Bitwise executive confirms ETF received $400 of unsolicited Bitcoin

A high Bitwise executive acknowledged on Jan. 26 that his firm’s space Bitcoin ETF has obtained hundreds of bucks of unsolicited Bitcoin.

Co-founder & CTO Hong Kim wrote that the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB) obtained 998,085 satoshis payment $419 all the map by map of 35 UTXOs over two days.

He suggested that this can merely magnify the ETF’s price, writing:

“[It’s] negligible when put next to the [fund’s assets under management] (~$511 million as of the day prior to this) nonetheless these sats are added to [net asset value] and accrue to the nice thing about shareholders.”

When asked whether or no longer the extra funds may perhaps perhaps perhaps as an different be donated to Bitcoin developers, Kim smartly-known that 10% of the fund’s income are donated to begin-supply Bitcoin fashion. Nonetheless, this donation policy became once part of Bitwise’s earlier ETF plans and is now not always an instantaneous response to the receipt of essentially the most modern funds.

Transfers to Bitwise’s Bitcoin tackle had been apparently precipitated by the firm’s decision to put up its tackle publicly, which happened on Jan. 24.

Causes in the encourage of transactions are unclear

The motivations for the transactions are unclear. Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas implied that the transfers had been benevolent, writing:

“Unheard of to mediate about if right here’s a one-off or initiate of something and we ogle [people] toss programs into the proverbial ETF jar admire if the fund had a factual year or correct for the hell of it.”

On the different hand, the intent may perhaps perhaps perhaps very smartly be malicious, as cramped unsolicited transactions are on the total known as “dusting” attacks.

But Kim ruled out the kind of concerns, writing:

“Going by map of [dusting] isn’t that laborious for an institutional custodian and the framing that you may perhaps perhaps perhaps ‘assault’ a public bitcoin tackle by sending it free sats doesn’t serve truth.”

He particularly denied the likely of damage by map of connections to questionable addresses. Kim wrote that the ETF’s custodian, Coinbase Custody, will flag any funds obtained from OFAC-sanctioned addresses. Such funds shall be “left untouched” without being added to the ETF’s glean asset price, he acknowledged.