The SOMA.finance Weekly Wrap-up #44
SOMA.finance
A Revolutionary Multi-Asset DEX & Issuance Platform for Tokenized Equities, Digital Assets, and NFTs
In This Issue
Market Overview
Financial markets, on the whole, remained in a holding pattern over the past week as concerns related to the global economy – from rising inflation and interest rates to the threat of a debt default in the U.S. – have investors sidelined and scrambling to find a safe haven for their wealth.?
Matters improved slightly for markets on Wednesday after positive comments from both sides of the aisle in regard to debt talks emerged, but the situation remains tense as the countdown to the date when significant portions of the U.S. government may need to shut down due to a lack of funding draws near.?
In response to Coinbase’s petition for mandamus, which asked the SEC to establish a clear regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies, the regulator argued that no applicable laws or regulations impose “an obligation to issue the broad new regulations regarding ‘digital assets’ Coinbase has requested,” nor are they required to do so on a specific timeline. The agency argued that even according to Coinbase’s own submissions, “considering the various paths it suggests is a necessarily complicated endeavor” and the process of formulating and approving a new regulatory regime could take years.
Little changed for the price of Bitcoin (BTC) over the past week as the top crypto continued to oscillate around the $27,000 support level after briefly falling to a low of $25,875 last Friday in a move that was highly anticipated by many technical analysts. The community now finds itself evenly split among those who think that price will steadily climb higher from here and those that think another tip into the $25,000 range – and possibly lower – is likely before the uptrend resumes.?
At the time of writing, the total cryptocurrency market cap stands at $1.122 trillion, an increase of 0.35% over the past week. The DeFi market cap currently stands at $49.9 billion with a 24-hour trading volume of $2.11 billion, which is 6.6% of the total crypto market volume.
Crypto News
NFTV - A recent patent filed by LG Global indicates that the company is seeking patent protection for a television that is capable of connecting with a non-fungible token (NFT) market server to allow users to send, receive and display artwork and fulfill purchases via a cryptocurrency wallet that is connected to the TV set. The patent, filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization, suggests that LG sees ongoing consumer demand for NFTs in the future and sees a business case for making them more accessible. LG first delved into the integration of NFTs with its television sets last September when it released its “LG Art Lab” marketplace, which enabled users to trade digital collectibles via U.S. LG televisions running their WebOS 5.0 operating system. The marketplace is only accessible via LG televisions.
Focused on Innovation - China officially launched its National Blockchain Technology Innovation Center in the capital city of Beijing, promising to train more than 500,000 specialists in blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) in the coming years. The center will collaborate with local universities, think tanks and blockchain businesses to advance the development of blockchain technology in China with a primary goal of connecting the siloed application chains developed in China in recent years. According to its operational plan, the center is looking to build a national blockchain computing power network composed of provincial and municipal backbone node networks and industry application node networks. This digital infrastructure will serve important industries and key areas of the national economy such as cross-border trade, supply chain finance, energy, production safety, and the food industry.
DEXtination Polkadot - The Uniswap decentralized exchange is looking to expand its domination of the DeFi DEX space by launching in the Polkadot ecosystem via Moonbeam (GLMR), a parachain in the Polkdadot ecosystem. The move comes after the Uniswap community gave near-unanimous approval to a proposal – put forward by the educational group Blockchain at Micigain – on the exchange’s governance platform. The smart contracts for the exchange have already been deployed to Moonbeam, and the only tasks left to fully launch it are “front-end integration updates and including Moonbeam to the auto router,” the proposal stated.
领英推荐
And in the World of Regulatory Actions…
No Entry for CBDCs - Florida Governor Ron DeSantis officially signed an anti-CBDC bill into law, banning the use of American or foreign central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the state. The bill was first announced on March 20, with DeSantis warning at the time that the creation of a digital dollar would grant “more power” to the government. During the Friday press conference following the signing, DeSantis accused President Biden's administration of wanting to “crowd out and eliminate other types of digital assets, like cryptocurrency.”
Regulation on the Horizon - The European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) bill, a landmark piece of legislation designed to establish a regulatory framework for the EU, reached another milestone as the bill was approved by the finance ministers of all 27 member states. The unanimous vote by the EU’s Economic and Financial Affairs Council means MiCA remains on track to become law by the third quarter of 2024. The next step is for the bill to be published in the Official Journal of the European Union. The European Parliament previously approved MiCA on April 20, with 517 members of parliament voting in favor and 38 voting against it. If the bill stays on track for enactment, provisions related to stablecoins could come into force as soon as July 2024, while many of the other provisions won’t take effect until January 2025 at the earliest.
DeFi Under the Microscope - Eun Young Choi, the U.S. Department of Justice’s top crypto enforcer, has indicated that the Justice Department is planning to start cracking down on cryptocurrency exchanges, mixers, and other sources of crypto crime that help hide the trail of transactions from regulators. Both companies that commit crimes as well as those that enable crimes such as money laundering to be perpetrated will be targeted in the enforcement. Choi said she believed focusing on platforms will “send a deterrent message” to other digital assets businesses that are circumventing AML and KYC rules or do not have robust compliance and risk mitigation measures. The DoJ’s crypto unit will also focus on investment scams, which caused $2.5 billion in losses in 2022, according to the FBI.