Huge news! Bitcoin is hovering around, actually just a bit under, US$26k! Again. Oh, and US$1.45 trillion asset manager Franklin Templeton has just filed for a spot Bitcoin ETF in the US and A.

The global investment firm titan is the latest to lob its paperwork at Gary Gensler’s United States Securities and Exchange Commission, aka the SEC, aka the biggest party pooper on the cryptoverse both before and since Charlie Munger called Bitcoin a “venereal disease or something” in February 2022 – back when he was a really, really, really old man and not an undead, 18th-level spellcasting lich.

Franklin Templeton joins BlackRock, VanEck, Fidelity, Ark Invest/21Shares and Grayscale, among other pretty big hitters, in the thus far elusive hunt for the great white whale of institutional crypto investment.

That is, the spot BTC ETF, which, when eventually approved as it surely one day will be (r… right?) is believed to be a major catalyst for the financial-liquidity floodgate to burst into the space and pave the way for other types of spot crypto ETFs, such as Ethereum for example.

Some other key things to note here:

• Publicly listed leading global crypto exchange Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) is the chosen custodian for the BTC that the Franklin Templeton fund intends to hold.

• The fund would be structured as a trust and the Bank of New York Mellon will be the cash custodian and administrator.

• A reference rate from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) will be used for pricing.

• The SEC’s next deadline for deciding on the raft of BTC ETF applications is October 16.

 

 

Here’s some reaction…

 

 

And here’s one of CNBC’s hosts, Joe Kernen, who’s made it reasonably clear in the past he’s a bit of a Bitcoin fan…

 

 

Meanwhile, the Genz…

SEC Chair Gary Gensler was asked by the Senate Banking Committee overnight what he needs to see before approving a spot Bitcoin ETF.

Unsurprisingly, Gensler continued to slam the crypto market, saying that it was a Wild West of non-compliance.

“It’s a field which is rife with fraud, abuse, and misconduct,” he told lawmakers.

Regarding the spot Bitcoin applications and specifically the SEC’s recent legal loss to Grayscale in the latter’s fight to turn its GBTC product into an ETF, he told Republican senator Bill Hagerty that: “We’re reviewing that decision”.

As one of Bloomberg’s ETF experts, Eric Balchunas notes, however, Gensler added: “There are multiple spot ETP filings that we’re also reviewing and I’m looking forward to the staff’s recommendation.”

 

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.07 trillion, up a fraction since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

 

 

Uppers and downers

Some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)

PUMPERS (11-100 market cap position)

• Rollbit Coin (RLB), (market cap: US$473 million) +13%

• VeChain (VET), (market cap: US$1.16 billion) +8%

• Toncoin (TON), (market cap: US$6.15 billion) +8%

 

SLUMPERS

• Stellar (XLM), (market cap: US$3.3 billion) -8%

• Sui (SUI), (market cap: US$336 million) -4%

• Near Protocol (NEAR), (market cap: US$1 billion) -4%

 

Around the blocks

Some pertinence and randomness that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse.

 

https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1701629897330901349

 

Hang on, what’s this? New York-based crypto custody firm Fireblocks has teamed up with the London-based HSBC, one of the largest banks in the world, according to a CoinDesk report that cites “two people familiar with the matter”.

More things that make you go hmm… in a bullish kind of way.

 

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