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June has been a very eventful month.
I’m not saying this because it is my birthday month.
While US SEC has been busy suing crypto exchanges in the country (if you missed out, here is a quick summary on the SEC suing Coinbase and Binance), be it a distraction or part of their plan to pave the way for government-centric solutions to be rolled out, a number of traditional finance (TradFi) players have been making key moves to push further into crypto.
How to read into this? Well, regardless if they have access to information normal people like you and me don’t have, we can assume that given the scale of these TradFi players, they know what they are doing. So if they are making the move, it is bullish for all of us - it is signaling quite directly that they recognize, at least certain cryptocurrencies such as BTC, as a new asset class. This a not just an endorsement, this is them legitimizing crypto.
What are the facts? Here we go with the news.
Investment giant Blackrock files for a spot Bitcoin ETF. The application lists Coinbase as the custodian for assets and pricing data. If approved, it would be the first product of its kind in the U.S (read more here).
Besides Blackrock, a series of traditional finance (TradFi) players are pushing further into crypto, including Invesco and WisdomTree also filing for spot Bitcoin ETF applications (read more here).
With Blackrock filing for spot Bitcoin ETF, asset management giant Fidelity is said to submit its own filing for a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. This will be Fidelity's second attempt at such a product (read more here).
EDX crypto exchange, which is backed by major TradFi players including Fidelity Digital Assets, Charles Schwab and Citadel Securities, also recently launched (read more here).
Banking giant Deutsche Bank announced that it had applied for a digital asset custody license in Germany (read more here).
And it’s not just the banks and investment players…
Governments across the world are racing too
European finance ministers unanimously approved a regional regulatory framework for digital assets. The Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulations provide guidelines for cryptocurrency exchanges and wallet providers, in addition to utility tokens, asset-backed tokens, and stablecoins (read more here).
U.K. parliamentarians have voted through a new bill that could recognize crypto as a regulated activity in the country. The approval of the Financial Services and Markets Bill (FSMB) by Parliament’s upper chamber, the House of Lords, means the bill is going to enter the final stages before it is put into law (read more here).
Sberbank, Russia’s biggest bank, to allow Crypto Trading (read more here).
The Bank of China’s investment banking arm BOCI issued tokenized securities on Ethereum in Hong Kong. BOCI offered CNH 200 million ($28 million) of structured notes, with Swiss banking giant UBS underwriting the issuance and placing with clients in Asia Pacific. This was the first time a Chinese financial institution issued tokenized securities on a public blockchain (read more here).
As Hong Kong pushes to become a hub of the crypto industry, it will allow retail trading of cryptocurrencies as early as the latter half of this year, and will accept applications from exchanges to offer such services (read more here).
Additionally, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) central banks are looking to collaborate on cryptocurrency regulations and financial technology development (read more here).
Beijing has also released a web3 white paper to promote the industry’s development (read more here).
Colombia's central bank, Banco de la República, has partnered with blockchain firm Ripple to explore the use of blockchain technology (read more here).
Coincidence? I don’t think so.
Amid all these announcements, what is truly great is that the crypto community continues to build.
Here are some of the latest development:
Crypto wallet and decentralized application provider MetaMask started rolling out ETH purchases via PayPal for users in the United States (read more here).
Uniswap, the largest decentralized crypto exchange, releases version 4 code, allowing for new types of liquidity pools (read more here).
Fetch.ai and peaq bridge the gap between blockchains with a multichain Self-Sovereign Machine IDs for safer data exchange on Polkadot and Cosmos (read more here).
An interoperable NFT standard has landed on Cosmos. This new NFT standard (ICS-721) will enable users to transfer their NFTs across blockchains (read more here).
Solana integrated AI and developed a ChatGPT plugin that will make it easier to understand Solana data and protocols, or surface data about Solana’s computing infrastructure and DeFi projects (read more here).
Stepn, a mobile “move-to-earn” game that rewards players with crypto tokens for walking and running with specialized NFTs, has launched an in-app marketplace for NFT sales within its iOS app for Apple’s iPhone (read more here).
Cardano scaling node Hydra Head went live on the blockchain's mainnet. The tool aims to speed up transaction times on Cardano (read more here).
Ethereum blockchain explorer Etherscan has unveiled a new AI tool that will use OpenAI's large language model to help users learn about the source code of any smart contract (read more here).
Polygon unveils its 2.0 Roadmap, with plans to develop ZK-powered multichain scaling solution (read more here).
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