acceptance into a program for high-potential entrepreneurs at the University of New South Wales in Sydney with a proposal to use blockchain technology to speed up foreign exchange transactions. He also attended the Minerva Schools, a mostly online college based in San Francisco, from August 2016 through December 2017, the school confirmed.Crypto BugHe got the crypto bug after an internship with a firm in China, he told DigFin. His task had been to build a platform between two venues, one in China and the other in the U.S., to allow the firm to arbitrage cryptocurrencies.Convinced he had happened upon a business, Qin moved to New York to found Virgil Capital. His strategy, he told investors, would be to exploit the tendency of cryptocurrencies to trade at different prices at various exchanges. He would be market-neutral, meaning that the firms funds wouldnt be exposed to price movements.And unlike other hedge funds, he told DigFin, Virgil wouldnt charge management fees, taking only fees based on the firms performance. We never try to make easy money, Qin said.By his telling, Virgil got off to a fast start, claiming 500% returns in 2017, which brought in more investors eager to participate. A marketing brochure boasted of 10% monthly returns -- or 2,811% over a three-year period ending in August 2019, legal filings show.His assets got an extra jolt after the Wall Street Journal profiled him in a February 2018 story that touted his skill at arbitraging cryptocurrency. Virgil experienced substantial growth as new investors flocked to the fund, prosecutors said.Missing AssetsThe first cracks appeared last summer. Some investors were becoming increasingly upset about missing assets and incomplete transfers, the former head of investor relations, Melissa Fox Murphy, said in a court declaration. (She left the firm in December.) The complaints grew.It is now MID DECEMBER and my MILLION DOLLARS IS NOWHERE TO BE SEEN, wrote one investor, whose name was blacked out in court documents. Its a disgrace the way you guys are treating one of your earliest and largest investors.Around the same time, nine investors with $3.5 million in funds asked for redemptions from the firms flagship Virgil Sigma Fund LP, according to prosecutors. But there was no money to transfer. Qin had drained the Sigma Fund of its assets. The funds balances were fabricated.Instead of trading at 39 exchanges around the world, as he had claimed, Qin spent investor money on personal expenses and to invest in other undisclosed high-risk investments, including initial coin offerings, prosecutors said.So Qin tried to stall. He convinced investors instead to transfer their interests into his VQR Multistrategy Fund, another cryptocurrency fund he started in February 2020 that used a variety of trading strategies -- and still had assets.Loan SharksHe also sought to withdraw $1.7 million from the VQR fund, but that aroused suspicions from the head trader, Antonio Hallak. In a phone call Hallak recorded in December, Qin said he needed the money to repay loan sharks in China that he had borrowed from to start his business, according to court filings in a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. He said the loan sharks might do anything to collect on the debt and that he had a liquidity issue that prevented him from repaying them.I just had such poor cash flow management to be honest with you, Qin told Hallak. I dont have money right now dude. Its so sad.When the trader balked at the withdrawal, Qin attempted to take over the reins of VQRs accounts. But by now the SEC was involved. It got cryptocurrency exchanges to put a hold on VQRs remaining assets and, a week later, filed suit.Asset RecoveryBy the end, Qin had drained virtually all of the money that was in the Sigma Fund. A court-appointed receiver who is overseeing the fund is looking to recover assets for investors, said Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss. About $24 million in assets in the VQR fund was frozen and should be available to disperse, he said.Stefan He Qin drained almost all of the assets from the $90 million cryptocurrency fund he owned, stealing investors money, spending it on indulgences and speculative personal investments, and lying to investors about the performance of the fund and what he had done with their money, Strauss said in a statement.In South Korea when he learned of the probe, Qin agreed to fly back to the U.S., prosecutors said. He surrendered to authorities on Feb. 4, pleaded guilty the same day before Caproni, and was freed on a $50,000 bond pending his sentencing, scheduled for May 20. While the maximum statutory penalty calls for 20 years in prison, as part of a plea deal, prosecutors agreed that he should get 151 to 188 months behind bars under federal sentencing guidelines and a fine of up to $350,000.That fate is a far cry from the career his parents had envisioned for him -- a physicist, he had told DigFin. They werent too happy when I told them I had quit uni to do this crypto thing. Who knows, maybe someday Ill complete my degree. But what I really want to do is trade crypto.The case is U.S. v Qin, 21-cr-75, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan)(Updates with comment from prosecutor and case caption)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.2021 Bloomberg L.P.

The rest is here:
The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust: What It Is and How It Works - Yahoo Finance

The wonderful thing about bitcoin is many of its apparent benefits, like the ability to be anonymously owned and securely transferred, are also the things that often create situations like this: police in Germany have seized more than 50 million ($60 million) in bitcoin, but they cant access any of it because, as Reuters reports, the person they took it from wont tell them his password.

The man in question was sentenced and has served his time in jail for covertly installing bitcoin mining software on peoples computers, but throughout the entire process, he never shared a peep about how German authorities should get in. We asked him but he didnt say is the explanation Reuters was offered by a prosecutor. It presents a big, and probably obvious, question: can you really seize something, particularly money, that you cant access or use?

The even more glaring issue is how often passwords, PINs, and their collective absence pop up in stories about bitcoin, illegal or otherwise. There was a recent story in The New York Times about a programmer with his own bitcoin fortune locked away in a secure hard drive that revealed an amazing statistic: around 20 percent of bitcoin in existence today (totaling around $140 billion) are completely lost or locked up in wallets with lost passwords, meaning theyre completely inaccessible.

