Ether Surges on BlackRock’s ETF Plans; A Milestone for Michael Saylor’s Massive Bitcoin Bet

The ETF race raises markets and Michael Sailor's Bitcoin bet pays off. You're watching Coin Desk Daily. I'm your host, Jen Sani. All right, let's take a look at the markets. The asset class continued its upward trend this week with the coin desk market index registering a 7.4% increase since Sunday. That's an 11% increase week on week. This surge brings the 185 asset broad market indexes year to date gain to 98%. The Coin desk Bitcoin Price XPX index is currently hovering around $37,000. That's at more than 6% this week. And the Coin Desk Ether price ETX index is currently up more than 16% on the week. The second largest Cryptocurrency by market cap is currently trading hands above $2000. Ethereum surges. Thanks to news that Blackrock wants to create an ETF that holds Ether. The company's plan was revealed in a filing by NASDAQ, the US Exchange where Blackrock will seek to list the product which will need regulatory approval. On Thursday, it emerged that the corporate entity Ishares Ethereum Trust had been registered in the State of Delaware Ishares is the name of Blackrock's ETF division. The surging price of Bitcoin has pushed the asset's largest public holder micro strategy to unrealized gains of over $1.1 billion. The company was founded by executive chairman Michael Saylor who often tweets his support for Bitcoin and he did it again today. But holdings at the business software company reached $5.7 billion on Thursday as the price crossed $37,000 for the first time since May 2022. That's 25% more than their cumulative investment. The company holds over 100 and 58,000 bitcoins crypto lender Celsius secured approval for its reorganization plan from a bankruptcy court on Thursday. The company said the implementation is expected to be completed by early 2024. Celsius filed for bankruptcy in July last year. A process that also saw it make a $4.7 billion settlement with us. Authorities over fraud allegations at the time of settlement. Former Ceo Alex Moshinsky who had resigned in September 2022 was arrested on fraud charges allegations. He has denied. His trial is scheduled for September 2024. That's a wrap for Coindesk daily. Get more updates on coindesk dot com and we'll see you on Monday.