The Bullish Insights Weekly Market Recap includes curated industry news and analysis from the Bullish team for the week of December 4, 2023.
This week’s peak exchange trade volume (24h): $941,999,050 [21,577 BTC] on December 6, 2023.
- AXA Investment Managers (AXA IM) has purchased a €5 million tokenized green bond from Societe Generale using a stablecoin called CoinVertible, which is designed for institutional use and was issued by Societe Generale FORGE. The purchase, which was executed on the Ethereum blockchain, is part of a new joint experiment meant to explore the use of a stablecoin for settling digital bond purchases.
- DigiFT, a Singapore-based digital assets exchange, has received authorization from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to operate collective investment schemes and a secondary market for trading. The exchange was granted the Capital Markets Services (CMS) license and a Recognized Market Operator (RMO) license.
- Circle, has partnered with Brazliian neobank Nubank, to increase the reach of USDC in Latin America, potentially impacting over 90 million customers in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. The partnership involves integrating USDC into Nubank Cripto, enabling Brazilian users to buy and hold digital dollars.
- Robinhood, has announced the launch of its crypto trading app in the European Union, offering over 25 tokens including BTC, ETH, and SOL. This follows the recent launch of its brokerage services in the UK and includes features such as repaying a percentage of customers' trading volume each month in BTC and BTC referral bonuses.
- Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., told U.S. lawmakers at a Senate Banking Committee hearing that he would shut down the cryptocurrency industry if he had the power. This statement builds on his history of criticizing digital currencies and follows a series of controversies in the crypto industry.
- Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce platform, has announced its intention to join the Polygon network's expanding series of Layer 2 chains. This development, part of Polygon's anticipated major announcements, aims to significantly increase the user base of both the Polygon ecosystem and Web3. Flipkart's decision comes after the successful launch of its Web3 loyalty program, Firedrops, in partnership with Polygon Labs, and the company now aims to upscale this initiative using Polygon’s Layer 2 technology.
- Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance has been ordered by a U.S. federal judge to stay in the United States ahead of his sentencing for anti-money laundering violations. Judge Richard Jones reversed an earlier ruling permitting Zhao to return to his UAE residence, citing Zhao's substantial overseas assets and the absence of an extradition treaty between the U.S. and the UAE, which could present a flight risk.
- U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has renewed her criticism of cryptocurrencies, asserting they pose a new threat to the country as they could potentially be used for financing terrorism and drug trafficking. Her remarks came as a response to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon's comments about wanting to shut down cryptocurrencies. However, according to data from Chainalysis, it's worth noting that less than 0.2% of cryptocurrency transactions are associated with illicit activities.
- Megacaps rallied in Thursday’s session with AI stocks seeing momentum bringing the Nasdaq Composite up by 1.4%. The S&P 500 rose by 0.8%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 0.2%
- Yields fell while US equity markets retreated in Wednesday’s session. The S&P 500 dropped by 0.4%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average retreated 0.2%, and the Nasdaq Composite fell by 0.6%.
- Treasuries continued its rally through to Tuesday’s session with US job openings data signalling a dip to its lowest level since 2021. The S&P 500 dropped by 0.1%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average retreated 0.2%, and the Nasdaq Composite rose by 0.3%.
- Bitcoin dominance has climbed to the highest level since March 2021 to 54.9%.
- In the past year, altcoin market share in trading volume has climbed to 67%, greater than the biggest blue-chips Bitcoin and Ethereum combined.
- The total market cap of stablecoins is at $129bn. Tether’s dominance has slowly climbed throughout 2023 to 70% market share as of December 8. Meanwhile over the same period, Circle’s USDC dominance has dipped to $23.6bn, levels last seen in June 2021.
