Grayscale announced that it had filed its final briefs in its litigation against the SEC to challenge the decision to deny the conversion of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust into a spot Bitcoin ETF on Feb. 7.

The company disclosed that it filed documents “essentially identical” to those sent previously, but it required additional “citations and references” to appease the judges.

“These are essentially identical to other briefs that were filed previously, but with additional citations and references. It’s a necessary requirement to prepare the briefs to be read by a panel of D.C. Circuit judges.”

The SEC has repeatedly denied all applications for a spot Bitcoin ETF while allowing derivative alternatives such as ProShares Bitcoin Strategy (BITO) and Valkyrie Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BTF).

Since their inception, Bitcoin Futures ETFs have acquired over $700 million in assets under management. However, the SEC has previously cited Bitcoin’s volatility as a significant concern for allowing a spot Bitcoin ETF.

A detailed timeline of the dispute, which began in June 2022, is documented on the Grayscale website, including a breakdown of all filings.

The case’s oral arguments are scheduled for Mar. 7 in the District of Columbia. A pivotal point to be debated is Grayscale’s assessment of the SEC’s framework for allowing a spot Bitcoin ETF. The final brief submitted by Grayscale calls the SEC’s approach “fundamentally unreasonable.”

“The Commission’s approach is fundamentally unreasonable—as underscored by the fact that the Commission has made it impossible for any spot bitcoin ETP to satisfy the significant-market test, since there is no spot bitcoin market that the Commission considers “significant.””

Around 620,000 new Bitcoin (BTC) addresses holding 0.1 BTC or less joined the network when the flagship asset regained the $20,000 mark on Jan. 13, according to Santiment data.

The blockchain analytical firm noted that these investors were majorly driven by the fear of missing out (FOMO) on the BTC bounce that took the asset’s value to as high as $24,167 in 30 days.

During this period, BTC market sentiments entered the “greed” zone for the first time since March 2022.

The total number of these addresses reached 39.8 million, Santiment added — the highest level since Nov. 19 amidst the FTX collapse.

Bitcoin analysts said this cohort accumulation is good for the network because it would make the asset more decentralized over time.

Meanwhile, amid this cohort’s new wave of investments,  a significant whale transaction occurred on Feb. 4, Santiment reported. A new whale address went from holding zero BTC to 13,369 BTC in one transaction, according to the firm. It added that this was the largest BTC transaction in the previous four weeks.

Bitcoin drops below $23k

Following a solid price performance in January, BTC price fell by roughly 4% since the beginning of February, according to CryptoSlate data.

The digital asset experienced a mild sell-off over the weekend that took its value to below $23,000 on Feb. 5, liquidating around $30 million from the market.

Russian citizens against their country’s war against Ukraine are using crypto to voice their opposition.

“Donations to Ukraine has varied from one dollar to millions of dollars,” said Ukraine’s deputy digital minister, Alex Bornyakov, to Yahoo Finance’s The Crypto Mile on Feb. 2.

“Crypto, in certain cases, offers an anonymous way to transfer money. We see that some Russians are donating to us a significant sum,” Bornyakov said.

“The Russian people who have donated have sent significant amounts of money. I understand that from within Russia there is no other way for them to do this other than through crypto,” he added.

The comments come nearly one year after Russia’s large-scale military invasion of Ukraine.

Since then, more than 100,000 people have sent aid to Ukraine using crypto currency, one-third of which came via the Crypto Fund Aid for Ukraine initiative, powered by Ukraine-based Kuna platform and blockchain company Everstake, with the support of the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine.

Most asset donations to Ukraine are in bitcoin, ethereum, cardano, solana, polkadot and stablecoins such as USDC  and USDT.

“So far Ukraine has received around 650 bitcoins, more than 10,000 ethereum, and there was also a significant amount of polkadot, almost 1.8 million in solana and $2.8m in the form of the USDC stablecoin,” Bornyakov said on February 2.