Here’s what happened in crypto today
Today in crypto, El Salvador acquires two additional BTC, Kraken announced that it will delist Tether’s USDt and four other stablecoins in Europe to comply with the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), and asset manager 21Shares has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a spot Polkadot exchange-traded fund (ETF).El Salvador continues accumulating BTC dispute IMF dealEl Salvador acquired two additional Bitcoin on Feb. 1, as the government's National Bitcoin Office accelerates its pace of BTC accumulation.According to El Salvador's national Bitcoin tracker, the country has a total of over 6,055 BTC, valued at over $612 million, at the time of this writing.The country recently walked back its Bitcoin legal tender law, which required businesses to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment.As part of the IMF deal, the country also agreed to scale back public sector involvement in the Bitcoin industry and privatize the Chivo wallet.Despite the IMF deal, El Salvador has continued accumulating Bitcoin for its national reserve.Kraken to delist USDT and four other stablecoins in EuropeCryptocurrency exchange Kraken is moving to comply with European crypto regulations by preparing to delist five stablecoins, including Tether’s USDt.Kraken will fully delist USDt on March 31 to comply with the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), according to an official announcement by the exchange.Alongside USDT, the exchange will gradually remove support for PayPal USD (PYUSD), Tether EURt (EURT), TrueUSD (TUSD), and TerraClassicUSD (UST) in the European market.“These changes ultimately ensure Kraken remains compliant and is able to provide its exceptional trading experience to European clients for the long term,” the company said.In line with the provisions set by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) to ensure a smooth and orderly delisting process, Kraken will drop USDT support in stages.First, Kraken will set margin pairs involving the affected assets to “reduce-only” mode for clients in the European Economic Area (EEA) on Feb. 13. Following this restriction, EEA users will be only able to reduce or fully close out existing margin positions.By Feb. 27, Kraken will put the affected tokens in “sell-only” mode, restricting EEA clients from generating deposit addresses for tokens like USDT but still supporting trading.On March 24, Kraken will halt all spot trading for the affected assets, closing all open orders and exchanges into other coins or fiat currencies.21Shares files with SEC for spot Polkadot ETFAsset management firm 21Shares has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch a spot Polkadot exchange-traded fund (ETF).In a Jan. 31 SEC filing, 21Shares stated its intention to list the 21Shares Polkadot (DOT) Trust on the Cboe BZX exchange, with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase acting as the DOT custodian.It comes just four years after 21Shares launched a similar product in Switzerland. In Feb 2021, the asset manager launched the world’s first Polkadot ETP on the Swiss SIX exchange.DOT is the 18th largest crypto by market capitalization, but its price performance has been underwhelming in recent times. Over the past 12 months, its price has fallen 5.16%, and it’s down 10.48% in the last month, according to CoinMarketCap data.The filing warned that there’s no guarantee of Polkadot’s price performance, either in the short or long term, after the ETF launches.“There is no assurance that DOT will maintain its value in the long or intermediate term,” the filing said.