The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has refuted the jury’s conclusion regarding Terraform Labs’ alleged violations and has demanded a summary judgment on all the claims.
A court filing from Oct. 27 showed the SEC’s reluctance to accept the jury’s leniency toward Do Kwon and his involvement in facilitating the frauds that eventually led to the collapse of the Terra ecosystem. The filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York read:
“No rational jury could conclude that Kwon was not liable for Terraform’s violations of Exchange Act Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 thereunder pursuant to Exchange Act Section 20(a).”
The “evidence” of violations provided by the SEC points to Kwon’s involvement in misleading crypto investors by creating and marketing Terra and its in-house Terra (LUNA) tokens as securities.
SEC seeks summary judgment in Kwon and Terraform Labs case. Source: CourtListener
On the same day, Kwon and Terraform Labs asked the judge to toss the SEC’s lawsuit, arguing that Terra Classic (LUNC), TerraClassicUSD (USTC), Mirror Protocol (MIR) and its mirrored assets (mAssets) are not securities as the SEC alleged.
However, the SEC maintains that Kwon and Terraform Labs offered and sold securities, sold LUNA and MIR in unregistered transactions, engaged in transactions involving mAssets and committed fraud.
While Terra co-founder Daniel Shin’s lawyer blamed the “unreasonable operation of the Anchor Protocol and external attacks carried out by Do-hyung Kwon” for the Terra ecosystem collapse, the company recently blamed market maker Citadel Securities for its role in an alleged “concerted, intentional effort” to cause the depeg of its TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin in 2022.
Screenshot from the filing by Terraform compelling Citadel to provide additional documents. Source: CourtListener
Citadel Securities told Cointelegraph in a statement: “This frivolous motion is based on false social media posts and ignores information we already provided confirming we had no role whatsoever in this matter.”
Bitcoin’s expanding institutional adoption may provide the “structural” inflows necessary to surpass gold’s market capitalization and push its price beyond $1 million by 2029, according to Bitwise’s head of European research, André Dragosch.
“Our in-house prediction is $1 million by 2029. So that Bitcoin will match gold’s market cap and total addressable market by 2029,” he told Cointelegraph during the Chain Reaction daily X spaces show on April 30.
Gold is currently the world’s largest asset, valued at over $21.7 trillion. In comparison, Bitcoin’s market capitalization sits at $1.9 trillion, making it the seventh-largest asset globally, according to CompaniesMarketCap data.
Top 10 global assets by market capitalization. Source: CompaniesMarketCap
For the 2025 market cycle, Bitcoin may surpass $200,000 in the “base case” and $500,000 with more governmental adoption, Dragosch said.
“But once you see sovereign bias like the US government stepping in, all this will change to $500,000.”
“So the base case is $200,000, conditional on the US government not stepping in. If they step in, it will move closer toward $500,000,” said Dragosch, referring to the US government’s plan to potentially make direct Bitcoin acquisitions through “budget-neutral” strategies.
The US is looking at “many creative ways” to fund its Bitcoin investments, including from tariff revenue and by reevaluating the US Treasury’s gold certificates, creating a paper surplus to fund the BTC reserve without selling gold, Bo Hines of the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets said in an interview on April 14.
The US-based spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have surpassed all expectations during their first year of trading, exceeding record trading volumes as BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF became the fastest-growing ETF in history.
The first year is usually the “slowest” for ETFs, Dragosch said, highlighting the launch of the gold ETF:
“That alone implies that in the second and third year, we will see growing inflows. In terms of the four four-year cycle, implies that, this cycle will be prolonged by these structural inflows.”
The Bitcoin cycle may also be prolonged when US wirehouses start gaining exposure to Bitcoin and ETFs.
“In the US, the major distribution channels go via Wirehouses, which are essentially the big banks like Merrill Lynch or Morgan Stanley. […] Not even half of these wirehouses have opened up their distribution channels to US Bitcoin ETFs,” the analyst said.
Adoption from US wirehouses may bring a “huge amount of capital,” since these control over $10 trillion worth of customer assets, Dragosch added.
Major European cryptocurrency investment firm 21Shares has filed for a spot Sui exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States, marking another step in its expansion to the US market.
21Shares on April 30 submitted the Form S-1 registration for a spot Sui (SUI) ETF to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Called the 21Shares Sui ETF, the proposed ETF will issue common shares of beneficial interest by seeking to track the performance of SUI held by 21Shares’ US subsidiary.
The US filing comes a year after 21Shares started trading the 21Shares Sui Staking exchange-traded product in Europe in July 2024, with its first listings on Euronext Paris and Euronext Amsterdam.
No ticker or planned exchange yet
The 128-page filing does not specify on which US exchange the new SUI ETF is expected to debut trading. The ETF also doesn’t have a ticker symbol yet.
“There is no certainty that there will be liquidity available on the exchange or that the market price will be in line with the NAV [net asset value] or the principal market NAV at any given time,” it states.
An excerpt from the S-1 Form for 21Shares Sui ETF. Source: SEC
The filing highlighted that the ETF aims to provide exposure to SUI by holding the tokens directly, without utilizing leverage, derivatives or engaging in speculative trading.
Canary Capital was the first to file for Sui ETF
21Shares is not the first company to file for a Sui ETF in the US. Canary Capital, a US-based crypto investment firm, filed a Form S-1 registration for a spot Sui ETF on March 17.
Banking giant Morgan Stanley reportedly plans to list cryptocurrencies on its E*Trade investment brokerage and trading platform.
According to a May 1 Bloomberg report, the firm intends to list crypto assets on E*Trade in 2026. The plan is still in early development, and the bank is said to be exploring partnerships with established crypto firms to power the service. Internal discussions about cryptocurrency support reportedly began in late 2024.
This would not be Morgan Stanley’s first exposure to digital assets. The bank’s wealthiest clients have had access to crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and futures for some time, with the firm’s advisers allowed to pitch Bitcoin ETFs since August 2024.
The news follows previous reports that Morgan Stanley was considering adding cryptocurrency trading to its E*Trade online brokerage platform in early January. The reports at the time cited the expectations of a friendlier crypto regulatory environment.
The move comes amid an increasingly favorable regulatory environment in the United States following the election of President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a pro-crypto platform and is personally involved in several blockchain ventures.