Weekly recap: Tesla sets conditions for Bitcoin reacceptance, NFT sales grow amid Euro 2020

Crypto market in numbers

The crypto Fear and Greed Index shows that the market has left the ‘Extreme Fear’ zone. while still remaining in the ‘Fear’ zone. Market sentiment has somewhat improved since the beginning of the current week: on Tuesday the EMSI index reached 38 points, only to drop to 33 points on Wednesday. According to the index, market sentiment has been negative for more than a month already.

The Bitcoin Volatility Index has also been relatively high for about a month: since May 24, it has been at around 6% or above.

EXMO Coin reaches its previous all-time highs On June 15, the coin hit $0.098. As of June 16th, its price has grown by 47% in just a week. According to Cryptorank, EXM remains the most profitable exchange token of the year with an ROI of over 3,300%.

All Time High

Gainers of the week ( 10th – 16th June 2021)

Losers of the week ( 10th – 16th June 2021)

Most traded coins (9th – 15th June 2021)

Top crypto market driving factors

Bitcoin (BTC) and the overall crypto market

▼ 09.06.2021 – CoinDesk: Bitcoin trading volumes have tumbled this month by 47% from May’s record level.

▼ 09.06.2021 – Police in China arrested over 1,100 people suspected of crypto-related money laundering.

▼ 09.06.2021 – Some bitcoin miners in the Chinese province of Xinjiang have been ordered to cease operations on June 9th.

▼ 09.06.2021 – Following the example of China’s Changji province, authorities in the province of Qinghai have also announced a ban on crypto mining.

▼ 09.06.2021 – The US Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has thrown into question the legality of DeFi.

▼ 10.06.2021 – JPMorgan: Bitcoin futures prices have fallen below the spot price, which is a negative signal pointing to a bear market in the future. The decrease in Bitcoin’s overall crypto market value from 70% at the start of the year down to 42% is also a worrying sign.

▲ 10.06.2021 – US consumer inflation rose at an annual rate of 5% in May, the fastest pace in nearly 13 years.

▼ 10.06.2021 – Sichuan authorities have told local bitcoin miners to prepare to leave the province by September 2021.

▲ 10.06.2021 – Six large insurers acquired shares of Bitcoin and Ethereum investment products offered by Grayscale Investments for the first time.

▼ 11.06.2021 – IMF on El Salvador’s decision: ‘Adoption of bitcoin as legal tender raises a number of macroeconomic, financial and legal issues that require very careful analysis’.

▼ 11.06.2021 – CoinDesk: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sent investors a second note urging them to reevaluate bitcoin futures-focused funds.

▲ 13.06.2021 – Elon Musk: ‘When there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions’.

▲ 14.06.2021 – The Purpose Bitcoin ETF, Canada’s first-to-market Bitcoin ETF, has added nearly 2,000 BTC since May 15 amid a market correction.

▼ 14.06.2021 – CryptoQuant: All exchanges inflow and outflow are decreasing. Inflow and outflow addresses are also decreasing with outflow addresses hitting a 1-year low.

▲ 14.06.2021 – Tudor Investment hedge fund trader and founder Paul Tudor invests 5% of his capital into BTC due to the Federal Reserve’s policy decision.

▲ 14.06.2021 – MicroStrategy completes a $500 million offering of 6.125% senior secured notes.

▲ 14.06.2021 – MicroStrategy to sell up to $1 billion worth of its stock to buy more BTC.

▲▼ 14.06.2021 – CoinShares: the outflows in Bitcoin investment products cooled last week, totalling $10m, significantly less than the previous record week of $141m.

▲ 15.06.2021 – Financial Times: Large hedge funds plan to increase their cryptocurrency holdings to an average of 7% of their assets by 2026.

Ethereum (ETH)

▲ 10.06.2021 – Six large insurers acquired shares of Bitcoin and Ethereum investment products offered by Grayscale Investments for the first time.

▼ 13.06.2021 – Founder of ETHhub Anthony Sassano: ‘The amount of ETH in smart contracts is now at a similar level to what it was during The DAO event in June 2016 (around 23% of all ETH).’

