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Good Wednesday morning. This is Billy Bambrough, getting you up to speed with the bitcoin and crypto latest.

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24-hour crypto market snapshot
Bitcoin (+5%) $40,443
Ethereum (+6%) $2,687
Luna (-2%) $90.11
Solana (+5%) $84.22
Whiplash 🥁
Cryptocurrency prices are surging this morning with bitcoin breaking back above $40,000 after a very brief surge and retreat yesterday. Bitcoin's sudden rise and fall "stemmed from stop orders on short trades and ran into stronger selling pressure," according to a Coindesk report. The subsequent rally back above $40k has been put down to South Korea's new crypto-positive president by Yahoo Finance but it's more likely a reflection of the bounce back in China's stock markets.

Meanwhile,
ethereum and most of the rest of the crypto top ten are climbing with Terra's luna the only major market coin in the red.

Look out today... for the U.S. Federal Reserve's first interest rate hike since 2018, with expectations high it will raise rates by 25 basis points. Fed chair Jerome Powell will give a press conference after the decision is released at 2pm EDT alongside the central bank's readings of the latest GDP growth, inflation and unemployment numbers. Powell is having to juggle his mandate to temper red-hot inflation with the effects of Russia's war in Ukraine and on-going supply chain issues out of China. Traders will be closely watching for anything Fed officals have to say about the bank's yawning balance sheet, now at just under $9 trillion.


Now read this:
Shorting tether renews debate around most traded cryptocurrency

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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.

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Insta-NFT 📸
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg spoke at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, yesterday via video link.
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg spoke at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, yesterday via video link. Getty Images for SXSW
For the 'Gram: Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's all-powerful chief executive, has confirmed that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are coming to Instagram, the company's image-based social network. "We’re working on bringing NFTs to Instagram in the near term," Zuckerberg said, speaking on a panel at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, it was first reported by Engadget's Karissa Bell. "I’m not ready to kind of announce exactly what that’s going to be today," he added. "But, over the next several months, the ability to bring some of your NFTs in, and hopefully over time be able to mint things within that environment."

NFT WTF: NFTs are blockchain-based tokens, mostly found on the ethereum network, that are usually tied to digital media or art but can be linked to real-world items too. The NFT market exploded last year as digital artists, musicans, sports teams and technology companies piled into them as a lucrative new way to monetise their work. However, the bottom has fallen out of the NFT market in recent months with the average sale price of an NFT droping almost 50% since November and fewer being traded at all. OpenSea, the world's biggest NFT marketplace, has seen its trading volume drop from $248 million in February 2022 to just $50 million in March.

Going super Novi: Meta thinks the NFT wagon has further to roll and is thought to be working on plans to bring NFTs to both Facebook and Instagram, allowing users to display NFTs on their profiles while it's also been reported NFTs could be added to Meta's crypto wallet Novi, the Financial Times revealed in January.

Zoom out: In October, Facebook changed its name to Meta as it refocused on what it expects to be the next stage of the internet: Virtual reality and the so-called "metaverse" online world. At the time Meta said in a presentation that its metaverse would support NFTs. "I would hope that the clothing that your avatar is wearing in the Metaverse can be minted as an NFT and you can take it between different places,” Zuckerberg said at the time. In December, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said the company was "actively exploring" NFTs with the goal of bringing the technology to a wider audience. "I think it’s an interesting place that we can play and also to hopefully help creators," Mosseri said in an Instagram story.

Keeping up with the competition: Social media rival Twitter enabled NFT profile pictures for premium users earlier this year, but Meta seems to be planning to go a step futher in planning to give users the ability to create new NFTs and potentially trade them.

But but but... There's been a big backlash against NFTs from broad swaths of the technology industry, especially from the world of gaming, where many users see NFTs as just another way for developers and publishers to squeeze money out of fans. The NFT-based businesses model is "dangerously close to a pyramid scheme," Tim Morten, the chief executive of developer Frost Giant Studios, told Wired.

Now read this: Elizabeth Warren’s anti-crypto crusade splits the left
Freedom Convoy clamped 🚛
🔐 Many of the Canadian Freedom Convoy truckers who blocked city streets in protest against vaccine mandates are now unable to cash out the bitcoin they began using after being locked out of the traditional finanncail system, according to a Vice report.

🏦 Last month, Canadian authorities ordered banks and crypto exchanges to block any transactions from crypto wallets tied to the truckers.

⚖️ "In following the bitcoin on the public ledger, it appears that some end users were able to cash out some bitcoin before it could be frozen," law firm Lenczner Slaght partner Monique Jilesen told
Vice.

Good to know: Afghans are turning to cryptocurrencies amid U.S. sanctions
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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