Gm,
Bitcoin starts the week hovering around the $46,000 mark which for many traders will remind them of how BTC started off the new year at practically the same level.
I’ve spoken about the fear of rising interest rates and the effect it could have on the overall crypto market given the dry up of ‘easy money’ will no longer will as apparent. So far, there are very few signs that a fundamental shift is on the way. Last week we saw The Bank of Japan adding to its balance sheet which would signal more good times for risk assets - I believe that more central banks will need to restart liquidity injections as any central banks will never voluntarily go bankrupt.
Despite the strong price movement for BTC, there is still a lack of volatility in the market. Bulls still have a strong hope for an attack on the $50,000 mark as April has historically been a good month for bitcoin. Precedence is not always a good factor to rely upon given that the past two years has seen the most amount of bitcoin leaving exchanges in a long while - to the tune of 100,000 BTC wiped off exchanges.
Last week saw a significant inflow of money into altcoins which may suggest that altseason is finally here. Open interest and and volume on altcoins passed bitcoin for the first time in over a year which shows that risk appetite amongst investors is increasing while in parallel market sentiment is improving.
Markets
As of 4th April 2022
(source: coinmarketcap)
Headline roundup
Japan exchange group to launch tokenised stocks by April 2025 (LI)
Buenos Aires to create digital identity platform (CD)
BNY Mellon lands major crypto custody deal for USDC stablecoin (LI)
US firms providing custody services should account for crypto assets as liability (CD)
Citi report values metaverse at $10 trillion plus by 2030 (LI)
Robinhood crypto head to depart (CD)
Israel’s Bank Leumi plans to offer crypto services to retail clients (LI)
Chainlink labs hires Diem CTO Dahila Malkhi to lead research (CD)
ANZ issues blockchain stablecoin (LI)
OpenSea closing in on support for Solana NFTs (CD)
FTX Europe in talks with British regulators to expand into the UK (CD)
CBDC
US legislators publish multiple CBDC bills with privacy emphasis (LI)
ECB digital euro focus groups identify payment preferences (LI)
Malaysia to explore both wholesale and retail CBDC (LI)
Bank of England, MIT to collaborate on CBDC (LI)
Central Bank of Kenya: CBDC not silver bullet for financial inclusion (LI)
Bank of Japan enters second phase of CBDC experiments (LI)
VC
Deutshce Telekon, Liberty Global in $200m funding of IoT Helium blockchain (LI)
Twitch co-founder’s gaming NFT marketplace raises $35m (CD)
Blockchain security firm CertiK raises $88m (CD)
A16z leads $4.8m round for P2E gaming startup Battleground (CD)
Crypto exchange Blockchain.com hits $14bn valuation in lightspeed-led funding round (CD)
A16z, FTX and Sequoia lead $135m round for LayerZero at $1bn valuation (CD)
Eldridge, A16z lead $620m financing round for fintech cross River Bank (CD)
Helium becomes Nova labs after raising $200m in fresh capital (CD)
MicroStrategy unit gets $205m collateral loan from Silvergate to buy Bitcoin (CD)
Meme of the week
About me
My name is Michael Burke, and I started working in the blockchain space 5 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