Gm,
It’s the start of another week for bitcoin under the $50k mark. We saw BTC touch $50,000 over the weekend however this level of resistance was rejected after a couple of attempts as seen in the chart below.
With the end of the year nearing close, the same bull runs seen in 2013 and 2017 are becoming increasingly unlikely to happen, but on-chain metrics are all pointing to an overwhelming amount of potential upside.
Whilst the fear and greed index definitely still remains on the fear side of things given the 26% price correction seen over the past month, that hasn’t stopped whales and institutional money flooding into crypto. Last week, MicroStrategy announced they had acquired 1,434 bitcoin, which increased their stake to 122,478 BTC.
Another reason for the big price correction can be attributed to the contagion fear that Evergrande, a leading Chinese property developer, defaulted on its US dollar debt on December 9th. In addition to this, the $1.1 bitcoin billion options expiry on Dec.10 could have also been a factor given the bears pocketed a cool $300m profit - right in time for Christmas shopping.
In other news, Bitcoin has reached an incredible milestone of 90% of its supply being officially mined. This means that 19.89 million bitcoins - of a maximum of 21 million are now open to the market. It took almost 12 years for this to happen, however, the remaining supply is not expected to be mined till February 2140, based on network activity estimates and Bitcoin’s halving schedules.
Markets
As of 13th December 2021
(source: coinmarketcap)
Headline roundup
Visa launches crypto advisory practice (LI)
WhatsApp starts testing currency payments with Meta’s Novi wallet (CT)
UAE wealth find Mubadala investing in crypto ecosystem (CD)
SETL launches multibank sandbox with Citi for scalable banking blockchain (LI)
‘We want to be the AWS of crypto’, says Coinbase exec (CT)
2 prominent bitcoin core contributors step away from their roles (CD)
Vanguard, State Street use blockchain for forex derivatives margins (LI)
Vitalik Buterin outlines ‘endgame’ roadmap for ETH 2.0 (CT)
Pontoro to tokenized bank infrastructure loans (LI)
Binance in talks to launch crypto exchange in Indonesia (CT)
SE2 partners with Digital Asset for blockchain in life insurance (LI)
Microstrategy purchases $82m in bitcoin, now holds 122.478 coins (CT)
EU progresses sandbox for blockchain-based tokenised securities (LI)
CBDC
France Switzerland execute multi-currency wholesale CBDC trial (LI)
Australia’s wholesale CBDC trials allowed access to non-banks (LI)
China’s CBDC linked to Hong Kong’s faster payments system (LI)
VC
Microsoft leading Palm NFT $27m funding round (LI)
Amex, VISA, Citi back $60m funding for TRM Labs blockchain intelligence (LI)
Polygon to invest up to 250M MATIC into ZKP (CT)
Mnemonic raises $4m to launch B2B API platform focused on NFTs (CT)
Hong Kong based Chiron Partners launches $50m Terra fund (CT)
French fintech startup Lydia raises $100m in series C funding round (CT)
Dan Tapiero’s 10T will launch $500m fund for late-stage crypto firms (CT)
Alameda Research leads $35m fund raise for crpyo trading app Stacked (CT)
Meme of the week
I think this may be my favourite meme of the year
About Me
My name is Michael Burke, and I started working in the blockchain space about 4 years ago, firstly with Deloitte, now with R3, where I help our customers build enterprise solutions utilising the Corda platform. My interest in blockchain and cryptocurrency stems from the sheer potential of the technology to completely transform industries and value chains for the better.