Crypto Highlights April 2022 – Crypto Valley Journal

The market value of the overall crypto market has fallen by 31% since April and has reached $ 1.48 trillion. USD. Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) have fallen by 23% and 26.7% respectively since last month. April was not easy for the stock market either. The S&P 500 experienced the worst April in 52 years with a 13.3% year-to-date decline. We will dive deeper into the macroeconomic factors that caused these declines. In this monthly summary, we also highlight the most important developments related to the regulatory situation, DeFi and the meta-verse.

Crypto-fraud, often called “carpet dragging”, could soon become a direct crime. New York lawmakers are lobbying for new legislation that would ban founders from selling significant percentages of their token holdings within a five-year period. This happened shortly after the Frosties carpet, a fraudulent NFT project whose creators were accused of stealing $ 1.3 million in ether last month. This can be a big win, not only for US investors, but for the entire DeFi area.

German banking giant Commerzbank has applied for a cryptocurrency depository license and has become the first major bank to venture into cryptocurrencies in Germany. In the United Arab Emirates, Kraken was licensed to become the first cryptocurrency exchange to offer direct financing and trading of UAE dirhams against bitcoin, ether and a number of other virtual assets. Finally, the Portuguese central bank granted Bison Bank its Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) license, making the bank the first in the country to offer its crypto services to individuals with high net worth.

Not only has the stablecoin sector been driven by the excitement surrounding the news of the new algorithmic currencies and their lucrative returns, the firm behind USDC has also had its share of attention. First, it was revealed that Circle had closed a $ 400 million round of funding led by Blackrock, Fidelity Management and more. The new round of financing aims to help the issuer support its growth effort and narrow its market gap with leading stablecoin USDT.

Another part of the agreement involves Blackrock becoming the primary asset manager of USDC liquidity reserves and exploring further applications for how USDC can be leveraged as a streamlined resource in the traditional financial world. It has also been revealed that Circle is considering launching a sterling-denominated stablecoin to complement its burgeoning ecosystem, shortly after the company announced its UK expansion plans.

Not surprisingly, Meta’s back-to-back announcements have dominated the new sector’s news cycle. The company is reportedly considering in-app and social tokens for its Metaverse. The announcement came shortly after Zuckerberg hinted at his plan to bring NFTs to Instagram. But that’s not all, when Meta announced that they will charge 47.5% on NFT sales.

As for the companies that are increasing access to the expanding ecosystem, Coinbase finally launched the beta version of their NFT marketplace. Amazon’s new CEO, Andy Jassy, ​​also hinted that the company is considering selling NFTs to take market share from Opensea and LooksRare. As for Opensea, the company has finally added support to the long-awaited Solana-based NFT collections in its beta mode.

Jerome Powell’s restrictive policies could mean another tumultuous month for cryptocurrencies. So it is worth keeping a close eye on this development. However, given the high level of adoption of cryptocurrencies at government and corporate level, the cryptocurrencies with the highest market values ​​will continue to exist. Looking at this vertical, it will also be exciting to see how the Terra model will get other L1s to adopt comparable mechanisms to attract new users and liquidity.

It will be interesting to see how sustainable some of these proposals are, starting with Tron’s latest product. Ultimately, UST stablecoins’ recovery depended on the cryptocurrency market and the correspondingly high demand for credit. Given the low-risk sentiment that stock markets are heading toward, it remains to be seen how stablecoin projects will be able to maintain their announced returns amid reduced demand.

We also expect U.S. Representative Patrick Toomey to push through his proposed Stablecoin TRUST Act before his term ends in 2023. Toomey said that after his term expires, he will no longer seek re-election and will retire completely from politics. The senior MP, who has been in office for 11 years, now has seven months to lobby for stablecoin innovation and translate this proposal into law.