Weekly letter of most important stuff we’ve seen previous week in crypto world with personal thoughts
Whole week major drivers
That was a stable week for the crypto market. It can be linked with finished G20 2018 summit in Argentina which clearly shows that for such high-level makers, crypto is still not well-understanded area and I think that country leaders feel that they don’t have real solutions to regulate it. And that was the main risk in the previous week. Now, this risk is gone for few months.
Secondly, there was also other very important market development last week. We could see renewed sell-off in equities. The S&P 500 was sold in eight of the past ten sessions for a two-week drop of more than 7%. And during that time we could observe rising Bitcoin. If this trend will follow it can lead to an interesting correlation between equities and crypto. And crypto can be good opportunity to hedge against falling stocks in upcoming weeks or months. It will be very interesting to see how it will develop.
Bitcoin and S&P 500 negative correlation during equities crackdown
Price action
Bitcoin and Ethereum didn’t make big moves last week. However, other coins have made more significant results. Specially EOS and TRON which I think are very unclear and risky projects. We could also observe big ICON and Binance Coin gains triggered by the news.
Weekly crypto performance — 19–26 March 2018 (by coin360.io)
We have finished the week with a market capitalization around 326 billion dollars and volumes are still slowly decreasing. Main resistance is at about 280 billion dollars.
Weekly crypto market capitalization — 19–26 March 2018 (by coinmarketcap.com)
Major events in week 19–26 March 2018
Binance to announce banking partnership in MaltaThe move comes after Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) sent a notice to the Hong Kong-based crypto exchange, demanding the company to register with Japanese trading regulators. Following this crackdown, binance is planning to open an office in Malta (European Union member).If this will finalize it’s possible that Binance will add fiat trading pairs and this means people can be allowed to directly purchase crypto with USD or the Euro.
Mastercard plans support only cryptocurrencies backed by governmentsThe announcement comes as Mastercard is gradually softening its stance on cryptocurrency. Now the company’s co-president for the Asia-Pacific region announced they’d be ”happy to look at” cryptos created by governments or backed by regulators. Mastercard is already working with blockchain technology and cryptocurrency on their own and Mastercard Labs has filed for more than 30 patents related to blockchain technology and cryptocurrency.
G20 agrees to monitor crypto, but no real actionFinance ministers and central bankers from the world’s 20 largest economies meeting in Buenos Aires asked regulators to monitor these “crypto assets” but stopped to stop short of any specific action. In many ways, technology was the central theme of the event. In a statement, the banking chiefs said:
“We acknowledge that technological innovation, including that underlying crypto-assets, has the potential to improve the efficiency and inclusiveness of the financial system and the economy more broadly.”
US Treasury wants to blacklist wallets addressesThe Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) announced on March 19 that it was considering including crypto wallets addresses associated with its list of persons and entities with whom U.S. persons and businesses are forbidden to transact business. This would come as an addition to sanctions the US Treasury leverage against blacklisted persons. Financial institutions would be required to screen any virtual currency address provided for a transaction against a list to be provided by OFAC, and to either report, deny service to, or block transactions involving any listed addresses. In theory, miners, mixing services, exchanges should also validate all transactions against this blacklist, but hardly possible to do. 20 percent of college students use their financial aid money to invest in cryptoAccording to findings from The Student Loan Report, a website for student loan information over 20% of university students use student loans money to purchase cryptocurrency. While the survey does not say how much the average university student spent on cryptocurrency which can be very important information. It is also clear that young people are more prone to making cryptocurrency investments. Furthermore, this finding shows that the crypto buying was made with credit. Tennessee passes a bill recognizing Smart Contracts and blockchain transactions The bill had sailed through the legislature since its introduction in January, passing both chambers unanimously. As the text of the bill explains:“As introduced, recognizes the legal authority to use blockchain technology and smart contracts in conducting electronic transactions; protects ownership rights of certain information secured by blockchain technology.”The law recognizes smart contracts as having legal power, stating that “no contract relating to a transaction shall be denied legal effect, validity, or enforceability solely because that contract contains a smart contract term.”
Next “What changed in crypto” letter is due on April 2nd, 2018
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