Nicholas Morgan

Nik has reported on international affairs and economics news for three years with bylines in International Business Times, New Europe magazine, The Washington Diplomat, and Ahval News. He is based in Jersey City, but will always be a lifelong New Yorker. Disclosure: no cryptocurrency holdings.

Stories by Nicholas Morgan

What the Bitcoin Halving and Bitcoin ETFs Mean for Supply and Demand
The resounding success of spot Bitcoin ETFs has been a boon for the price of Bitcoin, and its timing could not have been better. Why? The age-old principle of supply and demand. In April, Bitcoin will experience its next ‘halving’, an event that occurs programmatically on the Bitcoin blockchain roughly every four years. With this, Bitcoin rewards for miners, the individuals responsible for securing the Bitcoin network, will be cut in half as a way to keep inflation in check. For the newly minte...
NewsMarkets
5 min read
Nicholas MorganFeb 21, 2024
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Bitcoin ETF Market Will Shrink Before It Expands, Says 21Shares President
Bitcoin ETFs have been a huge success so far this year, but a yawning gap between the biggest issuers and the rest could mean a smaller field next year, according to 21Shares President Ophelia Snyder. “I think you’ll be having three to five winners in this market maximum,” Snyder told Decrypt. Snyder said the last month since spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds launched, events in the market have played out in ways that were both expected and unexpected. The amount of investments into ETFs has b...
NewsMarkets
4 min read
Nicholas MorganFeb 20, 2024
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'Think of It as Bitcoin’s IPO': BTC Will Enter New Price Discovery Post ETFs, Says Bitwise
Bitcoin is poised to chart new territory following the success of recently approved exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and the price of BTC could eclipse $80,000 this year, says Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan. The early success of the Bitcoin ETFs has shattered records among similar products, sparking a continuous flow of funds into Bitcoin since mid-January. In an interview with Decrypt, Hougan said that Bitwise, which launched its BITB spot ETF alongside nine others on Jan. 10, expect...
NewsCoins
4 min read
Nicholas MorganFeb 17, 2024
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VanEck Cuts Bitcoin ETF Fees as Competition Among Issuers Intensifies
VanEck is lowering its sponsor fee for its spot Bitcoin ETF just over a month after the digital asset manager launched the product, the latest in a string of cuts taken by issuers in a highly competitive market. In a supplemental filing submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission on February 15, VanEck said that it will be lowering its sponsor fee for its Bitcoin ETF, which trades under the HODL ticker, to 0.20% from its current rate of 0.25%. This cut will take effect on February 21....
NewsBusiness
3 min read
Nicholas MorganFeb 15, 2024
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Big Bank, Broker Interest in Bitcoin Is 'Accelerating', Says ETF Issuer VanEck
The appetite for Bitcoin among big financial institutions, including banks and brokerages, is "accelerating," as more of their clients show interest in Bitcoin ETFs, according to VanEck Head of Digital Assets Research Mathew Sigel. And as more institutions move closer to considering these offerings, the chances to see further adoption of this new asset class expands with it. “We don’t see obstacles, we see opportunity,” Sigel said in an interview with Decrypt. Bitcoin’s relationship with Wall...
NewsMarkets
4 min read
Nicholas MorganFeb 15, 2024
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Bitcoin ETF 'FOMO Rally' Could Send Price to All-Time High: Bernstein
Bitcoin is starting to look like the hot commodity on the market again after the launch of the much-anticipated spot Bitcoin ETFs. With so much enthusiasm surrounding these products, the question becomes how much more can “number go up.” The answer is, of course, unknown, but that won’t stop analysts from speculating, including those at the $725 billion asset manager AllianceBernstein. They predict it’s possible Bitcoin will breach a new all-time high this year. “We think the best days of Bitco...
NewsMarkets
3 min read
Nicholas MorganFeb 13, 2024
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Bitcoin ETF Issuers May Dwindle by End of Year, Says Valkyrie CIO
Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF) are close to their first month anniversary of operating, but there is a chance the field of ETFs may shrink by the end of the year, said Valkyrie Funds’ Chief Investment Officer Steven McClurg. McClurg predicts that of the ten issuers currently operating, only "about seven or eight" will be left standing. The reason, he tells Decrypt, is because the costs of running a spot ETF for Bitcoin may prove too onerous—especially amid a race to the bottom fee-cut...
NewsCoins
4 min read
Nicholas MorganFeb 10, 2024
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Sam Bankman-Fried's Defense Wants More Latitude In Questioning Witnesses
Lawyers for disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) are moving to expand the scope of their questioning for the prosecution’s next round of witnesses after a bruising two weeks of testimony by members of the mogul’s inner circle. SBF's lawyers raised concerns with what they said were restrictions on their available lines of questioning with government witnesses that they say block them from making a case for their client. To correct this, the defense asked for more room to explore defense...
NewsLaw and Order
3 min read
Nicholas MorganOct 16, 2023
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Correction: There Is No Solana Kill Switch, Bug Bounty Program Is Two Years Old
Editor's note: Decrypt has retracted the original story, which took a hoax tweet about fake testimony by Caroline Ellison at Sam Bankman-Fried's criminal trial as fact. Further, although the Solana security bug bounty program was brought up in light of the hoax, the program has existed for two years. Decrypt regrets the error.
NewsCoins
1 min read
Nicholas MorganOct 16, 2023
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Lambo Who? You Can Now Buy a Ferrari With Bitcoin
While Lamborghini sports cars are the exotic car make most commonly invoked in crypto, the world’s leading luxury automotive brand is now directly courting HODLers in the U.S. Ferrari, the luxury Italian automaker, is now allowing Americans to buy their luxury sports cars with Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH), or the USDC stablecoin. The carmaker is partnering with crypto-payment processor BitPay to handle the conversion from digital asset payments into fiat on behalf of Ferrari dealers—and perform relat...
NewsCoins
2 min read
