Crypto market update
Following several unsuccessful attempts to overcome $59,000, Bitcoin continues to struggle around the level of $57,000. The second-largest cryptocurrency came less than 1% away from registering a fresh all-time high just two days ago. However, it failed to conquer $4,800, and the subsequent rejection drove ETH to levels of around $4,600, where it is remaining now as well.
Bitcoin (BTC) is now trading at 56,999 USD (all data from Coingecko.com)
Ethereum (ETH) is now for 4,610 USD
PlatonCoin (PLTC) is now for 0,388 USD
Total marketcap is currently at 2.775 trillion USD
Daily news update
Charlie Munger and crypto: Berkshire’s Vice Chairman Charlie Munger said in a conference on Friday that the current market should be considered wildly overvalued. Speaking at the Sohn conference in Sydney, Munger said that he considers the current financial era even crazier than the dot-com era, when regular companies were unnecessarily implementing web technologies to attract more investors that were looking to put their funds in a rapidly developing industry.
Goldman Sachs and Bitcoin backed loans: Several top United States banks, including Goldman Sachs, are reportedly exploring using Bitcoin as collateral for offering loans to institutions. Under the plan, the participating banks will not engage in cryptocurrency spot markets but will mainly focus on products such as futures and other synthetic crypto offerings.
NFTs will disrupt Spotify: As popular music streaming services like Spotify cut much of musicians’ revenues, new technologies like nonfungible tokens (NFT) will likely help artists grab back their fair share, Saxo Bank predicted. According to one of Saxo Bank’s “Outrageous Predictions 2022: Revolution,” music creators will benefit from NFT-based streaming platforms, as they allow distributing music directly to listeners without centralized intermediaries charging a fee.
ECB and CBDC: There’s a tendency among consumers to think of CBDCs as simply digital money and assume that the same conditions which apply to notes and coins will also apply to these central bank digital currencies. However, a December paper by the European Central Bank shows why such a mindset is a mistake. With cash, merchants do not face any per-transaction fee. Nor do they require any acceptance device. This may not be the case for CBDC.
Great Britain and NFTs: The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) has published a report assessing the money laundering risks inherent in the NFT market, questioning whether the burgeoning digital art craze has become a “new frontier” for money laundering. “To start with, NFTs are most often purchased with cryptocurrencies on online marketplaces. Cryptocurrencies are routinely exploited for malicious means, such as obfuscating the source of criminal proceeds and, despite transactions being traceable, more sophisticated criminal actors use a variety of techniques to disrupt investigations by law enforcement,” the RUSI report reads.