Company: TOXR
Filing Date: 2025-12-10
Form Type: 424B3
Source: 0001213900-25-120172
Chunk: 44

Company: 21Shares XRP ETF
Filing Date: 2025-12-10
Form: 424B3
Chunk 44
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2019, there were reports claiming that 80.95% of bitcoin trading volume on digital asset exchanges was false or noneconomic in nature, with specific focus on unregulated exchanges located outside of the United States. Such reports alleged that certain overseas exchanges have displayed suspicious trading activity suggestive of a variety of manipulative or fraudulent practices. Other academics and market observers have put forth evidence to support claims that manipulative trading activity has occurred on certain digital asset exchanges. For example, in a 2017 paper titled “Price Manipulation in the Bitcoin Ecosystem” sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center at Tel Aviv University, a group of researchers used publicly available trading data, as well as leaked transaction data from a 2014 Mt. Gox security breach, to identify and analyze the impact of “suspicious trading activity” on Mt. Gox between February and November 2013, which, according to the authors, caused the price of bitcoin to increase from around $150 to more than $1,000 over a two-month period. In August 2017, it was reported that a trader or group of traders nicknamed “Spoofy” was placing large orders on Bitfinex without actually executing them, presumably in order to influence other investors into buying or selling by creating a false appearance that greater demand existed in the market. In December 2017, an anonymous blogger (publishing under the pseudonym Bitfinex’d) cited publicly available trading data to support his or her claim that a trading bot nicknamed “Picasso” was pursuing a paint-the-tape-style manipulation strategy by buying and selling bitcoin and bitcoin cash between affiliated accounts in order to create the appearance of substantial trading activity and thereby influence the price of such assets.

In November 2022, FTX, one of the largest digital asset exchanges by volume at the time, halted customer withdrawals amid rumors of the company’s liquidity issues and likely insolvency, which were subsequently corroborated by its CEO. Shortly thereafter, FTX’s CEO resigned and FTX and many of its affiliates filed for bankruptcy in the United States, while other affiliates have entered insolvency, liquidation, or similar proceedings around the globe, following which the U.S. Department of Justice brought criminal fraud and other charges, and the SEC and CFTC brought civil securities and commodities fraud charges, against certain of FTX’s and its affiliates’ senior executives, including its former CEO. Around the same time, there were reports that approximately $300-600 million worth of digital assets were removed from FTX