For fast-acting relief, try slowing down! (weekly crypto updates)

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What happened in crypto in the past week? Bitcoin faces late cycle pressure. I found a way to expose myself to BTC via BlackRock, using Freetrade. ETH update incoming on December 3. Solana and XRP got some interesting moves. Feel free to check them. What else? Read below:

• Bitcoin: Liquidations are growing smaller in magnitude over the last weeks. Strategy acquired another 8.178 BTC reaching a total of 649.870 BTC. Bitcoin whale Owen Gunden sold his last 2499 BTC and got a total exit of 11.000 BTC worth $1.3B. While institutions are buying more and more, total ownership of spot BTC ETF jumped to 40%, from 27% last year. BTC dipped below $90K as QCP Capital warned that markets are entering late-cycle territory, and Bitcoin ETFs outflows hit $2.8B. Bitcoin hits extreme oversold levels, as long term holders are finally selling after years of holding. Bitcoin maxis are also divided over Zcash, promoted as encrypted Bitcoin. Yet, some like Arthur Hayes call this as being the BTC bottom. Historical numbers, 8% of all BTC moved onchain in just 7 days. Do you know that 90% of the public companies BTC sits on the US soil?

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• Ethereum: Ethereum introduced the Ethereum Interop Layer (EIL), designed to make the ETH ecosystem feel like one chain again. Ethereum treasury holder FG Nexus sold 10.992 ETH to buy back its own stock, at $3.45, well under the reported net value of $3.94. Ethereum's Fusaka upgrade launches on December 3, introducing PeerDAS to cut validator costs and Layer-2 fees for networks like Arbitrum and Optimism. ETH block capacity jumped from 45M to 60M after validators signaled approval.

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• Altcoins and stablecoins: Go and check your DeBridge airdrop, if you are lucky you may have some big wins in there. AAVE introduced Aave App, a consumer app allowing users to earn up to 9% on their stablecoins, with deposit protection up to $1M. Grayscale filed for the first Zcash ETF in the US. 21Shares launched a leveraged Dogecoin ETF on Nasdaq. Franklin Templeton joins the XRP ETF race. It is quite funny as crypto funds lost $1.94B last week, with BNTC losing $1.27B, ETH $589M and Solana $156M, yet XRP gained $89M while everything else tanked. Abu Dhabi regulators approved Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin for licensed institutions. Tether goes big on Latin America investing in Parfin, targeting cross-border payments and real-world asset tokenization. Memecoins dropped massively as BTC went under $90K. A new gateway called Sunrise was launched by Wormhole Labs, designed to become the primary entry point for bringing external tokens to Solana. Solana treasury firm supported SIMD-0411, a proposal that would double the network's annual disinflation, cutting $3B worth of SOL from future emissions, can this really reduce the sell pressure on Solana's price?After three weeks straight of inflows, last Wednesday we seen $8.1M in outflows on Solana.

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• NFTs and blockchain games: We have a new NFT market with some promising airdrop rewards, if you feel like try it. I have enjoyed playing Golem Overlord lately on Hive, and it is quite enjoyable, I would say, with some significant updates lately. On Splinterlands, we have had the Land NFT new update and improved tokenomics, and the new rewards cards from the Conclave collection are up and running.

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• Good news: Kraken announced the submission of a draft registration statement for a proposed IPO. Revolut partnered with Polygon to support stablecoin payments. Visa partnered with crypto infrastructure company Aquanow to expand stablecoin settlements across Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, using USDC to cut costsand settlement times for banks and payment companies. US Band has started testing the issuance of custom stablecoin on the Stellar Network. Polymarket secured CFTC approval for the US return.

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• Bad news: EU MiCA regulations become mandatory on December 31, forcing exchanges to comply with licensing rules that favors big players. Monad team structured the initial release across two secments, 7.5% sold via Coinbase and 3.3% distributed via airdrop, but there is some schetchy bussiness here, with 27% allocated to Monad team, 19% to investors and 4% to Labs treasury, with 38.5 towards the ecosystem development, as the team/s share vastly exceeds the typical industry standards. Fear and Greed index is now at 10. World Liberty buys back $7.7M worth of its own tokens, as the token crashed almost 50% since January.

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• Joke of the week: X/Twitter is showing your location now, and crypto whales are worried that this will make them easier targets for robbers. But the real bandits are working on a higher scale, just look at Standard Chartered announcing that they will provide digital asset custody for 21Shares. replacing Zodia Custody, a crypto-native custodian that Standard Chartered itself co-founded in 2020. Spain is pushing crypto taxes to 47% by shifting digital asset gains into general income tax bracket, with them being classified as attachable assets eligible for seizure, instead of the flat 30% tax for corporate holders. Take Japan's example as they planned a flat 20% capital gains tax, aligning them with equities.

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All the best,

George

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Why not...

...have fun and win rewards on my favourite blockchain games (Splinterlands- a Hearthstone-like card game) (Golem Overlord - a Play2Earn game on Hive) (Upland - a real-life virtual land) (Holozing - a Pokemon-like game)and ( Chain of Legends - with a hint of Heroes of Might and Magic).

...get crypto while writing on the Publish0x blog, using the Presearch search engine to maximise your income with PRE tokens. Use Torum instead of Twitter. I am also writing for crypto on Hive.

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Posted Using INLEO