Early whale suddenly resumes activity / SEC Chairman Gensler, video criticizing crypto asset industry[top news from 4/22 to 4/28

A wallet holding a large amount of bitcoin that has been dormant for several years has suddenly come back to life. There is a debate on crypto-twitter about the reasons for that—here is a digest of the top news stories of the week.

Bitcoin’s dominance rose to 48% from 42% in the first quarter, but has struggled to surpass that level this month, according to TradingView data.

The metric has fluctuated between 38% and 48% for almost two years, and when it falls from 46-48%, it coincides with the altcoin’s massive rally.

Ethereum fell to $1,833 on the afternoon of the 21st, its lowest since April 9, according to CoinDesk data. We’ve lost all the gains that we liked last week when the big upgrade “Shanghai” went off without a hitch.

Institutional Ethereum staking service providers have already seen inflows almost triple in April compared to the previous month, according to CoinDesk analyst Michiel Milanovic at ethereum developer ConsenSys. told to About 80% of the inflow came after Shanghai on April 12.

Bitcoin faced significant selling pressure during the week of April 17-23 as bond yields rose and US dollar liquidity declined.

The top cryptocurrency by market capitalization fell 9% to $27,600, marking the biggest single-week decline since early November, according to data from TradingView and CoinDesk. Yields on 10-year US Treasuries climbed 0.6% to 3.58%, rising for the second straight week, Dampening the appeal of risky assets such as cryptocurrencies.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ), the central bank of the Republic of Zimbabwe, Plans to introduce a gold-backed digital currency as legal tender in an effort to stabilize the country’s currency, the Zimbabwean dollar, according to The Sunday email. Mail) reported on the 23rd.

Crypto assets (virtual currency) funds saw their first net outflow in five weeks last week, according to a report released by CoinShares on Thursday.

The outflow began on April 14, coinciding with the time when bitcoin reached $30,000 for the first time in about a year, indicating a profit-taking movement.

Deposits for Ethereum staking registered a record inflow last week due to the Ethereum blockchain mega-upgrade “Shanghai”. The inflow was driven primarily by institutional staking service providers and investors reinvesting rewards earned after withdrawals, crypto analysts said.

While the Ethereum blockchain is by far the most popular NFT underpinning, other layer 1 and layer 2 blockchains have recently seen a surge in transaction volume.

Data from CryptoSlam shows that Layer 1 blockchain Cardano temporarily overtook Layer 2, Polygon, the fourth-largest NFT by trading volume early on April 24.

One of the last such whales (major holders) to be active in 2012 moved more than 400 BTC (about $11 million) over the weekend, data shows. .

This whale moved 360 BTC to one wallet and 40 BTC to another. This whale bought about 900 BTC in 2012 and has been holding BTC ever since, earning a return of about 40,000% on its initial investment.

Along with the rise in the price of Ethereum, the assets under custody (Total Value LockedTVL) of the Ethereum Layer 2 network also rose, reaching a record high of $ 10 billion (about 1.34 trillion yen) on April 14th.

TVL has since declined due to the decline in the cryptocurrency market, but according to data from Layer 2 analytics site L2Beat, it has maintained about $9.29 billion, more than double the amount at the beginning of the year.

“Google for Startups Cloud Program” is an initiative to support startups and emerging projects. This time, the contents were strengthened for Web3 development companies. From Pre-Seed to Series A, eligible startups and projects can receive up to $200,000 in Google Cloud service usage discounts, technical training, and more over two years.

According to CryptoQuant, the “estimated leverage ratio,” which is the ratio of open interest in Bitcoin divided by reserves held by derivatives exchanges, fell to 0.195 on April 26, the lowest level since December 20, 2021. rice field.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler released a new video on April 27, alleging that cryptocurrency companies are violating securities laws, sending a critical message to the cryptocurrency industry. sending again.

US bank JPMorgan Chase & Co. is sticking to its plan to “tokenize” its traditional financial assets despite the bear market and regulatory uncertainty.

The bank uses digital asset platform Onyx, a permissioned version of the Ethereum blockchain, to process nearly $700 billion in short-term lending transactions. Customers can trade tokenized US Treasuries or use the bank’s own digital currency, JPM Coin.

Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corporation and Datachain announced on April 27 that they had successfully verified the technology for “cross-chain settlement of digital securities using stablecoins.”

In the technical verification, Corda, which is one of the blockchain layers of the stablecoin issuance management platform “Progmat Coin” being developed by Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking, and GoQuorum, which assumes a blockchain platform other than Progmat. We interconnected and realized the simultaneous transfer of tokens on both blockchains.

Using the Bitcoin blockchain’s ability to record transactions, a mysterious individual has stolen 986 accounts managed by Russia’s Military General Staff Intelligence Service (GRU), Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), and Federal Security Service (FSB). Chainalysis, a blockchain data analytics firm that works closely with the U.S. government, said it had identified the wallet.

|Text and editing: coindesk JAPAN editorial department

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