The Last Fortnight in Crypto - August
LATEST NEWS
Markets Rally as the Federal Reserve Increases Rates
Cryptocurrency prices continued rising following the latest Federal Reserve rate increase—with BTC +2% and ETH +12% in the last 7 days (at 29/7/'22). The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) raised the Fed Funds Rate by 0.75 basis points for the second consecutive time. Chairman Jerome Powell said they will be looking at economic data and may pause rate increases if the data worsens. The Nasdaq rallied to its biggest one-day jump since 2020 following the news.
Ethereum Community Conference Wrap-up
Ethereum's largest European event wrapped up with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin providing an update on Ethereum's roadmap, labelling Ethereum only "55% complete" after the merge.
The roadmap 'phases' will happen in parallel:
- The Merge: Happening sometime in 2022
- The Surge: The first major step towards scaling with the introduction of sharding in 2023.
- The Verge: A technical implementation and scaling upgrade to optimise for storage and size.
- The Purge: A "clean up" phase to streamline storage and reduce congestion.
- The Splurge: Many other small optimisations to ensure a smooth network.
Tesla Sells a Majority of its Bitcoin
Tesla sold $936M or 75% of its bitcoin holdings in Q2. Elon Musk said this was to maximise its cash position given the uncertainty of covid lockdowns in China.
It's not all doom and gloom — they kept 25%, and Musk said he was open to boosting its bitcoin exposure in the future.
Russia Bans Crypto Payments for Good and Service; While the UK Embraces Stablecoins
Russia took a hard-line ban on crypto payments for goods and services, although citizens can still buy and hold crypto assets. In a more progressive approach, UK regulators introduced a bill to regulate stablecoins as a form of payment in the UK. The legislation includes guidelines on the safe adoption of crypto assets and will need to pass parliament to become law.