▲ 14.06.2021 – Goldman Sachs to launch futures and options trading on Ethereum.

▼ 14.06.2021 – Ether, Ethereum’s native token, recorded its biggest outflow of $12.7 million last week.

Ethereum Classic (ETC)

▲ 11.06.2021 – Around July 21st, the Ethereum Classic (ETC) network will undergo an upgrade that will implement Ethereum’s Berlin upgrade components and ensure maximum compatibility across the two networks.

Cardano (ADA)

▲ 11.06.2021 – The first smart contract has been successfully launched on Alonzo, Cardano’s public testnet.

▼ 12.06.2021 – Billionaire Mike Novogratz: Cardano is a ‘weird cult’.

▲14.06.2021 – Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) announced the launch of AlonzoBlue 2.0 to the Cardano testnet, an important upgrade that provides the foundations to run various smart contracts.

Dogecoin (DOGE)

▲ 09.06.2021 – British digital bank Revolut added Dogecoin to its offering. DOGE is the 30th token to be made available on the neobank’s app.

▲ 10.06.2021 – Vitalik Buterin made over $4 million from investments in Dogecoin.

▼ 12.06.2021 – Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Board has banned crypto exchanges from trading Dogecoin and NFTs.

Polkadot (DOT)

▲ 09.06.2021 – Polkadot’s Kusama network to start parachain auctions on June 15th.

▲ 16.06.2021 – Polkadot (DOT) trading to be launched on Coinbase Pro.

Chiliz (CHZ)

▲ 11.06.2021 – UEFA EURO 2020 raises the demand for European big clubs’ NFT tokens launched on Socios, Chiliz fan influence and rewards platform.

▲ 15.06.2021 – Chiliz (CHZ) is launching on Coinbase Pro on June 17th.

Tron (TRX)

▲ 12.06.2021 – Tron makes a new ATH for daily active users, daily transaction volume, as well as network unique addresses.

EOS (EOS)

▲▼ 11.06.2021 – Block.one, the company behind the EOS project, has announced a resolution to the conflict with investors and agreed to settle $27.5 million.

Ripple (XRP)

▼15.06.2021 – US court postponed the consideration of the SEC lawsuit against Ripple until October 15, 2021. The decision on the case is expected no earlier than the end of 2021.

Crypto market trends

Regulation

? Italy’s stock market regulator said that the unregulated spread of cryptocurrencies is a cause for concern. Meanwhile, the director of the Netherlands’ Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, Pieter Hasekamp, has published an article on the official website titled ‘The Netherlands must ban bitcoin’. Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, directed lawmakers to prepare a legal framework to regulate cryptocurrencies. The risks of using cryptocurrencies were highlighted in Ukraine and Russia.

? A commissioner for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Dan M. Berkovitz, openly criticised decentralised finance, expressing concerns that DeFi markets trading derivatives may not share the same protections that their centralized counterparts offer. However, Commissioner of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Hester Pearce, warned against over-regulation of cryptocurrencies.

? A Texas state regulator has officially affirmed that Texas state-chartered banks are allowed to store cryptocurrencies for their customers.

? Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission has banned digital asset exchanges from trading meme- or fan-based tokens, NFTs and exchange-issued tokens.

? Police in China arrested over 1,100 suspects and stamped out over 170 criminal gangs in a crypto-related money-laundering crackdown. At the same time, major Chinese search engines have blocked access to a number of large cryptocurrency exchanges.

The authorities of the Chinese provinces of Xinjiang, Sichuan, Yunnan, as well as the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region continue to restrict the access of miners to electricity.

? The World Economic Forum has released the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Policy-Maker Toolkit which provides an overview of DeFi, explores and illustrates benefits and risks with case studies, and maps out legal and regulatory responses.

? The Basel Committee has proposed regulating crypto assets based on their risks to banks.

? The Danish tax ministry is considering revising the country’s tax law to deal with the challenges posed by cryptocurrencies such as rising risk of fraud and widespread filing errors involving digital assets.

