Weekly Roundup
Bitcoin ETF: The SEC rejected a proposal to list and trade a carbon-neutral spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) by asset management firm One River on the NYSE Arca exchange, citing concerns over fraud-prevention measures.
Terra Collapse: According to researcher Nansen, the collapse of TerraUST can’t be attributed to a single attacker. Instead, they identified the trades of a small number of players, including lender Celsius Network, as contributing to the decline.
Investomania: The SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy unveiled a game show-themed public service campaign to help investors make informed investment decisions and avoid fraud. The campaign titled “Investomania” features a 30-second TV spot, 15-second informational videos on crypto assets, margin calls, and guaranteed returns, and interactive quizzes, and aims to reach existing, new, and future investors of all ages.
Retail Investors: Goldman Sachs analysts revealed in a research note that retail investors have sold most of their U.S. stock purchases from the last two years. The note also reported that over the last seven weeks alone, $26 billion has flowed out of U.S. equity ETFs and mutual funds, which are often traded by retail investors.
FinTech Jobs: Outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas reported that the technology and fintech industries saw more job cuts in May than in the entire rest of the year put together.
In the Mix: This Week’s Top FinTech Thought Leader
Suneera Madhani, Co-Founder and CEO, Stax, said accountability needs to happen in order to tackle the tech industry’s diversity problem, citing government incentives or mandates for tech companies might be necessary to force the issue — because despite several years of tech leaders trying, women and people of color remain woefully underrepresented.
Caroline Pham, Commissioner, Commodities Futures Trading Commission, spoke on CNBC’s Crypto World about the effect of Terra’s collapse on future stable coin regulation, executive order, and crypto outlook.
Adrienne Harris, Superintendent, New York Department of Financial Services, was interviewed by Forbes, speaking on how the NYDFS has grown and adapted to changes in crypto and shed some interesting insights on how the agency is scaling up and building out its expertise to track everything from stablecoins to NFTs.