This week in coins. Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.
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.
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 ..."
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, and carbon offsets to maintain a net-zero carbon transaction: https://t.co/32hsKbnGuC
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, warnedthat 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%.
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CME Group on Thursday said it would introduce XRP futures on its derivatives marketplace for clients on May 19, the company announced Thursday.
The new product will allow clients to trade both a micro-sized contract of 2,500 XRP, and a larger-sized contract of 50,000 XRP.
"As innovation in the digital asset landscape continues to evolve, market participants continue to look to regulated derivatives products to manage risks across a wider range of tokens," Giovanni Vicioso, CME Group's global hea...
Institutional interest in Bitcoin intensified last month, even as retail investors reduced their exposure.
That’s the takeaway of John D’Agostino, head of strategy at Coinbase Institutional, who told CNBC Squawk Box that “pools of capital that have been buying during April” included “sovereign wealth funds, large institutional, long term duration pools of capital,” while Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF) saw net outflows.
In April, D’Agostino said, “Bitcoin ETF flows were net negative to the...
A hacker who drained nearly $5 million from Ethereum scaling protocol ZKsync’s airdrop contract has returned the stolen funds within the project’s 72-hour deadline, closing the chapter on the recent exploit.
“We’re pleased to share that the hacker has cooperated and returned the funds within the safe harbor deadline,” ZKsync posted on X, formerly Twitter. “The case is now considered resolved.”
The recovered assets, consisting of over 44.6 million ZK tokens and nearly 1,800 ETH, are now under the...