Hassan Maishera
The bear market is in play but that hasn’t stopped cryptocurrency companies to launch new innovative products.
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The total cryptocurrency market cap remains below $1 trillion
Another week has passed and there has been no major improvement in the performance of the major cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is still trading around the $20k psychological level while Ether could drop below the $1,000 mark in the coming days or weeks.
All this means that the total cryptocurrency market cap remains below $1 trillion. At press time, the total cryptocurrency market stands around $900 billion, down by more than 65% from the all-time high of $3 trillion recorded in November 2021.
Tether launches its Sterling-pegged stablecoin
Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer in the world, announced that it would launch a stablecoin pegged to the Pound Sterling next month. This latest development comes just a few weeks after launching its Eurocoin (pegged to the Euro) and MXNT (pegged to the Mexican Peso) stablecoins. The stablecoin will be called GBPT and will be available on the Ethereum network, the company said.
Bear market sees some companies halt certain operations
Earlier this month, we reported that Celsius, one of the leading cryptocurrency lending platforms paused withdrawals on its platform, citing the current market conditions. This week, we have two companies that followed the same route.
Bancor, a leading DeFi and staking protocol, announced that it has temporarily paused its Impermanent Loss (IL) Protection. According to Bancor, this is a temporary measure to protect the protocol and its users.
Crypto exchange CoinFLEX also paused withdrawals earlier this week, citing the extreme market conditions and continued uncertainty involving a counterparty. The company said it is confident that this situation can be repaired fully with the restoration of all functionality, namely withdrawals.
Elon Musks double down on support for Dogecoin
Elon Musk has made his love for Dogecoin known publicly on numerous occasions. Earlier this week, Musk said he personally intends to support Dogecoin. He pointed out that his support comes as many have asked him to do so.
The US Fed is watching the crypto market’s volatility
The US Federal Reserve has been occupied in recent months but it hasn’t taken its eyes off the cryptocurrency market. Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, told a Senate committee Wednesday that the central bank is watching the crypto market closely amid a period of heightened volatility. However, he added that the US Fed is not seeing significant macroeconomic implications at the moment.
Acquisitions continue despite the bear market
Mergers and acquisitions are becoming a big part of the cryptocurrency space and this week, several such deals were concluded. E-commerce giant eBay announced earlier this week that it had acquired the UK-based non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace KnownOrigin.
Voyager Digital announced that it plans to acquire embattled cryptocurrency hedge fund, Three Arrows Capital, in a deal that could be worth roughly $650 million. Uniswap Labs, the main developer of the Uniswap decentralized exchange protocol, revealed that it had acquired non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace aggregator Genie. This is part of Uniswap Lab’s expansion effort to include NFTs and ERC-20 tokens among its products, the company added.
FTX US, the American subsidiary of global crypto exchange FTX, is set to acquire equities clearing firm Embed Financial in a move to enhance its newly-launched stocks trading offering. The terms of the deal are yet unknown but Embed is currently valued above $120 million.
