GB Market Commentary 30/07/2021
by Alex Clark
PayPal’s crypto trading services could arrive in the U.K. next month but beyond trading, the company is also looking at how it can integrate smart contracts and decentralized apps into its platform. PayPal has been in talks with Uniswap among others to consider its DeFi integration. Whilst many are sceptical about corporate participation in what is meant to be a decentralised system, PayPal’s involvement will likely increase momentum and speed up the adoption process by bringing thousands more into the market.
The number of daily transactions on the Tron (TRX) network reached a record high of 9.29 million yesterday. Not only that, but the amount of daily new accounts on Tron (TRX) hit a new all-time high also. The price of the coin has suffered recently but with transactions and new accounts reaching record highs, this could be the catalyst for an upward movement.
XRP’s price jumped 17% this week after Ripple announced its expansion of On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) its cross-border payment product, for Japan. A total of $1.8 billion in remittances moves from Japan to the Philippines each year and thus this product launch offers incredible growth opportunity for Ripple.
Online tech retailer Newegg now accepts Litecoin (LTC) on its BitPay platform, which could be good news for the crypto asset if other retailers follow suit.
MicroStrategy has pledged to buy more Bitcoin despite being at an impairment loss of $424.8 million (based on the price of Bitcoin at the end of the quarter). This, however, is not a realized loss, and the company appears to have made nearly $1 billion from its bitcoin purchase.
Bitcoin whales withdrew $1.3 billion in bitcoin from Coinbase last night, which could indicate strong institutional investor interest.
German institutional funds (known as Spezialfonds) will be able to put up to a fifth of their portfolios into cryptocurrencies starting from August 2nd. Given that the funds currently manage around €1.8 trillion, we could anticipate up to €350 billion potentially flowing into the crypto market next week.
The Iranian government has announced a ban on cryptocurrency mining in the wake of months of power outages in the region. Given the market’s response to China’s ban, the gains we’ve enjoyed over the last few days could be wiped, although in contrast to China which controlled more than 60% of the Bitcoin network's collective hashrate, Iran only accounts for 5%.
Binance’s legal trouble has extended to India now as its role in a $134 million money laundering case is investigated. WazirX, an Indian crypto exchange acquired by Binance in 2019, was allegedly used for laundering by Chinese betting apps. Crucial to the case is the fact that Binance failed to collect the necessary know-your-customer documents from clients in most of the transactions and so it is possible that this investigation will drive a tightening of regulatory processes across the industry.