First mover Americas: BTC holds $26K, Hedera’s HBAR jumps

Bitcoin rose slightly on Thursday as traders digested concerns of a ruling in the FTX court case that temporarily spooked markets earlier this week. BTC added less than 1% over the past 24 hours to trade over $26,300 at the time of writing. Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR) and Solana’s SOL led gains amongst major tokens, rising 6% and 3%. Hedera announced on Wednesday at Token 2049 in Singapore that Stablecoin Studio, its open-source stablecoin issuance and management toolkit, is live. The CoinDesk Market Index (CMI), a broad-based index that tracks the prices of hundreds of tokens, rose 1.67% in the past 24 hours.

Crypto exchange FTX can sell and invest its crypto holdings to pay back creditors, a judge in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware ruled Wednesday. In a court hearing, Judge John Dorsey said he approved the motion and overruled two objections that were made opposing the plan. This allows the bankrupt exchange to sell, stake and hedge its crypto holdings, which it said are worth over $3.4 billion. An attorney representing the ad hoc committee of FTX customers supported the plan during the hearing, while a lawyer for the unsecured creditors committee said all of the involved parties looked to expedite the process. "The sooner we can get this process rolling, the better," he said.

Singapore’s financial regulator issued a nine-year prohibition order against the founders of Three Arrows Capital prohibiting them from operating in the country’s regulated financial services industry. Su Zhu and Kyle Davies will be prohibited from performing any regulated activity and from taking part in the management of, acting as a director of, or becoming a substantial shareholder of, any capital market services firm. MAS says the prohibition order comes after the regulator began investigating Three Arrows Capital after it reprimanded the fund in June 2022 for providing false information to the public and the role Zhu and Davies played in Three Arrows’ Singapore and British Virgin Island entities.

Chart of the day

• The chart shows open interest in perpetual futures contracts tied to solana (SOL). Open interest refers to the number of contracts active at a given time.

• Open interest has jumped 35% to a two-month high of 16.25 million SOL in one week.

• The surge, representing an influx of money in the market, comes as investors brace for FTX creditor liquidations.

• Bankrupt exchange FTX holds around $7 billion in assets, including $1.16 billion in SOL and $560 million in bitcoin.