More than a dozen investment firms have applied to issue spot Bitcoin ETFs. A decision is due Wednesday from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on the first of those applications.

GE Vernova, due to be spun off from the mother ship in the second quarter, won a contract to supply wind turbines to the Hoover Dam of U.S. wind energy projects.

Breathless in Bitcoinland

The SEC’s X account was hacked Tuesday, and a phony tweet claiming the agency had approved a spot Bitcoin ETF lifted the cryptocurrency to around $48,000. After SEC chair Gary Gensler replied to the tweet, stating that the agency had not approved a spot Bitcoin ETF, the price dropped back to around $44,900.

Just another day in Bitcoinland, where traders have by now priced in Wednesday’s expected SEC approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF. The agency’s first application has until January 10 to respond to an appeal from ARK 21Shares after the SEC denied its January 2023 application to create an ETF. All told, there are 11 applications pending.

That was the first time that the SEC rejected a joint application from Cathie Wood’s ARK Investment Management and Switzerland-based 21 Shares to list a spot ETF in the United States. In April, the SEC rejected an appeal from ARK 21Shares. In May, the two filed a second application. (See who are the biggest celebrity cryptocurrency losers.)

The SEC could rule on all 11 applications Wednesday, approving or rejecting all 11, approving only applications from exchanges, but not asset managers, or something else. The Bitcoin believers have long-since priced ETF approval in, so why the cryptocurrency jumped so high Tuesday is left as an exercise for the reader.

Massive wind turbine deal

General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) plans to spin off its GE Vernova business into a separate company sometime during the second quarter of this year. It is currently GE’s power, wind, and electrification segment. In the past two months, Vernova has received two large contracts.

On Tuesday, GE announced that it will supply 674 of its 3.6 MW wind turbines to the largest wind energy project in the United States. The SunZia wind project is being constructed by Pattern Energy over a million acres across three counties in New Mexico. (That’s a rectangle 30 miles by 80 miles.) When completed, it will generate 3.5 GW of electricity for markets in Arizona and California.

Vernova will supply almost 75% of the turbines for the project covering an area of about 45 miles by 25 miles. SunZia is scheduled to be completed in 2026 and will generate enough electricity to power 3 million homes. GE did not provide a dollar value for the contract, but the unit cost for a 3.5 MW turbine is around £3 million.

In mid-December, Vernova and partner MYTILINEOS Energy and Metals won a £1 billion contract to build two high-voltage direct current (HVDC) subsea transmission stations off the east coast of Britain. The two stations will be connected by a subsea cable running from Torness in East Lothian, Scotland, to Hawthorn Pit in County Durham, England, where the two transmission stations are located.

Construction is expected to begin next year and will provide renewable electricity to more than 2 million U.K. homes.

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