Today in crypto, US Democrats signaled support for a bipartisan approach to a digital asset market structure. Spot Bitcoin ETFs notched a fourth straight week of inflows, totaling $3.9 billion, and Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek denied claims the exchange concealed a 2023 user data leak from regulators.
Democrats signal support for bipartisan solution to market structure bill
A group of Democratic senators in the US Congress has signaled its intention to work with Republicans on advancing legislation to establish a digital asset market structure framework.
In a Friday statement, 12 Democrats, including members of the Senate Banking Committee and Senate Agriculture Committee, issued a statement ahead of an expected vote on a crypto market structure bill pushed by Republican leadership.
“We hope our Republican colleagues will agree to a bipartisan authorship process, as is the norm for legislation of this scale,” the statement reads. “Given our shared interest in moving forward quickly on this issue, we hope they will agree to reasonable requests to allow for true collaboration.”
Though Republicans hold a majority in both chambers of Congress, they could still need some Democratic support to pass legislation.
Among the Democrats’ proposed “seven key pillars” for a market structure bill released about two weeks ago were protections to fight illicit finance and “closing the gap in the spot market” for digital assets not considered securities.
They also asked Republicans to support “preventing corruption and abuse” and illicit finance.
Crypto funds see $1.9 billion inflows as Bitcoin ETFs extend streak
Cryptocurrency funds recorded a second consecutive week of inflows last week, extending the $3.3 billion in gains recorded the week before.
Crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs) logged $1.9 billion in inflows last week, data from CoinShares showed Monday.
Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) led the way with inflows of $977 million and $772 million, respectively, while Solana (SOL) and XRP (XRP) also saw strong demand with $127 million and $69 million of inflows.
With the new gains, the total assets under management (AUM) in global crypto ETPs surged to a new high of $40.4 billion year-to-date, CoinShares’ head of research, James Butterfill, said.
Bitcoin funds maintained momentum last week, attracting the largest share of inflows after topping the gains with $2.4 billion in inflows the previous week.
The latest inflows marked the fourth straight week of gains for Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), bringing the four-week total to $3.9 billion, according to SoSoValue.
In contrast, short-Bitcoin ETPs continued to struggle, with $3.5 billion in outflows and total AUM dropping to a multiyear low of $83 million.
Ether ETPs also saw strong investor demand last week, with fresh inflows pushing year-to-date totals to a record $12.6 billion, according to CoinShares data.
The fresh inflows in crypto funds came amid the US Federal Reserve slashing the key US interest rate by 0.25 points last Wednesday, marking its first cut of the year.
Crypto.com says report of undisclosed user data leak “unfounded”
Crypto exchange Crypto.com has denied that it kept a 2023 data leak of user details a secret from authorities.
Bloomberg reported on Friday that Noah Urban, a member of the hacking group Scattered Spider, said the group had phished their way into gaining access to a Crypto.com employee’s account sometime before early 2023, which exposed the personal information of some users.
Blockchain investigator ZachXBT then claimed on X that Crypto.com had “covered up a breach that impacted the personal information of your users,” adding that Crypto.com had been “breached several times.”
However, a Crypto.com spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the company made a “Notice of Data Security incident filing” in the US-based Nationwide Multistate Licensing System and in “additional reports with the relevant jurisdictional regulators.”
The incident “included exposure of limited PII [Personally Identifiable Information] data affecting a very small number of individuals,” they added. “The incident was contained within hours of detection, and no customer funds were accessed or ever at risk.”
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