Company: HODL
Filing Date: 2025-03-26
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000930413-25-000995
Chunk: 255

Company: VanEck Bitcoin ETF
Filing Date: 2025-03-26
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 255
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 Conduct Authority published
final rules in October 2020 banning the sale of derivatives and exchange traded notes that reference certain types of digital
assets, contending that they are “ill-suited” to retail investors citing extreme volatility, valuation challenges
and association with financial crime. A new bill, the Financial Services and Markets Bill (“FSMB”), became law in
2023. The FSMB brings digital asset activities within the scope of existing laws governing financial institutions, markets
and assets. In addition, the European Council of the European Union approved the text of Markets in Crypto-Assets
(“MiCA”) in October 2022. MiCA came into effect in 2024, establishing a regulatory framework for digital asset
services across the European Union. MiCA is intended to serve as a comprehensive regulation of digital asset markets and
imposes various obligations on digital asset issuers and service providers. The main aims of MiCA are industry regulation,
consumer protection, prevention of market abuse and upholding the integrity of digital asset markets.

Foreign laws, regulations or directives may conflict
with those of the United States and may negatively impact the acceptance of one or more digital assets by users, merchants and
service providers outside the United States and may therefore impede the growth or sustainability of the digital asset economy
in the European Union, China, Japan, Russia and the United States and globally, or otherwise negatively affect the value of bitcoin.
The effect of any future regulatory change on the Trust or bitcoin is impossible to predict, but such change could be substantial
and adverse to the Trust and the value of the Shares.

Furthermore, legal claims have been filed in the United
Kingdom by an entity associated with an individual named Craig Wright. The entity alleges that the private keys to bitcoin purportedly
worth several billion dollars were rendered inaccessible to it in a hack, and advances a series of novel legal theories in support
of its request that the court compel certain core developers associated with the Bitcoin network to either somehow transfer the
bitcoin out of the bitcoin address to which the entity no longer can access the private keys to a new bitcoin address that it
currently does control, or alternatively amend the source code to the Bitcoin network itself to restore its access to the stranded
bitcoin. In 2022, the High Court dismissed the claims, finding that the entity had not established a serious issue to be tried.
However, in February 2023, the Court of Appeals unanimously overruled the High Court’s decision, holding that there was
a serious issue