Crypto Morning: Bitcoin (BTC) Melts 8% and Approaches Lowest Price Since 2020; Investors fear further tightening of interest rates on “Super Wednesday”
Global investors in cryptocurrencies and stocks woke up with less appetite for risk this Monday (19th), in a key week for the setting of interest rates by several central banks, including Brazil. Bitcoin (BTC) has fallen 7.9% in the past 24 hours to $18,482.67, near its lowest since 2020, according to data from Bloomberg and CoinGeck.
In real terms, Bitcoin fell 7%, trading at R$97,689.70, according to the Bitcoin Portal Index (IPB).
Ethereum (ETH) remains in the red after the merger and is at a two-month low, down 11.2% to trade at $1,294.52, according to Bloomberg.
Bitcoin today
“We can see that BTC’s recovery was indeed unsustainable, as it gave back much of its gains after the US jobs data came in higher than expected and the ETH rally turned out to be a ‘sell’ event. The fact,’ ” Joe DiPasquale, CEO of crypto fund manager BitBull Capital, said in an email to CoinDesk.
XRP stands out among the losers, losing 10% in the last 24 hours. Both the SEC, the US CVM and XRP issuer Ripple have called for a swift resolution to a lawsuit accusing the company of violating federal securities laws over the sale of tokens, according to court documents filed on Friday (16).
Other altcoins are also running heavy losses on Monday, such as Binance Coin (-7.7%), Cardano (-9.7%), Solana (-8%), Dogecoin (-8.3%), Polkadot ( -12.1%), Shiba Inu (-10.4%), Polygon (-10.8%) and Alavanche (-10%).
currency tightening week
In addition to “Super Wednesday” on the 21st, with decisions on the monetary policy of Copom and the Federal Reserve in the USA, investors are also watching the meetings of the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey and Switzerland on Thursday (22).
However, high expectations are focused on the direction of interest rates in the US market due to the difficulty of the decision on the level of liquidity for investments. After data showed that consumer inflation in the US was above projections, economists consider a 0.75 percentage point increase in the base rate almost certain, but some risk an even higher dose.
“It is clear that the Fed will be sending ‘hawkish’ (monetary tightening) messages, reiterating that it will cut inflation unconditionally,” Vasileios Gkionakis, head of European currency strategy at Citigroup, wrote in a note to clients.
Ethereum after the merger
Unlike the near-perfect execution of the Ethereum blockchain upgrade, technical issues have hindered the forking of the “rebellious” network supported by cryptocurrency miners who prefer to continue working under the proof-of-work (PoW) technique. according to CoinDesk.
ETHW, the token of the new EthereumPoW network, fell as much as 70% on Friday (16) due to the failure and decision of crypto exchange Poloniex – in which Tron founder Justin Sun is an investor – to support another cryptocurrency fork. Ethereum.
Data suggests that many miners have migrated their resources to Ethereum Classic (ETC). However, well-known miner Chandler Guo told CoinDesk that only 10% of ETHW or ETC miners will survive.
Following Ethereum’s successful transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus system, Dogecoin has become the largest token by market cap to use the PoW method to validate blocks on its blockchain after Bitcoin, the world’s #1 cryptocurrency.
DOGE is now ranked 10th in the updated CoinGecko rankings, with a market cap of $7.5 billion compared to BTC’s $354 billion. ETH, the second largest cryptocurrency, follows with $157 billion.
Other featured cryptocurrencies
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, is opening two offices in Brazil next month, in Rio and São Paulo, according to O Globo newspaper. The offices will support a team of 150 employees that Binance currently has in the country – up from 60 at the start of the year – who will be able to choose whether to work in person or not.
Greener, a new platform with a global reachthis Monday begins trading (19) tokens representing massive amounts of carbon credits, with audited provenance, from preserved forests in the Brazilian Amazon, according to Valor.
Following the confirmation of the merger of the digital broker Warren with the manager Renascenço DTVM, the group’s goal is to be a leader among institutional clients. In an interview with Valor, Warren partner and director Luis Pauli said that offering a crypto-asset trading desk is in the pipeline and promises news “in the first half of next year.”
Even with the devaluation of prices, some Brazilians now prefer to receive a salary in cryptocurrencies, driven by the speed and simplicity of transactions, according to an article by E-Investidor that refers to data from the Bitwage platform. Since January 2021, the number of workers receiving crypto has increased by 600% in Argentina, 100% in the United States and 50% in Brazil, where there are currently about 300 users.
How crypto companies like Bitpanda and BlockFi are cutting jobs, many professionals are beginning to notice that with the right skills, they can find a job in the financial sector. Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are looking for experts with blockchain experience – and they’re not the only ones, as the technology that underpins crypto markets is still attracting attention from banking clients and regulators, Bloomberg reports.
Regulation, CBDC and Cyber Security
On Friday (16th), the White House published the document “The First Comprehensive Framework for the Responsible Development of Digital Assets.”“, in which nine reports, after six months of studying the crypto industry, presented the findings and recommendations of various US federal agencies.
Apart from regulatory reportsThe US government also announced an initiative to bring together more than 150 US federal prosecutors to strengthen the fight against crypto-related crimes, with the creation of a “Digital Asset Coordinators Network”, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Guidelines issued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC on how banks should classify digital assets held for clients has interfered with crypto industry projects, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Since the rule designates cryptocurrency exposure as a liability rather than an asset on the balance sheet, this results in increased costs.
It was published by the European Central Bank on Friday (16) the name of five companies that will cooperate with his digital euro initiative. The e-commerce giant Amazon, which was one of those selected in the program, was highlighted. In this first phase, the ESB and selected entities will develop user interfaces.
In Brazil, the central bank’s intention is to bring liquidity to the market not only with digital real, but also through financial products developed on the basis of this technology, said Fabio Araujo, coordinator of the Brazilian CBDC in the Lift Challenge program, as reported by Blocknews. On Friday (16th), Araujo participated in Lift Talks, a webinar of the National Federation of BC Server Associations (Fenasbac), along with Reinaldo RabeloCEO MB.
In response to whether there is currently a particular focus on regulationAraujo pointed out that companies are going through a period of business maturation and offering new services, so “it is natural that I want the rules to be clear”.
Rabelo agrees: “It seems contradictory to talk about regulation together with innovation, but, in our case, it is much more about the game: what is the rule of the game?”, he pointed out. In this sense, according to him, “programs such as Lift, Sandbox, are fundamental for this interaction with regulators”.
South Korean officials asked Interpol issue a ‘red alert’ to locate Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon, whose whereabouts are unknown, according to the Financial Times. Under the alert, agencies around the world are called in to locate and arrest the wanted person and keep him in custody until the extradition process begins.
On Twitter, Do Kwon said on Saturday who was not in Singapore but denied that he was fleeing the authorities.
Metaverse, Games and NFTs
2022 was a special year for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans, as they will soon have the opportunity to acquire a collection of irreplaceable tokens of famous heroes of comics, movies and games. The company behind the franchise has registered two new products, related to NFTs and the metaverse.
CVM (Securities and Exchange Commission) promotes the webinar “Metaverse and Capital Markets: Challenges and Opportunities” October 4th at 9:00 am Brazilian time, as part of the 6th World Investor Week (WIW), which takes place from October 3rd to 9th.
