Weekly Digest From TradeCrypto.com #13

News to follow:

  🔝 Uniswap votes in favor of deploying Polygon’s zkEVM

  🙃 Crypto Twitter jumps on newly launched Pepe memecoin 

  😎 Donald Trump launches NFT collection despite indictment

  👾 Sotheby’s auctions the famous seized 3AC NFT collection

Daily statistics update:

Today's market is red. BTC is trading at $28,054; ETH is around $1,918.

💪 Bitcoin dominance: 45.71%

📉 Total Crypto Market Cap: $1.19B

😲 Fear and greed index: 50 (Neutral)

🚀  7d Gainers (Top-100)

• OKB (OKB) +14.98%

• Render Token (RNDR) +11.26%

• Casper (CSPR) +9.58%

  😭 7d Losers (Top-100)

• Stacks (STX) -17.97%

• Conflux (CFX) -17.78%

• Immutable (IMX) -16.40%

The Singaporean crypto exchange has never returned back on track 😵‍💫 since announcing its $5 million exposure to bankrupt lender Celsius in July. At the time, it asked for a moratorium on returning the money to users, and extended the deadline several times since Dec. 22. This week it made another attempt to ask the court for a delay, of two months, assuming that the crypto exchange could resolve all liquidity issues and return most of the money to waiting users in that period. Their decision was based on talks with unspecified investors. However, we also know that one of them, V Ventures, decided to swiftly leave the deal 🚪 and provide no more than $1 million just to feed Zipmex employees.

Ahead of the long-awaited EU regulation MiCa, Kraken has secured a virtual asset service provider license in Ireland. 💪 Once MiCa comes into effect, all exchanges will be required to have this license in order to operate in the EU, so this is big news for Kraken. Given the tough times in the US and the fact that Kraken is only the third exchange to ever receive such a license (after Gemini and Coinbase). Kraken is there to drive mass adoption of cryptocurrencies. Don't you think it's easier to follow the rules if you know them (with a nod to the unclear regulatory rules in the US)? 😉

SEC chair Gary Gensler testified before House Financial Services Committee this week. The hearing was called to address a number of issues. And the chairman of the SEC was supposed to answer them. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. 😂 Or fortunately, depending on how you look at it. Lest you lose your train of thought, Gary is considered a conflicted person in the crypto community, as he was the one who took Ripple to court while turning a blind eye to FTX. The funniest and most interesting thing about this 5-hour hearing was that Gary Gensler decided not to answer the question of whether Ether is a security. This caused quite an uproar, because who else other than the chair of the Securities Commission can answer this question. Given Gary was the one who said everything is a security before.😅

Ledger has partnered with Etana Custody to offer crypto custody for institutional clients in the US. Now it'll be easy for these big institutions because they have access to over 1,800 tokens supported by Ledger. Given SEC's crackdown on the crypto industry, institutional investors are especially wary of compliance. 🧐 With this new partnership, Etana can act as a settlement party for counterparties, which means they will trade digital assets without risking the deal falling through. Basically, it's like preventing the Hokey Pokey - putting your money in and taking it out before the trade actually settles - and leaving the settlement risk to the exchange. 😎

The company just released its first quarter report for 2023. It holds the same $184 million worth of BTC, no more, no less. Although the value of Bitcoin (BTC) has increased from $16,500 to about $28,500 by the end of the first quarter, the overall valuation hasn't changed significantly. This is because accounting rules don't allow companies to recognize gains from bitcoin price increases. 🤓 Just a reminder: in July 2022, Tesla offloaded around 75% of its BTC holdings worth $2 billion. At the time, Elon said he was concerned about the environmental impact of bitcoin mining. Well, maybe he has other things to be concerned about now. Like the AI race. 😉

Again and again and again. We have been hearing these words for months now. 🥸 Quick summary: Binance.US is buying Voyager for $1 billion. The deal was settled, the counterparts are happy, the users are happy, the court gave the approval. But other regulators were against it. And Voyager couldn't get around them, so it decided to fight like hell. So they finally sealed the deal with the U.S. federal agency. Yet, the gov will continue to fight to strip the exchange's executives of amnesty if things go wrong. We sincerely hope that this is the end of the story and Voyager users will finally get their funds back thanks to Binance.US. 🥳

And will set up a derivatives exchange there as early as next week. Coinbase said they chose Bermuda due to its clear regulatory regime. 🧖‍♀️ The license allows the exchange a wide range of activities such as issuing and selling tokens. Many say the exchange is slowly moving away from the United States. This is supported by the strong push abroad and its CEO's comments that the U.S. sucks because there is no clear regulation there. Go broad and go deep, Armstrong. 🌍

After spending 9 months behind bars in a Dutch prison 🥵, the court decided it's time to release the Tornado Cash developer. Pertsev will be sent home on April 26. That also happens to be his birthday. Alexey can now await his trial from home with an ankle bracelet. He had previously been denied bail because the prosecution was convinced he would escape. It's not known why the court changed its mind, but Alexey's wife said they were finally able to make a strong case that Alexey had done nothing wrong.💪

Conclusion: Trading activity has slowed down this week. All eyes are on regulations. And the hearings of the big boys. And the inability of Gary Gensler to answer simple questions. More and more reasons to leave the US. The upcoming MiCa in the EU and all the good changes in HK will certainly impact the game. The biggest success this week is the release of Alexey Pertsev.

What is Crypto Ping Pong digest?

TC lads here are working quite hard and from time to time we gotta chill. Recently, we got ourselves a ping pong table to complete our lazy-bag-stuffed chill zone. As you all know our main hobby is Crypto, so even while we play we don’t really shut up about it. Ever.

So memes, leaks, gossips naturally come about – we collect them and share them with you in this interstellar space on our site we like to call Crypto Ping Pong digest.