? The Parliament of Kazakhstan may soon impose tax on crypto mining activities. Presently, the country has a tax-free policy for mining. According to the draft law, the new tax fee of one tenge per one kilowatt per hour for miners would enter into force starting from January 1, 2022.

? According to the IRS Fiscal Year 2022 Budget, the Internal Revenue Service has requested $32 million to strengthen crypto tax enforcement in 2022.

? The Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) announced that it will work together with the Government of El Salvador to provide technical assistance to implement bitcoin as legal tender.

According to Reuters, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said it has economic and legal concerns regarding the move by El Salvador to make bitcoin a parallel legal tender.

? The Tunisian Finance Minister stated that bitcoin ownership should be ‘decriminalized’.

? According to Bloomberg, while the Federal Reserve’s top brass has cast a skeptical eye on cryptocurrencies, the central bank may be a surprisingly early adopter of the first Bitcoin-linked junk bond. After the pandemic froze credit markets last year, the Fed bought bond exchange-traded funds. That made it the fourth-biggest owner, as of late March, of the SPDR Bloomberg Barclays High Yield Bond ETF.

? The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, referred to the future importance of cryptocurrencies as a part of the international settlements layer.

Mining

? Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC), initially set up by influential CEOs Michael Saylor and Elon Musk, has formally debuted and seeks members. The mandate of the BMC is to promote transparency, share best practices, and educate the public on the benefits of Bitcoin and bitcoin mining. There is no cost to join the BMC. The founding members that helped establish BMC, including Argo Blockchain, Marathon Digital Holdings, Galaxy Digital, MicroStrategy and others, will assume the onboarding and operating expenses for the first year of operation.

? The New York State Assembly failed to pass an environmental protection bill that would have clamped down on new and expanding bitcoin mining operations. The US Senator, Elizabeth Warren, has also voiced concerns regarding bitcoin mining: ‘Bitcoin requires so much computing activity that it eats up more energy than entire countries’.

? One River Digital Asset Management stated that its clients embrace carbon neutral bitcoin investing. At the end of May, the company officially filed to create a carbon-neutral bitcoin ETF.

? El Salvador plans to mine bitcoin using the energy from volcanoes.

? Hut 8 Mining Corp announced that the company’s common shares have been approved for listing on The Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol ‘HUT’.

Acceptance of cryptocurrencies

? Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway invests $500 million in Brazilian mobile bank Nubank. Following the acquisition of brokerage agency Easynvest, Nubank is going to offer bitcoin funding through QR Bitcoin ETF, one of Easynvest’s products.

? Interactive Brokers, a trading platform with more than one million users, will add cryptocurrency trading to its platform by the end of summer.

? Victory Capital, an investment management firm with over $157 billion in assets under management, plans to enter the cryptocurrency market with the launch of a private fund.

? Invesco, an investment management firm with $1.5 trillion in assets, plans to launch two cryptocurrency-focused exchange-traded funds.

? State Street, the U.S.’ oldest custody bank that oversees more than $40 trillion in assets, has launched a cryptocurrency trading division.

? The CEO of Twitter and Square, Jack Dorsey, says he is planning to integrate Lightning Network into Twitter or BlueSky. The Square digital payments company has launched a $5M Bitcoin fund to promote crypto inclusion.

? Mail.ru Group holding will acquire Playkey cloud gaming service by the end of 2021. Four years ago, Playkey raised $ 10.5 million via ICO and did not fulfill its obligations to investors.

? Cryptocurrency startup BlockFi is in talks with investors to raise funding at a valuation of about $5 billion.

? Bitwise Asset Management Inc. announces the completion of a $70 million Series B fundraising round. The Series B round values the firm at $500 million.

Stablecoins

? Analysts at JPMorgan noted that Tether has to store reserves in promissory notes because banks are reluctant to open bank a deposit bank account for it. As a result, the company moved up to seventh place in terms of the investment volume in these securities.

That’s all for this week! Follow EXMO on YouTube, Twitter, and Telegram to stay tuned to the main events and trends in the crypto market.