BTC is currently trading around $72,600 and ETH around $4,050. Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are LTC, XRP, and THETA. The global crypto market cap is $2.85T, up 4.0% over the last day. DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$103b and BTC dominance is around 54%.
Markets are mixed heading into a light week for economic data that features the US CPI on Tuesday and US producer prices and retail sales on Thursday. Notably, Japan’s Nikkei index fell more than 2% after Reuters reported the Bank of Japan could lift interest rates for the first time since 2007.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin hit an all-time high above $72,000 after the UK’s FCA said it wouldn’t object to Recognized Investment Exchanges (RIEs) establishing a listed market segment dedicated to crypto-backed exchange-traded notes (ETNs). Such ETNs will be available for trading only by professional investors, but may be listed as soon as 2Q this year. Also supporting prices are record inflows into crypto investment products, which totaled $2.7b last week, per CoinShares. Bitcoin has now surpassed silver to become the eighth largest asset by market cap.
Not to be outdone, Ethereum broke $4,000 on Friday for the first time since 2021 as the community awaits the Dencun upgrade set to occur on Wednesday at 13:55 UTC / 8:55am EST. While the exact impact of Dencun remains to be seen, Dencun will materially expand mainnet’s data availability throughput via data blobs and many expect the price of L2 transactions could fall 70% or more after the upgrade. Finally, note that despite Coinbase meeting with the SEC last week to discuss Grayscale’s spot Ethereum ETF application, enthusiasm for a spot Ethereum ETF may be waning, as Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas lowered his May approval odds from 70% in January to 35% currently due to a lack of positive signs that we had seen at this point with the spot Bitcoin ETFs. In addition, Fox Business reporter Eleanor Terrett reported that the SEC is not meaningfully engaging with the issuers regarding their spot Ethereum ETF applications and that the SEC may believe it’s politically easier to deny the ETFs than to approve them.
Notable news includes: China’s Shandong Province introduced a digital yuan loan program for entrepreneurs; the US state of Wyoming passed a law recognizing decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) as legal entities; Indian crypto investment platform Mudrex announced plans to offer US spot Bitcoin ETFs to institutional and retail investors in India; Moonbirds creator Kevin Rose sold $1.2m of NFTs; and, Solana client and liquid staking token protocol Jito discontinued its mempool function.
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Author:
Brian Rudick, Senior Strategist | Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn
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