Company: HODL
Filing Date: 2025-11-13
Form Type: 10-Q
Source: 0000930413-25-003438
Chunk: 150

Company: VanEck Bitcoin ETF
Filing Date: 2025-11-13
Form: 10-Q
Item: Part I, Item 4
Chunk 150
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 all.

Bitcoin trading platforms may be exposed to fraud and manipulation.

The SEC has identified possible sources of fraud and manipulation in
the bitcoin market generally, including, among others (1) “wash trading”; (2) persons with a dominant position
in bitcoin manipulating bitcoin pricing; (3) hacking of the Bitcoin network and trading platforms; (4) malicious control of the
Bitcoin network; (5) trading based on material, non-public information (for example, plans of market participants to significantly
increase or decrease their holdings in bitcoin, new sources of demand for bitcoin) or based on the

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dissemination of false and misleading information; (6) manipulative
activity involving purported “stablecoins,” including Tether (for more information, “-Prices of bitcoin may be
affected due to stablecoins (including Tether and US Dollar Coin (“USDC”)), the activities of stablecoin issuers and
their regulatory treatment”); and (7) fraud and manipulation at bitcoin trading platforms. The effect of potential market
manipulation, front-running, wash-trading, and other fraudulent or manipulative trading practices may inflate the volumes actually
present in crypto market and/or cause distortions in price, which could adversely affect the Trust or cause losses to Shareholders.

Over the past several years, some digital asset trading platforms have
been closed due to fraud and manipulative activity, business failure or security breaches. In many of these instances, the customers
of such digital asset trading platforms were not compensated or made whole for the partial or complete losses of their account
balances in such digital asset trading platforms. While, generally speaking, smaller digital asset trading platforms are less likely
to have the infrastructure and capitalization that make larger digital asset trading platforms more stable, larger digital asset
trading platforms are more likely to be appealing targets for hackers and malware and may be more likely to be targets of regulatory
enforcement action. For example, the collapse of Mt. Gox, which filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan in late February 2014,
demonstrated that even the largest digital asset trading platforms could be subject to abrupt failure with consequences for both
users of digital asset platforms and the digital asset industry as a whole. In particular, in the two weeks that followed the February
7, 2014 halt of bitcoin withdrawals from Mt. Gox, the value of one bitcoin fell on other trading platforms from around $795 on
February 6, 2014 to $578 on February