Strengths
- Of the cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap, the best performer for the week was Curve Dao, rising 47%.
- Congress passed the first federal legislation to regulate stablecoins, which imposes federal or state oversight on dollar-linked tokens. Supporters say the bill could unlock faster, cheaper forms of payments and bring legitimacy to the crypto industry, according to backers of the bill and reported by Bloomberg.
- Tokens perceived to benefit from regulatory changes and increased tokenization of financial assets, including Ethereum and Ripple, have outperformed lately, indicating traders may be rotating holdings more than taking directions bets on the space, writes Bloomberg.
Weaknesses
- Of the cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap, the worst performer for the week was Pump fun, down 31%.
- Vanguard executives say Bitcoin is not “appropriate” for long-term investors and is an “immature asset class” with no inherent economic value. Vanguard executives channeling the logic of the venerable Jack Bogle have made their opinions on crypto clear, according to Bloomberg.
- Uniswap Labs President and COO Mary-Catherines Lader has exited the firm. A spokesperson of Uniswap thanks Lader “for her four years of leadership and will continue to build on her contributions by remaining focused on our users, partners, and DeFi community,” writes Bloomberg.
Opportunities
- Pakistan and El Salvador have established bilateral ties with cryptocurrency cooperation at the center of the relationship. Bilal Bin Saqib met with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele to discuss a knowledge-sharing partnership, according to a statement by the Pakistan minister’s office. Pakistan has allocated 2,000 megawatts for Bitcoin mining and plans to create a national Bitcoin reserve and has established the Pakistan Digital Assets Authority to regulate the industry, according to Bloomberg.
- A team of crypto hedge fund executives are planning to invest as much as $200 million in Windtree Therapeutics to create a public crypto treasury company holding BNB tokens, the native token of the Binance blockchain, according to Bloomberg.
- Bitcoin breached $120,000 for the first time, with investor enthusiasm showing signs of dimming as the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to consider key industry legislation. Progress on crucial crypto legislation is adding fresh fuel to the rally with the prospect of a clear US regulatory framework bolstering confidence in the asset class among institutional investors writes Bloomberg.
Threats
- $2.17 billion was stolen from crypto services and individual wallets through June, according to blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis. Eric Jardine, cybercrimes research lead at Chainalysis, said, “It’s sort of fair to say there’s a high degree of technical sophistication in these hacks, and the more security layers that get put into place by crypto services, the more sophisticated bad actors have to become,” writes Bloomberg.
- Roger Ven has sued Spain to block his extradition to the U.S. to face tax evasion charges, claiming Spain violated his legal protections. U.S. prosecutors charged Ver with evading more than $48 million in taxes due from profits made by selling crypto tokens, according to Bloomberg.
- Former Binance executives Samuel Wenjun Lim and Diinghua Xiao urged a court to remove them from an FTX trust’s lawsuit, saying the U.S. bankruptcy court lacks jurisdiction over them. Lim and Xiao said they never received any benefit from the FTX transfers in question and that the true beneficiary of any alleged transfer was Binance, writes Bloomberg.
