GB Market Commentary 25/06/2021

by Alex Clark

While bitcoin and most altcoins are slowly recovering from the latest market sell-off, the price of ICP, which was once the star of the show, continues to fall. The token’s value peaked at around $630 when it went live on Coinbase Pro on May 10th and is now trading at $33.94. It’s thought that the timing of ICP’s launch likely pushed its initial valuation into upper range of expectations, thereby exacerbating the ‘dump’, but despite falling 95% in two months, the token remains in the top 25 cryptocurrencies by market cap.

Ethereum’s London hardfork was activated on the Ropsten test network yesterday, marking the first step towards the London upgrade on testnets, which will change the way transaction fees work. Miners currently receive revenue from a block subsidy and transaction fees, but the proposal will removes transaction fees as an income source and replace them with the inclusion fee.

Custodian Prime Trust has cut ties with Celsius Network, giving the crypto-lending platform 30 days to get off its custodial platform. Although a reason has not been given for the termination of the partnership, it is suspected that Prime Trust are concerned about Celsius’ strategy of “endlessly re-hypothecating assets” – meaning that Celsius have supposedly been re-using assets that were posted as collateral from one lending transaction to finance additional loans.

North America remains front and centre of the bitcoin community as New York City Democratic mayoral front runner Eric Adams said he would turn the city into a bitcoin hub within a year, rivalling Miami for the position as the epicentre of the US crypto community.

Following in the footsteps of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, Citigroup has officially launched a digital asset unit within its wealth management division.

Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, has announced the launch of a $2.2 billion crypto fund – demonstrating that crypto is not only the future of finance but is poised to transform all aspects of our lives.

Every Salvadoran adult who downloads the government’s Bitcoin wallet app will be eligible for an airdrop of $30 worth of BTC, and accessing BTC in El Salvdador is about to get a lot easier with the rollout of crypto ATMs by Athena.

Over the next three years, 50,000 EV charging stations across Europe will start accepting crypto payments. The integration of crypto payments with charging stations will begin from November 2021.

Apple Daily, a pro-democracy tabloid in Hong Kong which was forced to shut down by the government, is now being backed up onto the Arweave blockchain, highlighting the broad use of blockchain technology in everyday life.

Companies can apply to the Bogota Innovation, Technology and Creative Industries Fund for investment as of today. Colombia’s capital city, Bogota, has unveiled a $2.8 billion investment program to finance blockchain companies and to offer advice on how they can implement blockchain technology into their business models.