Bitcoin Falls As Jerome Powell Strikes Again | Coinbase Debuts NFT Marketplace

FED UNCERTAINTY CLOUDS MARKETS

Cryptocurrency prices dived along with most major stock markets after Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said a 50 basis point interest rate hike is “on the table” for May. Bitcoin managed to keep its head above the $40,000 level while ethereum briefly dipped under $3,000, but both were down around 4% on Thursday. As it happens during periods of uncertainty, these two drops led most of the market downward, with Solana leading the major market lower, off by almost 7%. With more 50 bps hikes expected throughout the year, we could see similar downturns in the crypto market.

However, two assets that are bucking the trend this week are Tron and 0x. Tron, an ethereum rival that has fallen out of favor since its 2018 heyday and is now ranked as the 22nd most valuable cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap, has surged 7% after founder Justin Sun announced he’d be following in the footsteps of Luna’s Terraform Labs in creating a decentralized algorithmic stablecoin called USDD. Additionally, the decentralized exchange 0x is up 32% over the past five days. It briefly surged 70% to over $1.15 on Wednesday when it was announced as a key partner in Coinbase’s NFT marketplace (see below).

FURTHERING THE FAD

Despite the cooling of the NFT market, on Wednesday, Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., launched its long-awaited marketplace for digital collectibles. The platform, first announced in October, has become available for a small number of users (from a waitlist of 3 million), allowing them to buy and sell Ethereum-based non-fungible tokens. In a bid to differentiate itself from OpenSea, a New York-based marketplace that firmly reigns the $25 billion NFT trade with more than 1.5 million active users, Coinbase has also rolled out Instagram and TikTok-like features, including likes, comments and personalized feeds. In the coming months, the company plans additional functionality, including drops, minting and the option to buy the tokens with a Coinbase account or a credit card as well as the support for multiple blockchains.

FIRST SANCTIONS AGAINST CRYPTO MINERS

In the latest retaliatory measures following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, the Treasury Department on Wednesday sanctioned one of the largest cryptocurrency miners in Europe and Asia—marking the first time the U.S. has targeted a mining operator. The officials designated Switzerland-based BitRiver AG for operating in the Russian technology sector, pointing out that the company operates out of three offices across Russia despite relocating legal ownership of its assets to Switzerland last year. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control also designated ten of BitRiver’s subsidiaries, saying that by operating vast server farms that sell cryptocurrency internationally, these companies are helping to monetize Russia’s natural resources and therefore offset the impact of economic sanctions on the country. In a Thursday statement, BitRiver CEO Igor Runets challenged the claims saying that the company has “never provided services to Russian government institutions and has not worked with customers already targeted by Washington’s sanctions.”

Source: Forbes Digital Assets, powered by Nomics. Prices as of 4:00 p.m. on April 22, 2022.

The True Value Of Cryptocurrencies

The geopolitical strife taking place in Ukraine has once again underlined the true value proposition of digital currencies that are secure, censorship resistant and easily transportable. To get in-depth research, interviews, trading signals and other valuable information unavailable anywhere else subscribe to Forbes CryptoAsset & Blockchain Advisor.

Get Forbes CryptoAsset & Blockchain Advisor

EVERYONE GETS A FEW HUNDRED MILLION

Many top blockchain projects are sitting on treasuries worth billions of dollars. With everyone looking for crypto’s first true killer app, it is natural for these teams to leverage these piles of cash to bootstrap growth. In the last year alone, Binance launched a $1 billion fund for its Binance Smart Chain, Near created an $800 million grant platform to stimulate DeFi growth, and similar ecosystem development funds from Algorand and Celo, earmarked at least $2.2 billion in growth capital. Now, the Ethereum compatible platform Polygon has entered the fray, pledging $100 million to users seeking to build application-specific blockchains using its tools. However, in comments given to Forbes, Polygon cofounder Mihailo Bjelic expressed some reservations about the size of funds that some teams have at their disposal , saying “It’s a blessing and a curse that we have so much capital at hand in crypto in general. It’s very useful to incentivize adoption to fund development…But it’s a curse in a sense that this is still a young industry. This is the reality that we live in. And we just need to try to be responsible in this current context.”

BLOCKCHAIN 50 SPOTLIGHT

BHP: In 2020 BHP, the $61 billion (sales) Anglo-Australian multinational mining outfit, sold its first “paperless” shipment of Australian iron ore to China. That evolved in 2021 to trading cargoes of copper concentrate to China, with all documents, assays and emissions data enshrined on its MineHub blockchain platform. BHP has since adopted blockchain-based traceability to ensure there’s no “dilution” of the nickel it sells to Tesla’s Shanghai battery factory and to track the carbon emissions of the copper it sends from Chile to electric cable maker Southwire in Carrollton, Georgia. BHP is now in talks with suppliers to use blockchain to guarantee that the rubber in the 6,000 giant truck tires it uses each year was produced without slave labor or illegal deforestation.

ELSEWHERE

King Of The ‘Lunatics’ Becomes Bitcoin’s Most-Watched Whale [Bloomberg]

Goldman Sachs Sought To Woo FTX At Caribbean Meeting [Financial Times]

Crypto Investors Made $163 Billion In Gains In 2021: Chainalysis [The Defiant]