Cryptocurrency Market News: Spot Bitcoin ETF’s Q1 Haul, Bankman-Fried’s Prison Sentence
Bitcoin (BTC) began the week trading in the red, below $70,000, after staying above that level most of the previous week. The cryptocurrency closed the first quarter of the year with gains of roughly 68%, driven in large part by spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds that amassed over $12 billion of net inflows since January.
Last week was a massive one for legal battles involving cryptocurrency companies. Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has been sentenced to 25 years in prison roughly 18 months after the collapse of the defunct crypto exchange, while KuCoin is the latest exchange to face charges related to anti-money laundering laws. Additionally, Coinbase (COIN) failed in a bid to have a lawsuit by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against it dismissed.
Eleven spot bitcoin ETFs approved by the SEC in January saw about $12.1 billion in net inflows by the end of the first quarter. Blackrock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) was the big winner of the spot bitcoin ETF inflows race with roughly $13.9 billion coming into the fund.
Higher fees led to a massive exodus from Grayscale's Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) with investors pulling out almost $14.7 billion from the fund. GBTC is the oldest and the largest bitcoin fund, that was converted into an ETF in January.Grayscale has filed for a mini bitcoin ETF with a lower fee plan to stem some of those outflows.
Hashdex's DEFI ETF, formerly a bitcoin futures ETF and one of the eleven approved by the SEC, finally converted to a spot bitcoin ETF and began trading on March 27.
Bankman-Fried has been handed a 25-year prison term for his involvement in a monumental fraud scheme that led to the platform's downfall in November 2022. Alongside the prison sentence, Bankman-Fried
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