SEC Delays BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Redemptions Decision

Plus, 🟠 Tether stacks $500M in BTC, 🪙 SNS airdrop stirs Solana, 🏦 VanEck goes tokenized Treasuries, 🎧 Two fresh pods, and more!

Author

Juan Aranovich
May 14, 2025

Hi! In today’s edition:

  • 📝 SEC opens public feedback on BlackRock ETF tweak

  • 💰 Tether buys nearly $500M in bitcoin

  • 🔄 Solana Name Service airdrops new token

  • 🏛️ VanEck brings Treasuries to blockchain

Also, we’ve got two new podcasts!

  • 🎧 Bits + Bips: Tariff reset & ETH’s surprise run

  • 🎙️ Unchained: How insiders rig token launches

By Tikta

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has delayed its decision on whether to allow BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) to adopt in-kind redemptions, instead moving the proposal into a public comment period for further legal and policy review.

Currently, BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF operates under a cash redemption model, where investors receive cash upon redemption, requiring the fund to sell bitcoin to fulfill withdrawals. The proposed in-kind model would allow authorized participants to redeem ETF shares directly for bitcoin, rather than cash.

The SEC said it needs additional analysis to determine whether the change meets investor protection and market integrity standards under Section 6(b)(5) of the Securities Exchange Act.

The Commission has also pushed other crypto ETF proposals, including Grayscale’s Solana and Litecoin Trusts and 21Shares’ Dogecoin ETF.

Both the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF’s in-kind redemption proposal and the Dogecoin ETF are now in public comment phases, allowing stakeholders and the broader public to submit feedback before the SEC makes its final determinations.

Tether, the issuer of USDT, has purchased 4,812 bitcoin at an average price of $95,319, fulfilling its funding commitment for the launch of Twenty One Capital, the newly formed bitcoin investment firm announced last month. The purchase is worth nearly $500 million at today’s prices.

Tether and Bitfinex are majority stakeholders in the new firm, with SoftBank holding a significant minority stake and Cantor Fitzgerald overseeing the SPAC merger that will make Twenty One Capital a publicly traded company. 

Twenty One Capital plans to hold over 42,000 BTC, valued at about $4.4 billion at current market prices, making it one of the largest public Bitcoin holders globally, currently third after Michael Saylor’s Strategy and MARA Holdings.

The company aims to provide both traditional and crypto-native financial services, including Bitcoin lending and reserves management, and to offer public-market exposure to bitcoin for institutional and retail investors.

If you are interested in learning more about Twenty One Capital, you can watch this interview: 

Solana Name Service Airdrops 40% of New Governance Token to Supporters

The Solana Name Service (SNS), a decentralized identity protocol that lets users register human-readable .sol domain names on the Solana blockchain formerly known as Bonfida, has launched a new token called SNS, replacing its previous token FIDA.

The SNS team said the FIDA token, originally designed for the now-defunct Serum decentralized exchange, had become “unsustainable” and misaligned with the needs of .sol domain holders and the SNS protocol.

While FIDA will retain minor utility such as discounts, SNS is intended to take over as the protocol’s core governance, rewards, and alignment token.

To kickstart adoption, SNS has airdropped 40% of its 10 billion total token supply, amounting to 4 billion SNS tokens, to early and new community members, according to the project’s website.

As of 2 am ET today, the SNS token was trading at a market cap of $8.6 million, down 8% since launch. Meanwhile, FIDA was up 14% in the last 24 hours, trading at a market cap of $11 million.

Asset management giant VanEck has debuted VBILL, its first tokenized U.S. Treasury fund, in partnership with Securitize, giving qualified investors blockchain-based access to short-term Treasury-backed assets with 24/7 liquidity and real-time settlement.

Launched across Avalanche, BNB Chain, Ethereum, and Solana, the fund leverages Wormhole’s interoperability platform for cross-chain token transfers, while Securitize handles tokenization, fund administration, and compliance services.

Minimum subscription starts at $100,000 for Avalanche, BNB Chain, and Solana, and $1 million for Ethereum, with State Street as custodian and RedStone providing daily net asset value (NAV) data via blockchain oracles.

The launch places VanEck alongside BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and others in the fast-growing tokenized Treasuries market, now estimated at nearly $7 billion.

Markets are moving on tariffs, Trump trade deals, and crypto policy. This week’s Bits + Bips unpacks all of this, and also why ETH is surprising skeptics, whether investors should fear the debt ceiling, and if the threat of a recession is over.

After the U.S. and China announced a 90-day pause on tariffs, signaling a massive de-escalation of the trade wars, markets rallied.

In this week’s Bits + Bips, the panel covers the biggest macro and crypto forces in motion right now:

  • Will the US-China tariff reset reshape the global economy, or just kick the can down the road?

  • America’s ballooning deficit and why politicians are spending like it’s wartime

  • Why some think ETH has a unique lane to outperform

  • How policymakers ignore the power of the crypto community at their own risk

  • Plus: Saylor copycats, Solana’s risk-reward balance, and whether stagflation or recession is still in the cards

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

As the Movement scandal showed, token launches can be rigged. How can the industry prevent some founders, market makers, and even VCs from quietly profiting at retail’s expense?

The Movement Labs scandal exposed more than just one bad deal –  it pulled back the curtain on a widespread problem in crypto: how some market makers, founders, and VCs play games to make money — whether the project succeeds or not.

In this episode, Laura speaks with José Macedo of Delphi Labs, Omar Shakeeb of SecondLane, and Taran Sabharwal of STIX to explain:

  • How market makers are supposed to work, and how they operate in crypto

  • Why insider selling is more common than you think

  • How projects like Movement, Mantra, and others exploit launch day hype

  • Whether VCs often enable this behavior with side deals that retail never hears about

  • And what the industry needs to do to fix this broken system

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

  • 🇺🇸 New SEC Chair Paul Atkins announced the regulator will shift away from enforcement-led crypto policy by introducing clearer rules on token issuance, custody, and trading to keep blockchain innovation in the U.S. instead of driving it offshore.

  • 🎨 Yuga Labs handed full ownership of the historic CryptoPunks NFT collection to the nonprofit Infinite Node Foundation, which plans to preserve and promote the project through partnerships with museums and a new advisory council.

  • 🇹🇭 Thailand’s finance ministry announced plans to offer $150 million worth of government-backed digital tokens to the public within two months, aiming to give citizens a higher-yield alternative to traditional bank deposits.

  • 💵 Robinhood expanded into Canada by acquiring crypto exchange WonderFi for nearly $179 million, gaining control of Bitbuy and Coinsquare to strengthen its position against rivals like Coinbase and Wealthsimple Crypto.

  • 🎉 eToro priced its Nasdaq IPO at $52 per share—above earlier estimates—raising around $310 million and achieving a $4.2 billion valuation as it joins the small group of publicly traded crypto-focused platforms.

  • Meet the ‘Crypto is Macro Now’ newsletter: where crypto and macro meet

A daily dose of updates and deep dives into how crypto is impacting the macro landscape and vice versa – markets, geopolitics, macro trends, tokenization, regulation, global adoption and more, delivered to your inbox for less than the price of a weekly New York coffee.