Crypto Weekly Roundup: BTC Ups And Downs And More

Table of Contents

• Bitcoin
• Ethereum
• Altcoins
• Technology
• Business
• Regulation
• Security

Bitcoin has seen some exciting action this week, as it experienced a significant price hike on Wednesday due to another TradFi institute taking a beating. However, it was immediately followed by a strong pullback influenced by other factors that soon resulted in a panic selling. Let’s find out more. 

Bitcoin

Financial experts are wondering how the U.S. government’s decision to raise its $13.4 trillion debt ceiling would affect Bitcoin and the crypto market. 

Robert Kiyosaki has gone to Twitter to warn his followers of the excesses of the banks and recommended gold and bitcoin instead. 

Bitcoin was sailing higher on Wednesday due to the news of First Republic Bank going under when suddenly, there was a strong pullback. News of Mt Gox and the US Government moving their BTC caused panic selling.

A Bitcoin white paper sneakily introduced through every MacOS update since 2018 has been removed from the upcoming operating system update. 

Ethereum

Binance has announced a new and significant upgrade to its ETH staking service, where the crypto exchange will introduce Wrapped Beacon ETH (WBETH) on the staking platform. 

Altcoins

Ripple reported selling over $361 million worth of XRP tokens in the first three months of 2023 (Q1). 

Technology

Lens released a beta version of its blockchain scaling solution, Bonsai, to address the concerning issue of scalability for decentralized social media platforms. 

Google Cloud has partnered with Polygon Labs to help developers to build, launch, and grow their decentralized applications and Web3 products on the layer-2 blockchain. 

Former senior technology and security executives from venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) have reportedly started an institutional-focused cryptocurrency custody firm.

Payment processing giant Visa is building upon current blockchain technologies to enable users to transact using stablecoins without fiat currency conversions. 

Stablecoin issuer Circle has launched its Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) on the mainnet, enabling permissionless transfers of USDC natively across supported blockchains.

Business

Belgian cryptocurrency trading platform Bit4You has announced the suspension of operations after it discovered that CoinLoan, one of its service providers, was declared insolvent by an Estonian court. 

Investment giant Franklin Templeton has announced that its Nasdaq-listed OnChain US Government Money Fund is now supported on the Polygon Network. 

Binance.US has withdrawn from its planned $1 billion acquisition of Voyager, citing the "hostile and uncertain" regulatory climate in the United States.

Regulation

Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) is set to publish guidelines on its licensing framework for cryptocurrency exchanges in May.

In a viral 2018 video that resurfaced on social media recently, Gary Gensler, the current chairman of the SEC, likened cryptocurrencies to cash. 

India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED) has frozen around $916 million from bank accounts linked to companies involved in the HPZ token scam. 

After two years of intensive work, the 20th of April marked the final Plenary vote of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation or “MiCA.”

Security

Despite being highly ranked by auditing firm, CertiK, the Ethereum-based decentralized exchange Merlin, suffered an exploit in which roughly $1.8 million in funds were lost.

CertiK is planning to launch a victim aid fund to return the funds stolen in the Merlin DEX exploit. 

A single wallet address has been traced to be the mastermind behind the launch of 114 questionable memecoins in just two months.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.