Weekly Market Wrap: Bitcoin slips amid Silvergate fallout
The third month of 2023 has started with two weeks of losses in the crypto market. However, it’s too early to say if this signals a return to the bear market we experienced at the end of 2022.
The recent pullback happened in response to news that Silvergate, a crypto bank, delayed filing its annual report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), causing its stock price to drop by 31% in after-hours trading on Wednesday. Coinbase, Tether, and several other crypto companies were quick to sever ties with Silvergate on the news.
Bitcoin (BTC), the world's largest cryptocurrency, lost 4.31% from February 27th to March 3rd, trading at $22,405 on Monday. Ether (ETH) also declined 4.54% in the same period, dropping to $1,564.
Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said that the option of crypto ban shouldn’t be ruled out if regulations can’t keep up with the potential risks.
Despite these developments, analysts noted that the correlation between macro events and the U.S. equity markets with the crypto market is weakening. The crypto market's sensitivity to traditional markets is not the same as it used to be, with each dip being bought after down days in U.S. equity markets, according to analysts at Bernstein
Huawei partners up with Polygon, Morpheus Labs, others
Huawei Cloud, the cloud computing arm of the Chinese smartphone maker Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., announced a Web3 metaverse alliance with Polygon, Morpheus Labs, and Blockchain Solutions last Thursday during its Asia-Pacific partner summit in Bali. The company has talked about integrating blockchain into its cloud services and has introduced its cloud-based Web3 solutions.
Huawei Cloud launched its blockchain services in 2018 and rolled out its non-fungible token (NFT) collection and trading platform in April 2022.
Ethereum’s Shanghai hard fork delayed to early April
The Shanghai hard fork for Ethereum, which is the first major mainnet update since the "Merge" last September, has been delayed from late March to the first two weeks of April. The long-anticipated upgrade should allow validators to withdraw their locked Ether, which has been staked since 2020. However, Ethereum core developers agreed that the hard fork should occur at least two weeks after the launch of the Goerli testnet, which is scheduled for March 14, to ensure a smooth launch.
In a Twitter thread on Thursday, Ethereum core developer and project coordinator Tim Beiko mentioned that the team has not yet set the exact date for the mainnet launch. However, they will "probably" do so during their next meeting on March 16 if all goes well on Goerli.
XBO featured Coin of the Week – Ripple (XRP)
XRP is a native cryptocurrency of the XRP Ledger, a decentralized, open-source blockchain technology developed by Ripple.
The token’s price has been stagnant over the past few weeks as the market is waiting for the summary judgment in the XRP lawsuit. Depending on the U.S. district court final decision, the XPR price might either soar or face a downtrend in the near future.
Unlike many other cryptocurrencies, XRP is not mined. Instead, all the tokens were created at the inception of the XRP Ledger, and Ripple holds a significant amount of XRP in reserve. For now, Ripple has unlocked 1 billion tokens (around $378M), so 51% of all existing XPR have come into the market. According to the BSC whales’ data, approximately $26.8M worth of XPR is held by the top 100 whale crypto wallets.
In the last seven days, XPR dropped by 3.56% and is now trading at $0.001592 per token.
Buy, sell, and swap XPR securely at XBO.com.
Disclaimer: Our content does not constitute financial advice. It is only intended for informational and educational purposes.
