Crypto market update
The year 2022 had one of the worst starts in the history of Bitcoin’s price performance as the digital gold lost almost 30% of its value on the lowest point of the month, but the short-term recovery has softened things out, Bloomberg reports. During trading days in January, Bitcoin dipped as low as $33,000 while trading at almost $70,000 back in November. The sell-off on the market was primarily caused by the risk of the rate hike by the Federal Reserve, which puts the whole financial system into risk-off mode.
Bitcoin (BTC) is now trading at 38,587 USD (all data from Coingecko.com)
Ethereum (ETH) is now for 2,746 USD
PlatonCoin (PLTC) is now for 0,465 USD
Total marketcap is currently at 1.851 trillion USD
Daily news update
90 000 BTC from Bitfinex hack: A chunk of the inactive Bitcoins (BTC) stolen in the 2016 Bitfinex exchange hack has moved from the hacker’s wallets to an unknown wallet on Tuesday, as detected by blockchain analytics bot Whale Alerts. 20 transactions involving the stolen Bitcoins were flagged. A sum of 64,641.29 BTC, worth almost $2.5 billion at the time of writing, was moved. This is more than half of the total amount seized by the hackers which are estimated to be around 120,000 BTC.
Meta sells Diem: Meta (formerly Facebook)-backed stablecoin project Diem’s intellectual property and assets have been sold to cryptocurrency bank Silvergate Capital Corporation for US$182 million, both entities confirmed on Monday.
El Salvador and Bitcoin: El Salvador has responded harshly to the International Monetary Fund’s recent demands that it drop Bitcoin as legal tender. Alejandro Zelaya, Minister of Finance, stated that the country would not end its support for Bitcoin as legal tender. Zelaya stated that “no international organization is going to make us do anything.” He also treated the demand as an affront to El Salvador’s independence, stating that “countries are sovereign nations and they make sovereign decisions about public policy.”
India and cryptotax: Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her budget speech on Tuesday that a 30% tax will be levied on income from all cryptocurrency or digital assets transfers. The levy on cryptocurrency will also apply to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and gifts, where the recipient will be taxed. In case of losses from crypto investments, no offsets will be allowed. Taxing crypto may signal that the government is moving towards regulation over an all-out ban. The Finance Minister also announced in her speech that India’s central bank will be issuing its central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the financial year 2022-23.
Thailand and cryptotax: The Financial Times reports that Thailand will not go ahead with its 15% cryptocurrency tax plan after the traders in the country voiced strong opposition. The country’s authorities had planned to impose capital gains tax on the asset class, including trading and mining. Supporters of the crypto market said that high taxation would result in the suffocation of the market. Crypto has become very popular in the country over the past 18 months, particularly among its youth.