While much of the industry’s attention was devoted to the autopsy and recovery of Terra historic collapse and the concurrent stock market crash, zooming out and looking at the bigger picture shows a week that is arguably more promising than the previous week.
For starters, the market’s seven-week freefall has finally slowed.
Major cryptocurrency Bitcoin was actually up 0.69% for $29,265while Ethereum is down just 0.88% in the seven days to hit $1,968, at the time of this writing.
There were no major losses among the top 40 cryptocurrencies by market cap. A few projects even thrived, with BNB exploding 10% to $307, privacy coin Monero jumping 24% to $175, and Cosmos adding 9% to $10.86.
And the view from the wreck?
TerraUSD (UST), formerly a dollar-pegged stablecoin, is currently trading for a fraction above 6 cents. Meanwhile, LUNA, the coin that gave UST value, is currently worth around $0.0001.
Barely a fortnight ago, there were 342 million LUNAs in circulation. Today there are just over 6.5 trillion.
News of the week
On Monday, the Australian Revenue Commissioners released a statement outlining his top four priorities for “Tax Time 2022,” and among them was tax crypto capital gains. ATO Deputy Commissioner Tim Loh said: “Through our data collection processes, we know that many Australians are buying, selling or trading coins and digital assets, so it’s important that people understand what it means for their tax obligations.”
Loh also issued a stern warning to crypto investors who might report losses: “Remember that you cannot offset your losses in crypto from your salary and wages.” According to ATO Guidelinesthe realization of a net capital loss may entitle the taxpayer to a reduction on future capital gains, but not on other income.
Australian authorities are keen to quickly regulate crypto and have promised bring the sector “out of the shadows” with a “world-leading” regulatory framework. On Friday, the country’s largest bank, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, discontinued its crypto trading pilot project. Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn highlighted the volatility of crypto assets and recommended more regulation in a technical briefing this week.
According to Monday’s edition of CoinShares”Weekly Digital Asset Fund Flow,” during last week stock market crash institutions paid nearly $300 million in bitcoin exchange-traded funds. CoinShares Head of Research James Butterfill said Decrypt: “It’s the biggest [investment in Bitcoin funds] since October 2021, and the 19th biggest week since records began in 2015.”
On Twitter that day, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin announced that his game company Web3 Metatheory had raised $24 million in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Metatheory currently uses NFTs in its dust breaker game, although under Lin, more blockchain-based titles are expected. He said in a statement, “After stepping away from Twitch to explore the next step in the industry, I truly believe that blockchain will open the door to even more possibilities and have a major impact in the gaming space. , storytelling and community building.”
On Tuesday, the South Korean press reported that the country’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) and Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) launched ““emergency” inspections in national crypto exchanges after the collapse of Terra. On the same day, the press reported that conservative lawmaker Yun Chang-Hyun was asking for hearings on potentially unscrupulous profit by some of the major crypto exchanges in the country during the LUNA crisis.
Photo giant Getty Images has announced tuesday that it is partnering with digital collectibles company Candy Digital to turn some never-before-seen images from its $500 million library into NFTs, which will be sold on Candy’s marketplace.
Former music-sharing service LimeWire, which announced its own Marketplace based in Algorand in March— said on Tuesday that it was signed to major label Universal Music Group to its platform. The deal will allow artists from Universal or its many imprints — Interscope, Def Jam, Motown, Geffen, EMI and Virgin among them — to release tokenized collectibles through LimeWire’s upcoming marketplace.
Testifying before a congressional subcommittee on Wednesday, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler told crypto exchanges to register with the SEC “or, frankly, we’ll continue to bring, to use what Congress has given us, in our enforcement and review functions.
While Gensler’s words couldn’t raise goosebumps on the likes of Binance and Coinbase, they do point to Washington’s illuminating spotlight on crypto. Speaking on a video screen at this year’s Chainalysis Links conference on Wednesday, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Rostin Behnam said the US derivatives regulator will continue to add more resources to fight against fraud and manipulation in the crypto markets.
Elsewhere, the recent stock market crash was enough to scare the world’s seven largest economies into multilateral action. Thusday, Reuters reported that a draft letter from finance ministers and central bankers of G7 countries asks the Swiss-based Financial Stability Board (FSB) to move forward “coherent and comprehensive regulations“before the next G7 in Germany.
Panamanian President Laurentino Cortizo told a Bloomberg reporter Thursday that he can veto a crypto bill approved by his country’s legislature last month. Cortizo wants assurances that the bill will meet global anti-money laundering standards before approving it. Should this pass, Panamanians will be able to pay for things with crypto. The bill also mentions that Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Litecoin, and Stellar would all be accepted.
On Friday, a group of Republicans in Congress introduced a bill to “protect” investors’ ability to add Bitcoin to 401(k) retirement plans. If passed, the bill will prohibit the Labor Department from restricting the type of investments 401(k) account holders can add to their retirement savings, such as Bitcoin, which Fidelity Investments plans to make available. . Later this year.
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