Bitcoin Daily: SEC Delays Ruling on NYDIG’s Spot Bitcoin ETF Proposal; Kosovo Bans Crypto Mining to Save Energy

Decentralized finance (DeFi) platform WonderFi Technologies has agreed to buy Canadian crypto exchange Bitbuy for $161.8 million, according to a Tuesday (Jan. 4) CoinDesk report.

With the deal, WonderFi now gets one of the fastest growing Canadian crypto platforms, with an addition of 375,000 new registered users. It will also be able to offer a new system for buying and investing crypto, bringing that together with DeFi access.

Meanwhile, the blockchain Harmony will grant a $380 million fund for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), which will allocate $500,000 to $1 million for each DAO, with a thousand bounties, a dozen partners, 100 ports and more.

Harmony also plans to launch the Bitcoin Bridge on Jan. 24 this year, which allows users to spend the popular crypto on DeFi products.

Furthermore, TheBlockCrypto reported Tuesday that crypto infrastructure startup Cion Digital has raised $12 million in a seed funding round.

Founder and CEO Snehal Fulzele said the money will be used on expanding the firm’s team and launching an infrastructure platform. The platform will help non-crypto native organizations offer crypto services.

See also: 10 Predictions About What’s Next for Crypto in 2022

In addition, bitcoin exchange reserves have hit almost record lows as the year begins, with Cointelegraph writing Tuesday that buyers appetites have grown.

CryptoQuant data shows reserves across 21 exchanges at 2.308 bitcoin as of Jan. 4. That data also shows that late December saw a macro low of 2.303 million bitcoin on exchanges’ books.

In other news, El Salvador’s government plans to send Congress around 20 bills focusing on markets and securities investments, looking to make a legal case for issuing bitcoin bonds, Reuters wrote Tuesday.

Finance Minister Alejandro Zelaya said the government wanted to “provide a legal structure and legal certainty to everyone who buys the bitcoin bond.”

In the first bitcoin bond issue planned for 2022, bitcoin bonds would be worth $1 billion and have a coupon for 6.5%. The idea, according to President Nayib Bukele, is to make a “Bitcoin City.”

Meanwhile, Reuters reported Tuesday that the government of Kosovo has banned cryptocurrency mining as an attempt to cut down on electricity consumption.

Kosovo’s youth have often recently gotten into crypto mining because of cheap power prices there, but the country is facing its worst energy crisis in a decade because of production outages.

Related: DeFi Is the New Big Thing in Crypto. But What Is It? Here’s Everything You Need to Know

In other news, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has elongated the time period for a ruling on NYDIG’s proposal for a new bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) by 60 days, Coindesk reported Tuesday.

The SEC wants more time to consider the rule change. However, the SEC has rejected several ETFs lately, and Chairperson Gary Gensler said he’d rather see a bitcoin futures ETF rather than one holding bitcoin directly.

Finally, Goldman Sachs Group says bitcoin plans to keep taking market share from gold, as digital assets are adopted more — which could make the $100,000 price a reality eventually, Bloomberg wrote Tuesday.

Goldman Sachs says bitcoin’s float-adjusted market capitalization is just under $700 billion.

If bitcoin’s share of the “store of value” market, comprised of bitcoin and gold, was to rise to 50% from its current 20% in the next five years, the $100,000 price could be reached, according to Zach Pandl, co-head of global FX and EM strategy.