Gm,
Bitcoin has been fairly choppy over the weekend and has seen a drop in price from the highs of $47,000 this month to back toward the $40,000 mark. Although this is not the forward momentum the bulls want, it could signal a retest of the previous resistance as support which is turn could spur on a reversal on price and a move upwards of $47,000.
The overall stock market looks ominous due to recent lockdown introductions in China. The major indexes in Shangai and Hong Kong fell over 2% this morning. Things in Europe are still shaky due to the ongoing problems with Russia and Ukraine but there are positive signs for the Euro with incumbent French president Emmanuel Macron taking the lead over his far right rival Marine Le Pen in the polls.
The ECB will meet this week to further discuss measures on inflation control. As mentioned previously on this newsletter, the measures that will be taken to control asset purchases and ultimately ring-fencing inflationary concerns will reduce the demand for bitcoin and crypto as easy money dries up.
As you can imagine, the aforementioned factors above have caused a negative effect on market sentiment. The crypto fear and greed index edged closer to ‘fear’ which would suggest that investors are starting to change their tune due to the correction seen in both equities and crypto markets. This sentiment isn’t really a good indicator on how you should trade so take it with a pinch of salt along with everyones opinion on crypto twitter ;)
Markets
As of 11th April 2022
(source: coinmarketcap)
Headline Roundup
US Banking regulator OCC: weak stablecoin interoperability is problematic (LI)
Twitter CEO says Elon Musk will not join board (CD)
Ex-Citi digital assets leaders launch crypto assets investment firm (LI)
Tesla, Blockstream, Block to mine bitcoin using solar power in Texas (CD)
FIS’ Worldpay to enable conventional businesses to recieve USDC stablecoin (LI)
DeFi giant Yearn leads the way on ERC-4626 token standard adoption (CD)
HSBC launches Metaverse fund in Asia (LI)
UK government plans to mint NFT as part of crypto-asset push (LI)
Crypto releases crypto wallet to 2m users (CD)
UK plans DLT sandbox for Financial Market Infrastructures by 2023 (LI)
Crypto.com to pay bitcoin bonuses to UFC fighters (CD)
EU consults payment sector on digital euro in preparation for regulation (LI)
Coinbase starts crypto trading services in India (CD)
Crypto exchange FTX.US invests in U.S. stock exchange IEX (LI)
CBDC
Sweden’s CBDC pilot identifies fixable DLT performance issues (LI)
South Africa completes CBDC DLT security token trials (LI)
Digital Yuan trials expand to more regions (LI)
U.S. legislators publish multiple CBDC bills with privacy emphasis (LI)
VC
BNY Mellon leads investment in blockchain analytics firm Coin Metrics (LI)
Softbank backs $150m funding for Improbable’s blockchain metaverse arm MSquared (LI)
Wax studio’s blockchain brawlers game earns $357m in first week (CD)
Applied Blockchain files for $60m Nasdaq IPO (CD)
Ex-Blockstream exec Samson Mow raises $31m for bitcoin startup JAN3 (CD)
a16z, SoftBank lead $150m raises for Metaverse startup Improbable (CD)
Payment company Bolt to buy Wyre for $1.5bn to add crypto option (CD)
Binance.US raises first fudning round at $4.5bn valuation (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