PointPay weekly column where we collect the most interesting and important news of the last week and share them. However, this week's main news is well-known by almost everyone in the crypto community: Bitcoin has been growing steadily since the beginning of the year and has reached the $21,000 level.
Bitcoin Bull Run 2023
Last year, the entire crypto market experienced a gradual decline. The phenomenon of crypto winter had a serious impact on the whole sphere, leading to several resonant events (the collapse of FTX and Terra, and the closure of various companies). However, after the New Year, Bitcoin began to steadily rise in price, and then speed up to take the $21,000 bar on January 16.
As the leader of the industry, Bitcoin actively pulled all other cryptocurrencies with it. Thus, Ethereum was able to take the price of $1,550 on January 14.
The cryptocurrency market: a trillion in capitalization and Top record rise
The total market cap has surpassed 1 trillion for the first time since the beginning of November 2022, driven by the strong growth of a large number of cryptocurrencies.
At the moment, all cryptocurrencies are showing price growth. Solana (SOL) stands out, with a 45% jump to $23.54.
Circle: USDC reserves verified
Last week Circle presented its stablecoin USDC reserves report. The date listed in the documents is Nov. 30, 2022. At the time, the company held a reserve of $43.23 billion. Moreover, 65% of that amount is held in US Treasury bills.
To accomplish this, Circle created a Reserve Fund on November 3. Management of the fund as well as ownership was transferred to a partner company called BlackRock. According to the information, the reserves include 12 treasury bills worth $28.6 billion.
Expert and market observer John Paul Koning is extremely positive about this state of affairs. He says that Circle's transfer of control over the reserves to an external company will have a positive impact on the safety and transparency of assets. Now, users may be able to get regular reserve status updates from BlackRock. In addition, BlackRock is under SEC regulation, which further strengthens confidence in stablecoin USDC.
The current daily trading volume of USDC is about $3 billion, and the total circulating currency is 43.8 billion USDC.
Binance's digital assets fall
Binance has faced some problems in recent months, including news of pending money laundering allegations, withdrawal problems, suspicious transactions that led to many frozen accounts, and problems with the reserve report. The result of the problems was the mass withdrawal of funds from the exchange, as well as rumors that the exchange is going to collapse like FTX.
The collapse did not happen, but the exchange has withdrawn more than $ 2 billion. Most popular cryptocurrencies were withdrawn, as well as stablecoins. This led to the exchange losing about 24% of its assets. Distribution of the remaining funds shifted to the exchange's currencies BNB and BUSD.
Despite the overall negative trend around the exchange, the value of BNB has not dropped, instead, it increased in value, as all other currencies at the moment. It is noteworthy that now BNB and BUSD stand at 50% of the value of all assets held on the exchange.
FTX: the subsidiaries have found buyers
As part of the bankruptcy, the court allowed the FTX exchange to sell some of its subsidiaries to obtain additional finance to pay creditors. However, the assets involved in the litigation won't be sold.
At the moment, companies such as FTX Japan, FTX Europe, LedgerX, etc. have been put up for sale. Most of the companies have already found dozens of buyers, and a total of 117 buyers are interested in the FTX property.
FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried himself is currently awaiting court proceedings at his parent's home, after being released on $250 million bail. Many media outlets (Associated Press, Bloomberg, Financial Times, CNBC, Reuters, Insider, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post), backed by a law firm, have contacted judge Lewis Kaplan to uncover the names of the sureties involved in the process. However, no answers have been received to date.
Tether beats Visa and Mastercard
For all of 2022, USDT issuer Tether processed $18.2 trillion of transactions, surpassing traditional payment systems:
- Visa — 14.1 trillion
- Mastercard — 7.7 trillion
Despite the general decline of the cryptocurrency market, dollar-linked stablecoins turned out to be an island of tranquility and were actively developing. However, amid the collapse of Terra, USDT temporarily lost its dollar link, losing about $10 billion of market capitalization.
Alternative stablecoins such as USDC and BUSD were also actively expanding. At the moment, USDC gained a capitalization of $56 billion and seeks to beat the leader USDT with $65.31 billion. Also, several exchanges, such as Coinbase, are actively encouraging users to transfer assets from USDT to USDC.
Twitter's new feature and Dogecoin
Twitter recently introduced a new "Coins" feature through which users will be able to buy Twitter coins. It is said that the purchase gonna be made through Stripe. Also, there is a possibility to get coins for reposting certain content, but Twitter's administration has not confirmed the information at the moment.
The appearance of Twitter's own coin puts at risk Elon Musk's "favorite" - Dogecoin. Supporters of the coin thought that it would be integrated into Twitter, as Elon repeatedly called DOGE the people's cryptocurrency. Now, it is very likely that the coin will lose its patron and continue to move forward on its own.
Summary
Last week turned out to be rich in various summaries and statistics. The crypto community could be happy about the success of stablecoins which managed to achieve serious results and can now compete with traditional payment systems, despite all appearing problems. Thus, people's confidence in such type of currencies has grown significantly, along with the opportunities to use them.
The global rise of the crypto market, so long awaited by all participants, may have begun. Bitcoin, returning to $21,000 and pulling the entire market with it, gives hope for the end of the crypto winter and a new stage of global crypto sector growth.
News about the FTX crash is gradually turning into a slow court process, though still actively attracting attention, as it is unclear how the story will end and whether people get their money.
You can find current news updates in our Crypto PointPay Digest next week!
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