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Good Thursday morning. This is Billy Bambrough, here with your latest batch of crypto news and analysis.

📧 Thank you for reading
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24-hour crypto market snapshot
Bitcoin (-8%) $39,068
Ethereum (-6%) $2,590
Dogecoin (-6%) $0.1163
Shiba inu (-7%) $0.00002276
Easy come, easy go 👋
Cryptocurrency prices have given up the gains they made yesterday on the back of the release of the long-awaited Biden administration crypto executive order. The bitcoin price has dropped back to under $40,000 and is currently trending downward, off by almost 8% on this time yesterday. Ethereum and the rest of the crypto top ten look equally as bad, with Terra's luna payment coin the only major cryptocurrency still in the green for the last week.

Beyond the top ten,
dogecoin and shiba inu, both of which broke in the major market last year, are slipping further and further down the rankings. Doge is now the 13th largest coin by value while shib is 16th, according to CoinMarketCap, as the shine comes off memecoins and interest from the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Cuban dries up.

Look out today... for latest U.S. consumer-price index (CPI) numbers, set to hit their highest in more than 40 years.

Now read this:
America's quiet default
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True Value Of Cryptocurrencies
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Binance is buidl-ing 🏗️
Binance's chief executive Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said his strategy is
Binance's chief executive Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said his strategy is "about making the crypto industry bigger." © 2021 Bloomberg Finance LP
Move fast: Just weeks after revealing a bombshell $200 million investment in Forbes magazine, Changpeng Zhao, the chief executive of the world's largest crypto exchange by volume Binance who's often known simply as CZ, has unveiled his plan to grow both his businesses and the crypto industry overall.

You break it, you bought it: "We want to identify and invest in one or two targets in every economic sector and try to bring them into crypto," CZ told the Financial Times in an interview.

Why it matters: CZ and Binance aren't the only crypto companies focused on growing the markets particpants beyond current borders. In the last year, crypto companies around the world have spent eye-watering sums on stadium sponsorships, celebrity ads and forays into the world beyond finance.

Binance by the numbers: Around 90% of Binance revenue comes from trading fees and Binance handled some $500 billion in spot crypto trading volume in January alone, according to the most recent figures from CryptoCompare, nearly four times more than its next largest rival. Meanwhile, Binance's $1.5 trillion in notional crypto derivatives volume by far the industry's largest, double the size of its nearest competitor.

Don't be hasty: Binance has though faced a lot of regulatory scrutiny due to the speed of its expansion. Last year, Binance drew the ire of regulators in the U.S., the European Union, the U.K. and across Asia. But Binance is fighting back, going on a compliance staff hiring spree. CZ last week reportedly spoke to a group of U.K. lawmakers in London, arguing the case for crypto in what one attendee called a charm offensive," according to The Block. In the U.K. especially, Binance has a knocked heads with regulators. In June last year, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) ordered Binance Markets Limited, its U.K. entity, halt all regulated activity in the country, going on to say it doens't feel capable of supervising Binance after it refused to answer questions.

A rising tide... However, despite ambitions beyond the existing crypto space, CZ denied he's trying to build Binance into a "conglomerate"—CZ surprized many in the crypto community last year when he said he'd step down in order to appease regulators. He claims to see Binance creating the infrastructure to integrate digital assets into existing industries. "The strategy is about making the crypto industry bigger," Zhao said.

CZ's shopping list: Retail, e-commerce and gaming are all high on the list of areas that CZ can see Binance and crypto expanding into.

The bottom line: The crypto industry is like a shark, if it doesn't keep moving it will die. Those leading crypto companies that survive on trading fees know they need to keep new users, or speculators, coming into the market. It's not enough for Binance and other exchanges for users to simply hodl, they need them to trade.

Now read this: The inside story of how Facebook's cryptocurrency dream died
Crypto sanction confirmation ✅
🗒️ Cryptocurries are on the European Union's list of sanctions, the E.U. has confirmed yesterday clarifying that people in Russia and Belarus are banned from trading digital assets in the bloc. Politico has a write-up.

🧱 The update from the European Commission came as part of a notification that the bloc had extended its sanctions to Belarus for joining the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the European Central Bank and the bloc’s treasuries raised concerns of a possible loophole in the crypto market
for those looking to dodge sanctions.

🤲 Meanwhile, the Ukraine government has now recieved "close to $100 million" in crypto donations, according to Alex Bornyakov, the country's deputy minister at the ministry of digital transformation and its de facto crypto spokesperson.
Coindesk has the story.

Now read this: War is calling crypto's 'neutrality' into question
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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