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- Bitwise has received over 16,000 inscriptions in its Bitcoin address holding BTC for its exchange-traded fund
- The inscriptions are part of other donations sent to the wallet after the firm publicly disclosed its ETF’s Bitcoin address
- The donations are worth slightly over $6,000
Bitwise, an asset manager offering a spot Bitcoin ETF, has received more than 16,000 Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions in its Bitcoin ETF wallet. The inscriptions are part of the over $6,000 in donations sent to the wallet less than a day after publicly disclosing its Bitcoin address that holds its fund’s BTC. Among the inscriptions are the recently anonymously airdropped artworks featuring “cutting-edge RSICs” and a Bitcoin Punk, a move that can be considered as either a way to welcome Bitwise to the Bitcoin blockchain or a marketing stunt by inscription creators.
Increasing Public Transparency
The wallet also holds items inscribed on the Bitcoin network using the BRC-20 standard launched mid-last year. There are however no transactions on the donations and the asset manager is yet to address the donations.
Bitwise believes that “publishing on-chain addresses is a first step toward increasing public transparency.”
Announcement: Today the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB) becomes the first U.S. bitcoin ETF to publish the bitcoin addresses of its holdings.
Now anyone can verify BITB’s holdings and flows directly on the blockchain.
Onchain transparency is core to Bitcoin’s ethos. We’re proud to… pic.twitter.com/1JTUh3zvDE
— Bitwise (@BitwiseInvest) January 24, 2024
Although the asset manager was mostly applauded for being the first spot Bitcoin ETF issuer to disclose its BTC address, some in the community criticized some of its actions. Some, for example, noted that the firm transferred a huge amount of BTC to the address in a single transaction without first sending a few coins for verification.
$4.5 Billion in One Day
The donations sent to the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF wallet come two weeks after the United States securities watchdog, SEC, approved 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs that attracted $4.5 billion in inflows on their first day of trading.
The day when the SEC was expected to approve the ETFs, its X (formerly Twitter) account was compromised, something that the commission later attributed to a SIM swap attack. The crypto community turned the SEC head’s response to the hack into a Bitcoin Ordinals inscription.
With donations to the wallet likely to increase, it’s unclear whether Bitwise will keep, liquidate or also donate them to other users on the blockchain.
