Crypto Weekly Roundup: The Cryptomarket Is Taking A Nosedive Amid The Bearish Flags And Uncertain Regulatory Crackdowns

2021/07/20 07:49:11

As part of our Crypto Weekly Roundup series, we will discuss the market driving factors, trends, and main events that happened in the crypto sector throughout the week.

It has been a rough week for the cryptocurrency market amid the bearish flags and sideways movements. Crypto trading volumes across leading spot exchanges fell by almost 26%, and the market cap has decreased by 8%. These trading volumes are the lowest we have seen since December 2020.

Bitcoin

a). According to a recent announcement, Meitu (a Chinese tech company) lost $17.3 million worth of bitcoins during the first half of 2021 alone.

b). Elon Musk is once again in the spotlight for his criticism on the base-layer scalability of Bitcoin and Ethereum. He said in his tweet, "BTC & ETH are pursuing a multilayer transaction system, but base layer transaction rate is slow & transaction cost is high".

c). The daily exchange outflow of BTC has reached 2,000 BTC. This exchange outflow is equivalent to $61.4 million every single day.

d). A US-based real estate firm, Lincoln Avenue Capital, acquired 1,000 BTC by investing 5% of assets under management.

e). The Bitcoin testnet finally got Taproot on 8th July. Taproot is scheduled to go live on the Bitcoin mainnet in November this year.

f). A statement came from the deputy governor of China's central bank that caught the attention of the mainstream media. He said Bitcoin and stablecoins are speculative tools and a threat to financial security and social stability.

Ethereum

a).The Ethereum London hard fork upgrade is live on all three testnets (Ropsten, Koven, and Rinkeby). The London hard fork is expected to go live on the mainnet on August 4.

b). Tom Jessop, President of Fidelity Institutional Asset Management, mentioned the rising demand in ETH, stating, “We’ve seen more interest in Ethereum, so we want to be ahead of that demand.”

c). The much-anticipated cross-chain bridge between Zilliqa and Ethereum is now live on the testnet.

d). The first official Ethereum ETF is finally here. The Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission approved the launch of the first Ethereum ETF in the country.

e).The shift from ETH1.0 to ETH2.0 is expected in the first quarter of 2022. However, Trustnodes has stated that the transition might happen by the end of 2022.

Altcoins

a). Dogecoin, the favorite cryptocurrency of Twitter and Elon Musk, is once again in the limelight. Elon Musk criticized the base-layer scalability of Bitcoin and Ethereum, and stated that Dogecoin has the potential to maximize base layer transactions at lower costs.

b). Gitcoin, an open-source software funding project, announced that they have now integrated Tezos onto the platform.

c). A recent analysis shows that more than 60% of LINK’s total circulating supply is held by top 10 whale addresses.

d). Uniswap V3 is getting deployed to Optimistic, an Ethereum Layer-2 scaling solution.

Regulations

a).The Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) mentioned in their annual survey on cryptocurrencies that the crypto industry cannot be fully regulated because of the insufficient measures taken by the countries.

b).The Central Bank of India is launching a 'digital rupee', and as part of the transition, a new bill will be proposed in the parliament to ban all private cryptocurrencies in the country when the digital rupee is launched.

c).Digital assets are not a legal tender, said the Bank of Thailand. Thailand has seen immense growth in the adoption of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins.

d). El Salvador might face scrutiny from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) after adopting Bitcoin as a legal tender, said The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLAC.

e). A recent survey indicates that 20% of El Salvador citizens approve the decision of accepting Bitcoin as a legal tender.

f). A bill was presented in the Parliament of Paraguay on July 14th to recognize Bitcoin as a legal tender.

g). The State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) has sent a final notice demanding to stop cryptocurrency mining. 90% of the mining operations have already been shut down in China within the last two months.

h). Bank of America made a team of researchers to expand the scope and understanding of cryptocurrencies within the company. Fidelity Digital Assets is expanding its staff by 70% after the demand surge from crypto institutional investors.

Closing Thoughts

Amid the bearish market, the cryptocurrency space has been getting a lot of interest from regulators, mainly because of their awareness and an increasing adoption rate by retail and institutional investors.

The regulatory environment is still uncertain, but we have seen a lot of new developments as smaller countries from Latin America are exploring to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender, following the footsteps of El Salvador.