🍉 The Mellon Vault

Happy Friday, In A Nutshell this week:

• 🍉 The BNY Mellon Vault

• 📃 Bitcoin’s First Amendment Protection

• 🤔 Are Coinbase conning BlackRock?

• …and much more

 🚀⏰ Today’s news should be a ~3.59-minute read (522 words).

🧠 Quote Of The Week

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

– Charles Darwin

🍉 The Mellon Vault

BNY Mellon, one of the world’s largest custodian banks, revealed to Bloomberg on Tuesday that it is preparing to offer custody services for Bitcoin and ether.

“BNY has engaged, and will continue to engage, its banking regulators to offer custody services to crypto ETP clients at scale.” - BNY Mellon

The SEC provided BNY with a “non-objection” to the plan, a term that gives comfort to the bank that its structure won’t fall afoul of their requirement.

📃 Bitcoin’s First Amendment Protection

Bitcoin isn’t just currency, it’s speech. Transactions, mining, and network participation are expressive acts, protected by the First Amendment.

Recent regulations targeting Bitcoin could infringe on these constitutional rights, as they fail to account for the communicative nature of Bitcoin’s decentralised system.

This paper was written by Ross Stevens, Founder and Executive Chairman of NYDIG.

🤔 Are Coinbase conning BlackRock?

Recent social media posts suggest Coinbase might be issuing "paper Bitcoin" to BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF instead of holding real BTC.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong dismissed these claims, confirming all ETF transactions are settled on-chain.

In light of this BlackRock updated the ETF terms requiring Coinbase to release Bitcoin much quicker to the asset manager, within 12 hours of notice.

Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas called the rumours unfounded, noting such actions would be illegal and highly risky for a major player like BlackRock. Backing this up by saying says BlackRock runs a Bitcoin node to validate the BTC held by its spot Bitcoin ETF

🚀 Take Me To The Moon

Just a bit of fun for your Friday…

Somebody has created an adaptation of ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ by Frank Sinatra with animations of Michael Saylor, Nayib Bukele, Max Keiser and Tucker Carlson.

🔥 What else have you missed?

1. PayPal now allows US businesses to withdraw Bitcoin to external wallets.

2. Israel to consider limiting ownership of precious metals.

3. Nayib Bukele says, In El Salvador, we do not censor opinions or confiscate property for thinking differently.

4. Inside the Biden Admin’s Plot to Destroy Silvergate and Debank Crypto for Good - by Nic Carter.

5. Gary Gensler affirms Bitcoin is not a security.

🍾 Friday Fun!

This week’s crossword is now live - Play here

🧞‍♂️ Your wish is our command