On Aug. 22, 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued three orders rejecting nine bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) proposals and disapproving related rule changes. Each of the proposed ETFs was tied to the bitcoin futures market as provided by the CBOE and CME exchanges, not the spot market, which was proposed for the recently rejected Winklevoss ETF. Despite this difference, the SEC rejected the proposals, noting that the bitcoin futures market was not mature enough and that the proposals failed to protect against fraud and manipulation. Although the rule change was disapproved, the SEC emphasized in all three proposals that "the disapproval does not rest on an evaluation of whether bitcoin, or blockchain more generally, has utility or value as an innovation or investment." According to The New York Times, the day after the rejection orders were published, the SEC announced that it would review the decisions. In a post on Twitter, SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce made the following comment about the forthcoming review: "In English: the Commission (Chairman and Commissioners) delegates some tasks to its staff. When the staff acts in such cases, it acts on behalf of the Commission. The Commission may review the staff's action, as will now happen here."

This week, a token trading platform operating as an SEC- and FINRA-registered broker-dealer and alternative trading system entered into an agreement with CUSIP Global Services to become the first registered broker-dealer to offer nine-digit alphanumeric codes, or CUSIPs, to so-called securitized tokenized offerings (STOs). STOs traded on the platform reportedly will be offered the same CUSIPs that are issued to stocks and bonds, allowing the tokenized securities to be integrated into the existing transactional system.

In foreign markets, several new exchanges and services were announced this week. Singaporean cryptocurrency exchange, Huobi, launched the Huobi Automated Listing platform, a service designed to streamline and increase transparency by requiring cryptocurrency projects to submit documentation and be verified before being listed on the exchange.

Binance LCX, a joint venture between Binance and the Liechtenstein Cryptoassets Exchange, announced the launch of a fiat-to-crypto exchange in Liechtenstein that will offer trading between Swiss francs and euros against major digital currency pairs. And ZB.com, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world by traded value, announced that it will set up operations in Malta with the launch of a new exchange.

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