Weekly Newsletter – 31 Mar 2023

Bitcoin Price Briefly Hits $29K Before Q1 Futures Expire

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Weekly Summary

  • XRP Surges For Two Days Following Settlement Rumors with SEC
  • Binance and CZ Rejected US Charges over US Regulatory Violations by CFTC
  • Bitdeer, Jihan Wu’s Crypto Mining Firm, Moves a Step Closer to Nasdaq SPAC Listing
  • Ethereum Core Devs Confirm April 12 Date for Shapella Upgrade
  • OKX to Transfer $157 Million in Frozen Assets Linked to FTX and Alameda Research

Industry Stories

XRP Price Soars 20% Following Ripple-SEC Settlement Rumors: Ripple’s XRP token surged over 20% with the company’s lawsuit progress, as investors grew hopeful that Ripple will win its legal battle with the SEC. Ripple is accused of breaching US securities laws by selling XRP without first registering it as a security, and contests the SEC’s allegations, stating XRP should be considered a digital currency. If XRP is deemed a security, it could have significant ramifications for the digital currency industry. Monica Long, president of Ripple, told CNBC she is “very hopeful” about achieving a positive resolution to the SEC case, with an outcome expected “sometime this year.”

Binance and CZ Rejected US Charges over US Regulatory Violations by CFTC: The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has sued Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao over allegations of offering unregistered crypto derivatives products in the US, failure of KYC and anti-money laundering processes, and directing US customers to evade compliance controls through VPNs. The news sent ripples through markets, driving Bitcoin’s price down by about 3% on Monday. CZ has denied the allegations on Tuesday, describing the lawsuit as “an incomplete recitation of facts”.

Bitdeer, Jihan Wu’s Crypto Mining Firm, Moves a Step Closer to Nasdaq SPAC Listing: Bitdeer Technologies and Blue Safari have announced that their proposed business combination has been approved by the SEC. The Business Combination will make Bitdeer a publicly listed company on the Nasdaq with an implied equity value of around $1.18 billion. Blue Safari has urged shareholders to vote in favor of the proposal and has said that BSG First Euro Investment Corp., which owns 49.3% of its shares, will vote in favour of the proposal. The vote will take place at the Extraordinary General Meeting of Blue Safari on April 11, after which the Business Combination is expected to be completed. 

Ethereum Core Devs Confirm April 12 Date for Shapella Upgrade: The Ethereum Shapella network upgrade, enabling staked ether withdrawals for the first time, will take place on April 12, according to a blog post by the Ethereum Foundation. The upgrade will happen at network epoch 194,048, which is expected to take place at 6:27 pm EDT. The Shapella upgrade will introduce EIP-4895, which will enable the withdrawal of staked ether, along with other network improvements aimed at optimising transaction fees. The bug bounty program for Shapella vulnerabilities will run until April 5, with a doubled reward of $500,000.

OKX to Transfer $157 Million in Frozen Assets Linked to FTX and Alameda Research: OKX has identified and is turning over $157 million in digital assets belonging to FTX and Alameda Research to the FTX bankruptcy estate, according to an announcement. The exchange did not specify which digital assets were identified. FTX bankruptcy lawyers had previously identified $694 million in liquid assets, including fiat, stablecoins, bitcoin, BNB, SOL, and ether, before OKX’s announcement. The move comes after FTX’s November 2022 collapse, during which a hacker stole $600 million from its wallets.

Product Highlight:

As the market starts to warm up, Matrixport’s Fixed Income has refreshed yields and iscurrently offering class-leading returns on deposits. The product includes investment choices for 16 cryptocurrencies, generating stable returns within a selected tenor. 

Stablecoin holders can now enjoy up to 9% and 9.25% APY with Matrixport’s USDC and USDT Fixed Term respectively, with tenors starting from 45 days. For large-cap token HODLers, BTC and ETH deposits now return up to 4.25% APY. And for altcoin enthusiasts, popular coins such as BNB and XRP are also supported with competitive yields. 

Investors can check the underlying assets report in the app, and decide their favoured investment currency, tenor and yield. Early redemptions are also allowed for selected products.

Check out the earning option that fits you the best.

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(The abovementioned yields are real-time rates as of Mar 30, and will be updated timely based on market conditions.)

Matrixport News:

Matrixport is excited to announce our partnership with CIAN Protocol to enhance institutional DeFi offerings. With the partnership, Matrixport will support CIAN’s infrastructure and dApp, enabling institutional and accredited investors to seamlessly participate in CIAN’s one-stop recursive strategy vault, which taps into top-tier lending protocols such as Aave Companies and Compound.

Read more here.

At the recent panel organized by DigiFT Tech, Matrixport’s Markus Thielen, Head of Research, shared his views on the value of RWA tokenization and the future of Defi.

“There’s a lot of talk around bringing real world assets on chain — the biggest opportunity in TradFi and the lowest hanging fruit being the interest rate component. Tokens that can be linked to traditional financial assets are an attractive proposition for investors as it makes price discovery and evaluating return prospects a lot easier.”

Discover more here.

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Grow and manage your digital wealth with the Matrixport app:

Stay connected in our community: https://t.me/matrixport 

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