Market News

1inch Network co-founder Sergej Kunz believes that the SEC’s enforcement actions against two centralized exchanges may have a negative impact on the growth of Web3 in the United States. I share Brian Armstrong’s opinion that the SEC is killing innovation in the US and all the companies there are thinking about moving to another country.

Europe’s adoption of Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) legislation to create solid regulatory standards for the cryptocurrency ecosystem contrasts with the lack of such standards across the Atlantic, where Web3 companies and advocates continue to call for greater regulatory clarity.

Additionally, Kunz added that events like the FTX debacle show that there are risks in trusting a centralized party to hold their funds or assets.

According to reports, the director of the Thai National Police Agency, Dang Longsa, ordered a number of subordinate officials to carry out the “Trust No One” operation with the Thai Anti-Money Laundering Office, Immigration Bureau and other departments, aiming to clean up cryptocurrency criminals. A search was also carried out at multiple dens on Sinakalong Road and Kritha in Bangkok.

It is understood that there are as many as 5 target search points in the Prawet luxury villa area in Bangkok, most of which are 2-story single-family villas.

The police arrested 31-year-old Chinese man Mingjian Su and his 25-year-old wife Yixi Li in one of them. They seized over 15 million baht in cash, real estate title deeds worth over 60 million baht, and deeds for 4 luxury apartments in Sukhumvit (approximately 128 million yuan). Baht), 14 Bearbricks (a toy), 6 Apple phones, several tablets and laptops, and several international brand-name bags.

The police said that the amount of crime committed by the gang may exceed 10 billion baht, and the number of victims has reached more than 200,000, but the specific number is still not available because there are still other victims.

Coinbase released a research report saying that the intersection of artificial intelligence and blockchain is a major opportunity for entrepreneurs.

In a report on Thursday, the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange highlighted the benefits of combining the two technologies to create new solutions to societal challenges posed by artificial intelligence.

David Duong, director of research at Coinbase, said, “As AI and applications in blockchain mature, the disruption these technologies represent could lead to the emergence of areas of collaboration and new use cases for cryptocurrencies to help address specific societal challenges brought about by AI. challenges.” The report mentions several potential use cases combining AI and blockchain technology.

U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he does not want anti-cryptocurrency folks at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

He also attacked securities regulators for protecting banks rather than the American people. “What they did was vague, not transparent and did not bring transparency to our system,” he said.

In the interview, Kennedy expressed his admiration for Bitcoin while criticizing the way the SEC regulates the cryptocurrency industry.

He said that if he is elected president, he intends to nominate crypto-friendly people to the SEC.

According to Deribit data, $3.6 billion worth of bitcoin and ethereum options contracts will expire on Friday, of which about 85,000 bitcoin options contracts worth $2.3 billion and about 700,000 ethereum options worth $1.3 billion contract.

With a put ratio of 0.38, Deribit chief commercial officer Luuk Strijers said there could be more than two-and-a-half times more outstanding calls than puts. The amount of options expiring is sizable, but that doesn’t mean the market has reason to panic.

Implied volumes are still at their lowest levels, with Bitcoin and Ethereum at 50 DVOL, seeing a similar minimum IV situation in January of this year, followed by a massive spike.

Pakistan’s Minister of State for Finance and Taxation said cryptocurrencies cannot be legalized in the country due to conditions set by a global money laundering watchdog, which demanded that they be excluded from a list of countries with heightened surveillance.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) said it “does not require countries to indiscriminately ban virtual assets and virtual asset service providers”.

The FATF said it requires countries to understand the money laundering and terrorism financing risks faced by the crypto industry, and to issue licenses or register exchanges to regulate the industry in the same way as other financial institutions.

The FATF requires virtual asset service providers to implement the same precautions as financial institutions, including customer due diligence, record keeping and suspicious transaction reporting, and to comply with its travel rule.

The rule requires crypto service providers to collect and share transaction information above a certain threshold. It was previously reported that Pakistan has no plans to legalize cryptocurrency trading.

Bank of America (BAC) said in a research note on Friday that the cryptocurrency market has limited upside in the short term.

Analysts Alkesh Shah and Andrew Moss wrote that low market confidence, limited catalysts and outperformance year-to-date have kept the digital asset industry stuck in a trading range, while a challenging macro backdrop may limit digital asset upside.

Conversations with clients suggest that hedge funds are returning to token trading, with momentum strategies likely to benefit in part from heightened volatility due to lower trading volumes, the bank said.

The report added that traditional finance (TradFi) firms and tech firms continue to build blockchain applications, focusing on the tokenization of demand deposits, repo settlement, and bond issuance.

Dan O’Prey, chief product officer of digital asset platform Bakkt, said at the Bitcoin 2023 conference that the international regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies is improving and that the company is eyeing retail expansion on the African continent.

The overall lack of clarity on U.S. regulation of cryptocurrencies has been the most significant hurdle to Bitcoin adoption.

Additionally, O’Prey praised MiCA, the EU’s recently adopted regulation for markets in cryptoassets, and O’Prey said that any kind of clarity is generally good.

At least people know where they stand, know how they should operate, understand how to comply, and this enables businesses and institutions to participate in the space, and these regions that provide clear regulation for cryptocurrencies will receive a large inflow of talent, capital and jobs.

The UAE’s National Bank of Dubai has opened a digital asset lab to develop new ecosystems for consumer-facing financial services using digital assets and their underlying technologies.

The bank has signed deals with professional services firm PwC and digital asset transfer and direct custody technology platform Fireblocks to become members of the founding committee.