Nicholas MorganOct 15, 2023
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Coinbase Decries SEC ‘Bureaucratic Pantomime', Again Demands a Decision on Crypto Rules
Dismissing the most recent response from the Securities and Exchange Commission to its long-delayed petition on rulemaking, Coinbase is demanding once again that the agency take prompt action on a request it made last year for formal rules on which digital assets count as securities. If the SEC won’t do that, the exchange wants the courts to force the SEC to take action. In a filing submitted to a Manhattan federal court on Friday, Coinbase accused the SEC of a pattern of "troubling intransigen...
NewsLaw and Order
3 min read
Nicholas MorganOct 15, 2023
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U.S. Finance is ‘Lurching’ Toward a China Surveillance Model: Rohit Chopra
The vast collection of Americans’ financial data by a dwindling number of large financial firms is one of the ways the United States could end up like China, warned Rohit Chopra, the head of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB). In a panel discussion hosted by the Brookings Institute on Friday, Chopra made his case for a fresh batch of regulations that would require payment companies to provide more information on their use of personal data and private currencies, including digital curr...
NewsLaw and Order
3 min read
Nicholas MorganOct 9, 2023
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Crypto Has ‘No Innate or Inherent Value’, SEC Argues in Coinbase Case
The Securities and Exchange Commission is arguing that cryptocurrencies lack any "innate or inherent value" as part of their case against Coinbase in federal court—prompting eye rolls from Coinbase and crypto watchers. In response to a motion to throw out the agency’s lawsuit filed over the summer, the SEC petitioned a judge to reject Coinbase’s stance that cryptocurrency trading does not count as an investment contract between parties. It justified its position by repeating its position that fe...
NewsCoins
3 min read
Nicholas MorganOct 8, 2023
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Huobi Reclaims $8 Million In Stolen Ethereum After Offering Bounty to Hacker
Huobi Gloabl’s cryptocurrency exchange has recovered millions in stolen funds from a hacker who absconded with them in September after making contact with the attacker and negotiating a deal to see it returned. Justin Sun, a Huobi Global investor and HTX adviser, took to Twitter on Saturday to announce that $8 million in stolen Ether (ETH) was restored and that the hacker made “the right choice” to accept HTX’s offer. "We have confirmed that the hacker has fully returned all funds, as promised,...
NewsBusiness
2 min read
Nicholas MorganOct 8, 2023
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SBF Can't Blame FTX Attorneys At the Start Of His Trial, Says Judge
Sam Bankman-Fried and his legal team cannot blame FTX company lawyers for allegedly reviewing and approving decisions that he made as CEO, according to a weekend ruling by the judge presiding over the disgraced founder's upcoming criminal trial—at least not at first. In a 10-page memo released on Sunday, Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that any “advice of counsel” defense cannot be included in the defense’s opening remarks, granting a request made by the prosecution to block such a move. To make his d...
NewsLaw and Order
2 min read
Nicholas MorganOct 2, 2023
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For Mark Zuckerberg, Advances in AI Still Lead Back to the Metaverse
Meta’s ambitions in leading the virtual and augmented reality future has not ebbed, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg sees cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology as a compelling way to make that happen. Across several media interviews this past week, Zuckerberg has made it clear that he saw recent developments in generative AI as key to maximizing myriad applications in the “metaverse.” In particular, the Meta CEO dialed in on the creation of digital avatars that will one day be embedded across...
NewsArtificial Intelligence
4 min read
Nicholas MorganOct 1, 2023
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Sam Bankman-Fried Has Few Pathways to Acquittal, Say Legal Experts
Nearly a year after cryptocurrency exchange FTX went down in flames, the trial of its disgraced founder Sam Bankman-Fried is set to begin in a Manhattan federal court on Tuesday. SBF—a once-feted wunderkind who often cast himself as an embodiment of responsible stewardship in crypto—faces a litany of charges, including money laundering, wire fraud, and illegal political donations. If convicted, SBF faces potentially decades in prison for his role in the implosion of FTX, forcibly removed from th...
NewsLaw and Order
6 min read
Nicholas MorganOct 1, 2023
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SBF Trial Prosecution Previews the Witnesses It Plans to Call
Federal prosecutors revealed part of their slate of witnesses who will testify in the criminal case against disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried only days before the high-profile trial is set to start. In a pair of filings to the court over the weekend, prosecutors said that they plan to introduce testimony from FTX customers and investors affected by the firm’s collapse last November to lay out how they expected the company would take care of their digital assets rather than how they were u...
NewsLaw and Order
3 min read
Nicholas MorganOct 1, 2023
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Security Platform Immunefi Launches Smart Contract Bug Bounty Vaults
Bug bounty platform Immunefi is launching a new system to improve cooperation between developers and security researchers at a time when hackers are wreaking havoc across the DeFi ecosystem. To do this, Immunefi announced the launch of Vault Systems, a smart contract system that allows developers to safely deposit funds earmarked for paying hackers or researchers for reporting vulnerabilities in their code. The funds only get released to a hacker when a vulnerability report has been verified. Th...
NewsDeFi
3 min read
Nicholas MorganSep 26, 2023
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Terra Classic Community Votes to End Minting, Reminting of USTC Tokens
The Terra Classic community has voted to end the minting and reminting of Terra Classic USD (USTC) tokens more than a year after its collapse sparked a widespread meltdown in cryptocurrency markets. A week of voting on whether or not to end the token concluded on September 21, and ended with about 59% of the community in favor of ending all minting activities. About 40% voted against the proposal, while just under 7% of voters chose to abstain. In a post, the community said the proposal aims to...
NewsCoins
2 min read
Nicholas MorganSep 25, 2023
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