The biggest risk is not taking any risk! (weekly crypto updates)

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What happened in crypto in the past week? A new ATH for Bitcoin. What else? Read below:

• Bitcoin: Last Monday BTC crossed the $120K threshold, touching $123K after one funny weekend that flushed out the short term excess and left the world's largest crypto up 30%. Then promptly pulled back to $117K. Liquidations hit $463M. Cantor Fitzgerald is closing a deal with Adam Back and Blockstrean, acquiring 30K BTC worth over $3B in exchange for shares in Cantor Equity Partners 1 (the firm's special purpose acquisition company). Retail sector is ignoring Bitcoin at ATH, with a 60% less interest since November, yet, the Bitcoin 4-year cycle is alive and well. Can my heart survive the next cycle, when it would aim for the $1million? MicroStrategy bought some more on June 30 - 4980 BTC for $532M, and now is holding 597K worth $70.9B.

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• Ethereum: Standard Chartered launched spot BTC and ETH trading through its UK operations. Both BTC and ETH ETFs reached the second-highest inflows on record this week. ETH-linked funds alone pulled nearly a billion last week. SharpLink Gaming tops Ethereum Foundation as largest corporate holder of ETH, as they control now over 280K Ethereum, worth $840M. Corporate treasuries purchased $1.6B worth of ETH in the past month alone. Surging 9% past $3330 certainly helped. The futures market jumped 27% after that, but we also got more than $152M worth of short positions getting liquidated. Consensys predicted that ETH could hit $15800 by 2028. Even BlackRock filled with the SEC to add staking to its ETHA fund.

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• Altcoins and stablecoins: The entire crypto market is green. PumpDotFun raised $500M in just 12 minutes, while listing the PUMP token. Coinbase launched a super app powered by Base, replacing the existing Coinbase wallet, with integrated messaging, payments, trading, social features, all powered bu USDC and the Coinbase's ETH Layer 2 blockchain, Base. I noticed Base Pay, a 1-click USDC checkout option co-developed with Shopify, available to thousands of online merchants, and set to expand to physical stores by the end of the year. The XRP whale number surged by 26%, up to 2743 wallets holding more than one million XRP. NYSE Arca just certified ProShares' leveraged XRP futures ETF for listing. Solana's RWA holdings jumped 140% this year, reaching $418M while the broader market only grew 62%. Solana won the forth place after ETH, ZKSynk, and Aptos. The memecoins added $17Bthis month.

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• NFTs and blockchain games: So, Pengu jumped 95% to trade around $0.031, as Canary Capital filed for a PENGU ETF back in March, and it is reviewed now. I have enjoyed playing Golem Overlord lately on Hive, and it is quite profitable, I would say, with some significant updates lately. On Splinterlands, we have had the Land NFT new update and improved tokenomics on March 18. The presale of its latest Conclave Arcana collection is ongoing, and two new promo cards are on sale. Check my Holozing article to learn about a new blockchain game that looks full of potential.

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• Good news: UK has some plans with crypto and stablecoins, as the Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey warned the world's largest lenders to shelve plans for their own stablecoins and instead issue tokenized version of pounds helds on deposit, as rapid shifts into private coins could set off forced sales of assets used to back them. Would this work? Grayscale Investments confidentially filed paperwork with the SEC for a potential ICO. OKX joined Kraken, RobinHood and Worldplay providing access to USDG stablecoin and the Global Dollar Network (as they follow the new European crypto regulations). Pakistan and Ecuador forge a crypto-focused alliance, placing cryptocurrency collaboration at the heart of their new diplomatic relationship. Ondo launched its Treasury fund on SEI network, with backing from World Liberty Financial, combining stablecoin stability and US Treasury yields. Avalon Labs joins Microstrategy Bitcoin alliance.

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• Bad news: Trump is still talking about fiting Jerome Powell, and if this happen, it would create volability in traditional markets while potentially boosting Bitcoin. Ther president is pressuring Powell to lower interest rates, calling his performance lousy.

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• Joke of the week: Trump secured support from nearly all Republican lawmakers to end GOP blockade on crypto bills. After nine-hour standoff, the US House of Representatives has cleared the way for three key crypto bills with 217 votes for and 212 against it. The three bills include the Clarity Act (regulatory framework for digital assets), the Genius Act (stablecoin use) and the anti-CBDC Surveilance Act (a bill to block the issuance of a digital dollar).

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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.