Bitcoin News Roundup for Feb. 3, 2021

With BTC trading in its recent range and a look at DeFi in a post-WallStreetBets world, CoinDesk’s Market Daily is back with the latest news roundup.

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This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io.

Today’s stories:

GameStop comedown shows appeal of social media-fueled trading. Dogecoin chatter in Reddit reveals cryptocurrency analogue.

Bitwise Asset Management said Tuesday it’s seeking U.S. regulatory approval to publicly trade shares of its bitcoin fund on the over-the-counter marketplace OTCQX. “There is significant growth in interest from professional investors in accessing bitcoin as a tool to hedge their portfolios against rising inflationary risk,” says Matt Hougan, Bitwise’s chief investment officer.

Grayscale Investments reopened its Ethereum Trust earlier this week to accredited investors. (NOTE: Grayscale is a unit of Digital Currency Group, which also owns CoinDesk.)

Switzerland’s 21Shares (formerly known as Amun) is launching the world’s first exchange-traded product for the cryptocurrency polkadot (DOT), to be traded on the Swiss SIX Exchange under the ticker symbol PDOT. Prices for DOT have doubled this year, for a market capitalization of about $15 billion.

The investment firm Accelerate Financial Technologies is seeking approval from Canadian securities regulators to list a bitcoin exchange-traded fund on the Toronto Stock Exchange, CoinDesk’s Tanzeel Akhtar reported Wednesday.