This Week in Coins: KPMG Adds Bitcoin and Ethereum as Russia Ponders Regulations

A 4.5% drop in crypto’s global market capitalization over the last 24 hours means that every top 30 cryptocurrency was down from Friday, despite the fact that market leaders Bitcoin and Ethereum both posted double-digit overnight gains this week on multiple days.

Bitcoin is one of the few cryptocurrencies in the green since last Saturday, trading at $42,327 at the time of writing, a 2.2% increase over the last seven days. Meanwhile, Ethereum dropped 3.2% over the past week and is trading at $2,916.

But XRP and Shiba Inu both weathered the storm.

XRP is up 15% in seven days, trading at $0.77 at the time of this writing, while Shiba Inu blew up 22% and is trading at $0.00002854. The Dogecoin-inspired meme token began its little bull run on Monday, adding 20% overnight.

The week's biggest losers among the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market cap were Solana, down 17% to $95 as of this writing, and Polkadot, which fell 13% to $18.76.

This week’s news

On Monday, the Canadian arm of giant global accounting network KPMG announced that it's added Bitcoin and Ethereum to its corporate treasury. 

KMPG Canada tweeted: “We have just completed an allocation of cryptoassets to our corporate treasury, our firm’s first of its kind investment in the asset class. This includes Bitcoin and Ethereum tokens ..."

Russia’s government and central bank reached an agreement on Wednesday, after the Bank of Russia’s proposal for a cryptocurrency ban last month was criticized by the country’s finance minister.

Russia plans to introduce a new draft law on February 18 to regulate crypto as the country takes its first steps towards recognizing digital assets as currency.

The draft law would apply to cryptocurrencies the same regulatory framework as foreign currencies, allowing banks to operate as intermediaries between users and crypto trading platforms. Crypto exchanges also will have to register as legal entities and satisfy all requirements of traditional financial institutions in Russia.

On the same day, EU finance chief Mairead McGuinness said at a fintech conference that the European Union will introduce a digital euro bill early next year. The news comes six months after the European Central Bank warned governments that they risk losing their monetary autonomy to the tech sector if they fail to produce Central Bank Digital Currencies.

Finally, on Thursday the governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Shaktikanta Das, warned that private cryptocurrency “has no underlying value” and “is a big threat to our macroeconomic stability and financial stability.”

The comments come in the wake of the Indian government's pledge to develop a digital rupee and tax crypto gains at 30%.