So maybe this German bitcoin enthusiast is sticking it to the people who had him locked up, or maybe hes simply forgotten his password. Reuters reports that prosecutors have ensured the man cannot access [his] largesse but if they cant access it either, I think its safe to say that pile of lost bitcoin just got a bit larger.

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A German man is keeping $60 million in bitcoin from police by never revealing his password - The Verge

JERSEY CITY, N.J., Feb. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --BlockFiInc. ("BlockFi"), a financial services company dedicated to building a bridge between cryptocurrencies and traditional financial and wealth management products, today announced the launch of the BlockFi Bitcoin Trust ("the Trust"), an investment vehicle for investors seeking access to Bitcoin ("BTC"), the leading digital asset. The entry of the Trust into the market will provide investors with an alternative, more cost-effective entry point to the crypto market compared with similar existing products.

Investment trusts are among the most popular methods for major institutions to invest in BTC. The Trust will issue shares via private placements, and the investment objective of the Trust is for the value of the shares to reflect the value of BTC held by the Trust less the Trust's expenses and other liabilities. Trust shares will be available to global institutions and other qualified investors in the near-term, and later this eligibility will be expanded to include accredited individual investors in the U.S.

Initial subscribers to the Trust are expected to include BlockFi and select institutional investors, using BTC to subscribe. Upon the expiration of an initial lockup, shares may become available for secondary investment on a wide range of recognized brokerage platforms.

As sponsor of the Trust, BlockFi Management LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of BlockFi, will charge a sponsor fee of 1.75%. BTC held in the Trust will be custodied by Fidelity Digital Assets Services, LLC ("Fidelity Digital Assets") through an enterprise-grade custody solution purpose-built for institutional investments. Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP is legal counsel to BlockFi in connection with the Trust, with Coin Metrics Inc. providing index and pricing data and Grant Thornton LLP serving as financial statement auditor.

"Given the level of institutional activity in recent months and demand for new, professional-grade investment vehicles, the timing of BlockFi Bitcoin Trust is ideal," said Zac Prince, Founder & CEO of BlockFi. "As we work to broaden the availability of this vehicle to retail brokerages, we expect this product will facilitate greater investments in digital assets - at the core of BlockFi's mission in bridging crypto with traditional finance."

"We believe a trust structure for this product is beneficial for investors and will play an important role in improving access in this nascent market," added Yevgeniy Feldman, Vice President for Institutional Services at BlockFi. "The BlockFi Bitcoin Trust can more easily meet rapidly growing demands from the public to invest in digital assets, and our decision to custody the Trust's holdings with Fidelity Digital Assets will help give shareholders peace-of-mind in the security of their investments."

"The digital asset ecosystem has grown significantly in recent years, creating an even more robust marketplace for investors and accelerating demand among institutions," said Christine Sandler, Head of Sales and Marketing for Fidelity Digital Assets. "An increasingly wide range of investors seeking access to Bitcoin has emphasized the need for a more diversified set of products offering exposure to the asset. Like BlockFi, we believe pairing innovative products with institutional-grade solutions that provide high caliber security will help enable broader adoption of digital assets."

For additional information, interested investors can visit: https://www.BlockFiTrust.com

Legal Disclaimers:

Investors should carefully consider the investment objectives and risks as well as fees and expenses of the Trust before investing. More information can be found in the Trust's Private Placement Memorandum. Read the Private Placement Memorandum carefully before investing.

Nothing contained in this announcement should be construed as a solicitation of an offer to buy or offer, or recommendation, to acquire or dispose of any security, commodity, investment or to engage in any other transaction.The information provided in this announcement is not intended for distribution to, or use by, any person or entity in any jurisdiction or country where such distribution or use would be contrary to law or regulation. This announcement is not directed to any person in any jurisdiction where the publication or availability of the announcement is prohibited, by reason of that person's nationality, residence or otherwise.

Investments in the Trust involve risk and the value of the Trust's shares could go down.

Neither BlockFi nor any of its affiliates or representatives provide legal, tax or accounting advice. You should consult your legal and/or tax advisors before making any financial decisions.

Media Contact for BlockFi:

Ryan DicovitskyDukas Linden Public Relations[emailprotected]

About BlockFi

BlockFi is a new breed of financial services company. Founded in 2017 by Zac Prince and Flori Marquez, BlockFi is building a bridge between cryptocurrencies and traditional financial and wealth management products to advance the overall digital asset ecosystem for individual and institutional investors. BlockFi's platform manages more than $8 billion in assets and has generated tens of millions in interest for clients. The company, headquartered in New Jersey with offices around the globe, continues to expand its presence in the United States and internationally.

About Fidelity Digital Assets

Fidelity Digital Assets offers a full-service enterprise-grade platform for securing, trading and supporting digital assets. A business of Fidelity Investments, one of the world's largest and most diversified financial services providers with more than $9.8 trillion in client assets under administration as of December 31, 2020, Fidelity Digital Assets combines the operational and technical capabilities of the broader Fidelity organization with dedicated blockchain expertise to deliver a completely new offering for institutional investors. Learn more at http://fidelitydigitalassets.com.

Fidelity Digital AssetsSM("Fidelity") is an independent company, unaffiliated with BlockFi. Fidelity is a service provider to BlockFi. There is no form of legal partnership agency affiliation, or similar relationship between the BlockFi and Fidelity, nor is such a relationship created or implied by the information herein.

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BlockFi Launches the BlockFi Bitcoin Trust - PRNewswire - PRNewswire