BTC is currently trading around $20,400 and ETH around $1,200. Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are OMI, ICP, and AVAX. The global crypto market cap is $960B, up 1.4% over the last day. DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$77b and BTC dominance is around 43%.
Risk markets are modestly higher after yesterday’s release of the FOMC meeting minutes where officials reiterated a tough stance on inflation and stated that another 50-75 bp rate hike would likely be appropriate at its July meeting. Also of note, Ether is rallying following the move to proof-of-stake on the public testnet Sepolia. While there were some hiccups with 25-30% of validators moving offline after the merge due to improper configs, they are not thought to be severe enough to delay Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake on mainnet and the testnet merge was generally considered a success. The final testnet merge will occur on the Goerli testnet, likely within the next month, before The Merge occurs on mainnet and Ethereum moves to proof-of-stake.
Elsewhere, notable news includes: Belgium started an open consultation to determine how it should classify crypto assets in order to provide clarity while awaiting a harmonized European approach; Italy has dedicated $46m for blockchain research grants; China’s PBoC has applied for eight patents involving smart contracts, implying smart contract technology may be applied to the digital yuan; the UK revealed plans to release stablecoin regulation by August; the ETH 2.0 deposit contract crossed 13m ETH for the first time in history; embattled centralized crypto lending company Celsius has reportedly let go of 25% of its workforce and shuffled its directors; fellow centralized crypto lending company BlockFi sent an email to users stating that 50% of client funds are held in short-term positions and just 10% are used as collateral; crypto prime broker Genesis Trading revealed loans to 3AC had an average margin of 80% and that its parent Digital Currency Group has assumed some of Genesis’s losses; crypto exchange FTX stated it has up to $2b in cash to bail out the crypto industry if necessary; three JP Morgan executives have left the bank for crypto jobs; crypto exchange Bitstamp has dropped its inactivity fee following backlash from the community; digital collectibles marketplace Limewire is teaming up with several artists such as Travis Barker to launch NFT collections; a class action lawsuit was filed against Solana Labs and Multicoin, accusing the firms of selling an unregistered security in SOL; Ethereum scaling solution Immutable X revealed plans to allow users to withdraw USD to their bank accounts; Shiba Inu developers revealed plans to roll out a decentralized stablecoin called SHI and also unveiled the SHIB metaverse’s upcoming reward token TREAT; Elon Musk’s The Boring Company began allowing customers to pay for rides on its Las Vegas transit system using DOGE; the Crema Finance hacker has returned $8m of stolen funds but was allowed to keep $1.6m as a white hat bounty; Konvoy Ventures launched a $150m fund targeting web3 gaming; Planetarium Labs, which is building a community-driven web3 gaming network, raised a $32m Series A funding round led by Animoca; Bitcoin miner Riot announced plans to relocate its rigs from its New York Coinmint facility to its Texas Whinstone facility to lower power costs and eliminate third-party hosting fees; and, Bitcoin miner Hut 8 HODL’d all of its June bitcoin production.
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