Syz the moment

North American mining firm Hut8 is seeing new demand for AI and high performance computing as it looks to re-energize some 6,400 rigs being moved from its inoperative North Bay site in Ontario. As previously reported, Hut8 is in an ongoing legal battle with its third party energy supplier Validus Power over alleged failure to meet contractual obligations. Operations at the facility have been suspended since Nov. 2022. Source: Cointelegrah

The Securities and Exchange Commission said a recent wave of applications filed by asset managers to launch spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds are inadequate, according to people familiar with the matter. The agency informed exchanges Nasdaq and Cboe Global Markets, which filed the applications on behalf of asset managers including BlackRock and Fidelity Investments, that the filings aren't sufficiently clear and comprehensive, the people said.

Though the Swiss National Bank is set to pilot central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, amid a changing financial ecosystem, it doesn’t necessarily have plans to launch one. The pilot is meant to test a wholesale CBDC for “a limited time” to test transactions with market participants on the SIX Digital Exchange, a spokesperson told Blockworks. The central bank sees signs in Switzerland of the development of a new financial ecosystem where transactions take place with tokenized securities and tokenized money — an environment set to make financial markets more efficient. Source: Blockworks

Last week, BlackRock submitted an application for a spot Bitcoin ETF, which would track Bitcoin’s underlying market price. Source: HolgerZ, Bloomberg

Bitcoin’s price hit $29,000 amid a flurry of exchange traded fund (ETF) applications in the United States and newfound institutional interest in facilitating crypto trading. The launch of EDX markets on Tuesday, a crypto exchange backed by Fidelity, Charles Schwab and Citadel Securities also appears to have strengthen the bullish momentum. EDX currently supports four cryptocurrencies in Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Source: Decrypt

Bitcoin's whales have been busy while the crowd watched prices dwindle these past two months. Wallets holding 1K to 10K $BTC have accumulated a combined $3.5B since the first week of April. Source: Santiment

The regulatory challenges facing crypto exchange Binance continue to mount, now from Europe. French newspaper Le Monde today reported that Binance is under investigation by the judicial finance investigation service under the direction of the specialized interregional jurisdiction of Paris (JIRS) for “illegal” acts relating to the function of service provider on digital assets, as well as "aggravated money laundering." Source: Decrypt

Speculation is mounting that Tether’s USDT, the largest stablecoin by market capitalization at around $83.4 billion, may be under pressure. Specific liquidity pools on the Uniswap and Curve protocols — the deepest pools in the DeFi ecosystem — currently seem to be flooded with USDT sellers. When sellers flood the market it can cause a rapid depeg, a situation noted during the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, when the well-regarded USDC stablecoin (issued by Circle and Coinbase) lost its peg and fell as low as $0.93 before regaining its dollar parity within a couple of days. Source Blockworks