Abdulla Qassem, COO, NBD, said, “Our new Digital Asset Lab, with the support of our industry partners, serves as a hub for innovation, experimentation and collaboration in the digital asset space. We see this as an opportunity to accelerate our transformation journey and Another step in developing state-of-the-art solutions that optimize the customer experience.”

Cryptocurrency advocacy group CryptoUK has criticized the UK Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee’s proposal to regulate cryptocurrency trading as gambling.

The advocacy group called them “unhelpful, false, fundamentally flawed and unsubstantiated.” CryptoUK said the Treasury select committee statement failed to reflect the true nature, purpose and potential of the crypto industry.

Bitcoin, ethereum and other cryptocurrencies should be regulated as gambling given the substantial risk they pose to consumers, a group of British lawmakers said in a report.

Patrick Hansen, Circle’s head of EU policy, said on social media that Europe already has the most crypto-friendly banks in the world so far, and this global lead may be further improved with the entry into force of MiCA regulations.

Facilitating access to banking services for crypto asset service providers is stated as one of its objectives.

Additionally, Coincub’s Crypto Banking Report 2023 reports that there are currently 55 crypto-friendly banks in Europe, 24 in Asia, and 23 in North America.

May 14 news, South Korea’s main opposition Democratic Party lawmaker Kim Nam-kuk said on Sunday that he will quit the party due to mounting allegations of involvement in large-scale cryptocurrency transactions.

There are allegations that the first-term MP traded cryptocurrencies while attending at least two meetings of the National Assembly’s Judiciary Committee in May and November last year.

According to previous news, South Korean congressman Kim Nam-guk held 800,000 WEMIX when he proposed to delay the taxation of virtual assets such as cryptocurrencies in 2021, and the highest price exceeded 6 billion won (about 4.55 million U.S. dollars). Very different. Prosecutors have launched an investigation into the matter to determine whether there was any wrongdoing.

According to news on May 14, Argentine electronic bank Uala will suspend its cryptocurrency business, and customers must sell their assets.

Uala currently has 300,000 users holding cryptocurrencies in its digital wallets, who are required to sell them within 30 days.

Uala will sell these cryptocurrencies with a 5 percent commission and settle in pesos at a rate similar to MEP dollars.

According to news last week, the Central Bank of Argentina stated in a statement that payment platforms are now prohibited from providing digital assets such as Bitcoin to customers to reduce user risks.

Britain cannot afford to fall behind in innovation on cryptocurrencies and digital currencies, the UK’s financial services secretary said.

Britain’s financial services secretary said the government envisions the digital pound as a safe and trusted form of money like the physical pound.

The UK cannot afford to be left behind when it comes to innovation in cryptocurrencies and digital currencies. The UK is getting closer to “when, not if”, a digital pound, but we haven’t made a final decision yet.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Hester Peirce praised the speed at which the European Union put together its digital finance package.

The European Parliament adopted the Markets in Cryptoassets (MiCA) last month, laying out a comprehensive framework for cryptocurrency regulation across the 27-nation bloc.

MiCA could serve as a model for us, Peirce said Wednesday at the Financial Times Cryptocurrency and Digital Assets Summit.

She added that the U.K.’s efforts to create a crypto-friendly regulatory regime could also serve as inspiration for the U.S.

Speaking at an event in Bengaluru, India’s finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, said that India is not opposed to blockchain technology, but the currency must be regulated by the government or the central bank.

Otherwise, it could have huge spillovers all over the world like those companies that have gone bankrupt, like FTX.

India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, has launched a retail and wholesale central bank digital currency pilot.

According to Sitharaman, the digital rupee aims to improve cross-border and batch payments to minimize arbitrage losses.

India currently chairs the G20, an intergovernmental forum of the world’s major economies, and has cryptocurrencies and their regulation on the agenda for discussion.

CZ, the founder of Binance, spoke in an AMA and said that the banking industry has existed for a long time, so banks have become less and less efficient.

The failure of banks has nothing to do with the development of encryption. Cryptocurrency is just an option for people to invest in. Different people like different types of assets. People will not enter the field of encryption after the failure of banks. The better the banking system, the better for crypto. We should focus on making encryption easier to use.

CZ said that in the face of supervision in various places, I think the biggest challenge is the support of banks, if banks are especially willing to cooperate and communicate with encrypted businesses. In this way, we can truly and conveniently realize the liquidity integration between the traditional financial system and the encrypted financial system, which is beneficial to both parties.

According to the “2023-2032 Web3.0 Market Forecast” report released by Acumen Research & Consulting, a market research and consulting company, it shows that.

It is estimated that the Web 3.0 market size will reach US$81.9 billion by 2032, with a compound annual growth rate of 44.5%. Among them, the Web 3.0 market in the Asia-Pacific region will experience significant growth.

It is expected to grow at a CAGR of approximately 47% from 2023 to 2032. According to a previous report, the insurance industry could save up to $500-100 billion per year by adopting blockchain technology due to reduced fraud and improved claims processing.

Federal Reserve Governor Waller said in a speech today that the potential application of blockchain technology to record transactions in traditional assets such as securities and derivatives is “promising.”

Blockchain can provide fast money transfers 24/7 and allow for programmable transactions of tokenized assets, Waller said: That’s not to say tokenization is risk-free, just that it’s a promising prospect.

Waller added that the Fed is in regular discussions with banks that are exploring the use of artificial intelligence to understand and manage associated risks.