What happened in crypto the past 2 weeks? Trump is an agent of Chaos on the crypto market. ETH is bleeding and SOL is having trouble. What else? Read below:
- Bitcoin: The President of El Salvador has vowed to keep accumulating BTC despite the growing pressure from the IMF to stop him from investing in the cryptocurrency. The country has now 6101 BTC worth $530M. Blockstream, the Bitcoin development firm co-founded by Adam Back, is set to launch three new investment firms, two of them focused on crypto lending. The Swiss Central Bank has dismissed the idea of incorporating Bitcoin into its reserves. Bank of Korea has ruled out incorporating BTC into its foreign exchange reserves, citing the inherent volatility. Mt. Gox transferred over $1.2B in BTC ahead of its October Repayment deadline. Mining stocks lost 22% of their market value in February alone. A famous BTC tool declared that $69K is the Bitcoin's eternal price floor.
- Ethereum: The Ethereum developers plan to deploy a new testnet, Hoodi, on Monday, to validate the upcoming Pectra upgrade after two problematic test runs. If the test is successful, the upgrade can be rolled out on the mainnet within 30 days. Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), one of Spain's largest financial institutions, has received regulatory approval to offer BTC and ETH trading to its clients. Coinbase Derivatives is preparing to launch 24/7 Bitcoin and Ether futures trading. ETH has plummeted over 53% since December last year. One unlucky trader bet everything exchanging all his BTC and using 160K ETH worth $308M for a 50x leveraged long, and got liquidated as prices dipped below the threshold. But the ETH fees went down 95% since the Dencun upgrade. Yet the price is not going up, for now. The last 17 straight days, money has been flowing out of crypto ETFs, pushing the five-week total to a $6.4B.
- Altcoins and stablecoins: SBI VC Trade, a subsidiary of the Japanese financial behemoth SBI Holdings, secured a license to bring USDC to the Japanese market. Bitwise unveiled an ETF tracking the companies with over 1000 BTC holdings (and the list included Strategy, Mara Holdings, CleanSpark, and Riot Platforms, among others. Hedge fund manager Canary Capital has filed with the SEC for an SUI ETF. Grayscale is filing for a Hedera (HBAR) ETF. Bitwise is filing for an Aptos ETF. Fun fact, the football legend Ronaldinho has launched his memecoin Star10, promising exclusive experiences, real benefits and signed collectables, but it seems that 35% of the token supply is allocated to insiders, 20% to Ronaldinho and 15% to the team, making it vulnerable to a potential collapse. USDtb news now, Bybit is rolling out rewards for the clients holding Ethena's stablecoins, no staking or trading is required. Solana (SOL) faced $485M outflow in February, primarily redirected towards ETH, ARB and BNB Chain. Dogecoin dropped another 12%. Is this the end for DOGE? USDC and USDT got the green light in Thailand. Toncoin surged 67% as its founder leaves France. And Pancake is back, outpacing even Uniswap, right after Binance delisted USDT, most of it transferred to PancakeSwap.
- NFTs and blockchain games: I am big on playing Golem Overlord lately on Hive, and it is quite profitable, I would say, with some great updates lately. On Splinterlands, we are finally getting ready for the Land NFT update and improved tokenomics on March 18. I hope this may help the game by bringing up more speed and stability. Check my Holozing article to learn about a new blockchain game that looks full of potential. I am also playing a cute little game called Chain of Legends, which reminds me of Heroes of Might and Magic, even if the overlap is not 100%. The long-awaited SOL-based MMO Star Atlas is ready to launch by the end of 2025.
- Good news: A new organization, the National Cryptocurrency Association, was launched using $50M seed money provided by Ripple, working to demystify crypto. The Belarusian President instructed the Energy Ministry to explore crypto mining to monetize the country's excess supply. The US Department of Housing explored the crypto and blockchain integration. The US House of Representatives has voted to overturn a rule that would have classified various crypto entities, including DEX, as brokers. Coinbase is reentering the Indian market, with a FIU registration. The US Senate Banking Committee has voted to advance a landmark stablecoin bill that would regulate the US stablecoin issuers at a federal level. RobinHood launched a prediction market on its platform, through the CFTC-regulated exchange Kalshi. Metamask is betting big with BTC and SOL support, gas payments with any token and a debit card.
- Bad news: The market hits 'Extreme Fear' for the first time since the FTX collapse. Funnily, what goes around comes around, as Coinbase demanded the SEC to reveal a detailed record of its spending on investigations and actions against the crypto industry, filing a Freedom of Information Act using its contractor History Associates. What a coincidence, that the SEC agreed in principle to drop the lawsuit against the crypto exchange Kraken. Even the ex-FTX founder SBF has something to say about crypto, with his last interview with Tucker Carlson, criticizing the Biden administration and Gary Gensler. And I am like, dude, you have been convicted for 25 years for fraud, stealing billions from honest working people, you should not talk to us about fairness! There are talks about a Trump family representative discussing buying a stake in BinanceUS, while the exchange declined to comment. Is this an attempt to allow the exchange back in the US? OKX temporarily disabled its DEX aggregator, following inquiries from EU regulators over its use by NK hackers to launder proceeds from the Bybit hack. The Libra token creators face a lawsuit over $100M of investor losses. Even the Argentinian President was dragged into this scandal. The FDIC is fighting to keep secrets about Operation Chokepoint 2.0 buried forever, as they resist basic transparency. After the collapse of crypto-friendly banks in early 2023, at least 30 tech and crypto founders were secretly debanked.
- Joke of the week: Again, trumping around! So, we started with Trump naming BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL and ADA as his choices for the Strategic Crypto Reserve, with some of them initially pumping up. Shortly after, the BTC and ETH prices went down amid trade tensions and recession fears. Then, he directed his administration to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve, along with a broader stockpile of other digital assets, to be funded with assets that have been seized by the government, and budget-neutral strategies that have no incremental costs on the American taxpayers. The Texas Senate passed a bill that allows for the establishment of a strategic bitcoin reserve, along with potentially other assets, too. Utah has passed the Bitcoin Adoption Bill without a state reserve provision. Michael Saylor pitched in, presenting a $100 trillion plan for the next decade, with four main categories: capital formation, market efficiency, the dollar's global standing and digital commodities for wealth preservation. Solana founder is not happy to be mentioned by Trump, as he sees government control as a fail against decentralization. Strange things happened, as Solana dropped 29% after, despite $10B liquidity boost and the US Crypto Stockpile inclusion. Maybe the TRUMP memecoin is to blame.
All the best,
George
Why not...
...have fun and win rewards on my favourite blockchain games (
Splinterlands- a Hearthstone-like card game) (
Golem Overlord - a Play2Earn game on Hive) (
Upland - a real-life virtual land) (
Holozing - a Pokemon-like game)and (
Chain of Legends - with a hint of Heroes of Might and Magic).
...get
crypto while writing on the
Publish0x blog, using the
Presearch search engine to maximize your income with
PRE tokens. Use
Torum instead of Twitter. I am also writing for crypto on
Hive.
