Forbes - Cold war 🥶

Happy Friday! This is Billy Bambrough, here with your latest batch of crypto news and analysis.
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24-hour crypto market snapshot
Support collapse ☠️
Cryptocurrency prices have finally made a move but it's not one that many wanted to see. The bitcoin price has finally followed stock prices lower this week, giving up its key $40,000 support level while ethereum dropped under $3,000 per ether. Read the full story on Forbes.

The major crypto market is being led lower by ethereum rivals cardano, solana and avalanche this morning, all down over 10% after fear that's gripped Wall Street over unsustainably high prices finally spread to crypto. The sell-off has wiped away around $200 billion worth of value in just 24 hours and the crypto market is now around $1.2 trillion down from its peak.

Look out today... for European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde speaking at a virtual Davos event this morning at 7:30 ET and then U.S. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen who takes the virtual stage at Davos at 11:00am.

Date for the diary: The 2nd annual Bitcoin for Corporations virtual conference is happening on February 1
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Digital debate 👾
Fed chair Jerome Powell was recently nominated for a second term
Fed chair Jerome Powell was recently nominated for a second term POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Healthy debate: The Federal Reserve has, after months of anticipation, opened what will likely to be a heated and consequential debate on whether it should create a digital dollar and what the effect of the introduction of a U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC) would be as it seeks to keep pace with financial innovation and maintain global dollar dominance. "We look forward to engaging with the public, elected representatives, and a broad range of stakeholders as we examine the positives and negatives of a central bank digital currency in the United States," Fed chair Jerome Powell said in a statement. The discussion will be open to public comments for the next 120 days. Read the full story on Forbes.

Cheerleaders: Pat Toomey, a Republican senator who's both voiced support for a digital dollar and warned over privacy concerns in recent months, applauded the central bank for "constructively" contributing to the debate.

Essential reading: The Fed opened the debate alongside the release of its hotly-anticipated report on a potential digital dollar—outlining what the benefits and drawbacks would be but crucially stopping short of taking a position on its implementation without the help of lawmakers. The Fed's seven-member board of governors, which authored the 40-page report, said they don't want to issue a digital dollar without "clear support" from the executive branch and Congress—"ideally in the form of a specific authorizing law." "The introduction of a CBDC would represent a highly significant innovation in American money," Fed officials wrote in the report. "Accordingly, broad consultation with the general public and key stakeholders is essential."

Zoom out: The U.S. and the Fed are well behind China and lagging Europe when it comes to CBDCs. China has already begun real-world tests of its digital yuan and the European Central Bank has announced experiments involving member state banking giants.

Wall Street worry: Some fear a fully-fledged digital dollar could upend the global financial system and the report warned CBDCs could "fundamentally change" the banking system and its relationship with the Fed, adding a digital dollar able to serve as a "near-perfect" substitute for commercial bank money. However, the Financial Times points to previous comments made by Powell that a CBDC should serve "as a complement to, and not a replacement of, cash and current private-sector digital forms of the dollar, such as deposits at commercial banks."

But but but: Earlier this week, the chief executive of crypto bank Silvergate Alan Lane said he expected the launch of a digital dollar is "likely years away." Silvergate is working on its own dollar-backed stablecoin in 2022, slated for launch this year. "If a U.S. CBDC is launched and it is a direct-to-consumer, direct-to-retail CBDC, then that would essentially be competing with any other existing or proposed stablecoin out there," Lane said on the bank’s fourth-quarter earnings call, it was reported by Bloomberg.

The bottom line: The U.S. finally got out of the blocks in the global race to digitalize currencies. But this is a marathon not a sprint and the Fed's betting that slow and steady will win the race.

Now read this: Congress weighs cleaning up cryptocurrency mining in the US
Russia fears "financial pyramids" 🔺
🇷🇺 Russia’s central bank has proposed following in China's footsteps and outlawing all crypto trading, mining and use in the country.

⚡The report, which can be read in full here, was presented by the director of the Bank of Russia's Financial Stability Department and warned crypto threatens Russia's financial stability, its citizens' wellbeing and the country's monetary policy sovereignty.

🪆 While Russia-based bitcoin miners—those who use high-powered computers to secure the bitcoin network in return for freshly minted coins—are thought to contribute just some 10% to bitcoin's global hashrate some fear this could be the start of a wider trend of bitcoin and crypto bans.

Now read this: The actual impact of bitcoin on war
Social media show offs 🤳
💸 Social media companies, keen to find revenue streams beyond new users and greater engagement, are turning to the non-fungible token (NFT) craze. Read the full story on Forbes.

🖼️ Yesterday, Twitter rolled out a feature allowing users of its paid Twitter Blue service to authenticate their ownership of an NFT and make it their profile picture. Meanwhile, a report in the Financial Times revealed Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is working on a feature that will allow Facebook and Instagram users to create and display NFTs on their profiles.

💪 NFT marketplaces have become big business over the last year and social media giants muscling in is likely to worry the likes of OpenSea, currently the biggest NFT marketplace with 415,000 monthly active traders, and even major crypto exchange Coinbase, which is planning on launching its own NFT platform and already has 2.7 million people on its waiting list.

Now watch this: Collectors, players and leagues cash in on the sports NFT action
hello world
Billy Bambrough
Forbes Senior Contributor
I am a journalist with significant experience covering technology, finance, economics, and business. I write about how bitcoin, crypto and blockchain can change the world.
Follow me on Twitter or email me.
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