U.Today presents the top three news stories over the past day.
Bitcoin community abuzz as Jeff Bezos sells Amazon stocks worth billions
Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and former CEO, has recently been spotted dumping a significant number of stocks, CNBC reports citing Bezos's securities filing. According to the filing, the Amazon founder unloaded 14 million stocks worth roughly $2.4 billion, with the sales starting last week and continuing through Tuesday, Feb. 20. CNBC adds that by getting rid of this substantial amount of stocks, Bezos is following the plan he revealed earlier this month; per the plan, Bezos could sell up to 50 million AMZN before January 2025 ends. Such a massive share sale by the Amazon founder was not left unnoticed by the crypto community, with Bitcoin evangelist Anthony Pompliano commenting on X that the last time Bezos sold that many shares was in 2021, when the market was at the top. Many X users in the comments section started speculating about possible reasons behind Bezos's sales. Some Bitcoin enthusiasts suggested that he intends to buy Bitcoin; however, the Amazon founder did not make such a statement.
Suspected Justin Sun wallet buys $259 million in Ethereum
Data provided by Lookonchain reveals that yesterday, a wallet suspected to be associated with Tron founder Justin Sun made a significant deposit of 90 million USDT to Binance. Following this move, the wallet identified as "0x7a95" withdrew 10,136 ETH ($29.76 million) and 40 million USDT from the same exchange. So far, Lookonchain's X post states, the whale wallet has purchased a total of 91,316 ETH worth approximately $259.1 million. These large transactions raised waves of speculations among the crypto community about the wallet's owner and their intentions. If Justin Sun is the person behind these transactions, this could suggest rising interest in Ethereum. Besides, such large Ethereum investments from such a person as Justin Sun may indicate a change in market sentiment or strategic positioning within the crypto industry. At the moment of writing, Ethereum is trading at $2,986, up 2.52% over the past 24 hours, per CoinMarketCap.
Ripple CEO weighs in on XRP ETF rumors
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has recently made an appearance on Bloomberg Crypto, speaking on the potential launch of an XRP ETF and the current state of cryptocurrency regulation. Garlinghouse noted that Ripple's recent court victory against the SEC marked a turning point and underscored the need for clearer rules in the industry. The CEO went into detail on Ripple's confrontations with the SEC, pointing out that the agency preferred to regulate through enforcement rather than to provide the industry with clear guidance. Garlinghouse hopes that regulatory clarity will be attained in the future, either as a result of congressional action or SEC realization. Regarding the XRP ETF, the CEO was optimistic and compared it to the early days of the stock market, when risk was best managed by diversification. In his opinion, the approval of a Bitcoin ETF indicates that the courts are willing to challenge the SEC's resistance. "I think it only makes sense there will be other ETFs too," he said. Despite not confirming specific discussions, Garlinghouse expressed Ripple's support for an XRP ETF: "We would certainly welcome it. And I think it's inevitable that there'll be, you know, multiple ETFs around different tokens."
Arman Shirinyan
Yuri Molchan
Godfrey Benjamin
