Galaxy Digital, a crypto-focused investment firm, will accept digital assets, cryptocurrency mining hardware, and property as collateral on cash loans to cryptoasset development projects and mining outfits, according to Business Insider. To that end, Mike Novogratz, founder, CEO, and majority stakeholder of Galaxy will seek to raise $250 worth of new capital in order to fund the loans.
According to private sources, Business Insider reports that the funding round will be open until March. Galaxy and other crypto-lenders, such as Salt Lending and BlockFi, have seen strong demand for loans, as developers and cryptocurrency miners struggle to survive the ongoing “crypto winter.”
Novogratz, a minor celebrity in the cryptoasset industry, has had a difficult year.
His September 2018 prediction that the crypto markets had found their bottom was proved wrong as prices dropped precipitously in November. Recently, Novogratz scooped up 7.5 million of his own company’s shares – listed on the Toronto stock exchange after a strategic merger last year – to the tune of $5.5 million, in order to bolster flagging share prices.
(Galaxy Digital Holdings LTD.; source: Tradingview.com)
2018(-2019?) Bear Market
An appropriately deflating bookend for the cryptoasset industry in 2018 came today, as the Cboe withdrew its application for the VanEck SolidX Bitcoin Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). There has been intense speculation and anticipation through the better part of 2018 surrounded the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) decision on the VanEck ETF.
It transpired that neither approval nor denial was reached. Amid the ongoing shutdown of the US government – owing to apparently irreconcilable political conflicts between the country’s two main political parties – the Cboe likely thought it best to withdraw the application rather than risking the possibility of a summary decision.
At any rate, it already seemed unlikely that the VanEck would gain approval, owing to the SEC’s (perhaps unfounded) concerns surrounding market manipulation
CBOE has withdrawn the VanEck/SolidX bitcoin ETF proposal (https://t.co/812Ym7U7Hh).
They haven't given a reason yet, but withdrawal implies that they expected denial & didn't want another SEC order setting bad precedent for the future.
There will be no bitcoin ETF in Q1 2019.
— Jake Chervinsky (@jchervinsky) January 23, 2019
