Everything is negotiable. Whether or not the negotiation is easy is another thing! (weekly crypto updates)
What happened in crypto in the past 3 weekS? Way too long since my last post, but to my defence, I was for two weeks in Kuala Lumpur at HiveFest. Nice festival, but we still need to work a bit more on marketing in there. What else? Read below:
Bitcoin: BTC key support is getting weaker, as it dropped to $112K at first. It has been tested four times in six weeks. Then it tanked to $103850 last Friday. and now, after two weeks of US/Chinese negotiations, jumped above $113K. Are we gonna see BTC dropping below six figures? Another mini-drop followed Jerome Powell's press conference, announcing no rate cut. Even Elon commented about BTC, defending its energy-based proof-of-work system. It is hard when BTC lost half a billion in minutes, triggering over $524M in liquidations. Bitcoin dominance sits at 58.79%. Leading European asset manager Amundi enters the crypto market, with plans for a Bitcoin investment product. Since Steak'n Shake started accepting Bitcoin payments five months ago, they are celebrating by stamping a burger with the Bitcoin logo on the bun. Cool! Saylor hinted at another big BTC buy and then he just bought 778 BTC, 78% less than September's 3526 buy. As BlackRock facilitates authorized participants exchange of Bitcoin for ETF shares instead of cash, more and more whales are moving funds from self-custody. American Bitcoin, the mining company of Eric and Donald Trump Jr, added 1414 BTC to its treasury, landing them into the top 25 Bitcoin holders globally.
Ethereum: Fusaka upgrade in December 2025 will boost ETH data capacity 10x, letting Layer 2 handle 12K+ transactions per second next year. Ethereum liquidity is disappearing faster, as now we have 40% of the total supply is now locked out of circulation. Layer 2 networks control 65% of the ETH total value locked. BitMine bought the dip hard, spending $827M for 202K Ethereum and now they have 2.5% of the entire supply. SharpLink bought $79M worth of ETH too, after one month break. Still, ETH whales are buying, while SOL whales are dumping. Except the American institutional investors, what are quietly pulling back from ETH. Right now, 900K ETH (worth $3.9B) awaits withdrawal from staking queues.
Altcoins and stablecoins: Did you claim your Monad airdrop? XRP dropped 4.5% to $2.50, triggering $94M in XRP long liquidations. Ripple partnered with Absa Bank to bring institutional crypto custody to Africa and recently acquired GTreasury, a company that handles treasury management for Fortune 500 companies, managing cash, foreign exchange and risk for them. Evernorth Holdings plans to raise $1B to buy XRP for its treasury. Zora will launch Believe fund, to support promising launches and creators. A16z wrote a $50M check to Jito, who runs critical infrastructure for Solana. Gemini new Solana credit card auto-stakes your crypto rewards for extra yield. First spot SOL ETF launches in Hong Kong. Elon put a video if its Shiba Inu, Floki, and the memecoin jumped 29%. AI sector dropped 8.1% in value. USDT just hit 500M users. Stablecoins are replacing banks across Latin America, from daily payments, saving accounts, to major purchases like homes and cars. Zcash surged 27% after Arthur Hayes price prediction, and Dash also jumped 19%, so better keep an eye on the privacy coins next few weeks. VIRTUAL went up 80%. What is happening? Ondo Finance expands beyond ETH, into BNB Chain.
NFTs and blockchain games: Gamefi crashes 28% as Bitcoin plummeted. I have enjoyed playing Golem Overlord lately on Hive, and it is quite enjoyable, I would say, with some significant updates lately. On Splinterlands, we have had the Land NFT new update and improved tokenomics on March 18, and the new rewards cards from the Conclave collection are up and running.
Good news: UK has lifted its ban on crypto exchange-traded notes, allowing retail investors to gain exposure to BTC and ETH in pensions and ISAs. BlackRock launches its iShares Bitcoin ETP on the London Stock Exchange. Citigroup is preparing to launch a crypto custody service in 2026. Even Nigel Farage called on the UK to introduce crypto regulations urgently as we fall behind as a financial center. Looks like the crypto investment funds loaded up during the crash, as Bitcoin funds added $2.7B for the week, and ETH $338M too. BlackRock is building its own technology to tokenize traditional assets, cutting the middleman. Unlike Coinbase, Hyperliquid maintained 100% uptime and a succesfull execution of cross margin ADL, during the recent flash crash. 21Shares just filed for a Hyperliquid ETF with the SEC. It is refreshing to see there are some good actors on the market too, not only thieves like Coinbase, trying to take our money. Galaxy Digital says that crypto will rally soon. Wishful thinking? The National Hockey League (NHL) officially partnered with both Polymarket and Kalshi as their official prediction partners. Revolut got its MiCA license from Cyprus, unlocking crypto services for 30 European countries with 280 tockens and zero-fee staking. Pakistan cornershops are now using stablecoins to sell and buy stuff. Bitwise's SOL ETF pulled in $56M on day one, biggest ETF debut of 2025. Indonesia announced its own stablecoin. Japan weight letting banks trade BTC and other tokens in policy shift. Western Union to test stablecoin transfers, for faster, cheaper cross-border payments. Consensys is looking to list publicly with JPMorgan and Goldman as underwriters.
Bad news: Gold dropped 5%, after it destroyed BTC for a couple of months. Proof-of-work Layer 1 Kadena announced their shutdown, ceasing all operations and maintenance imediatelly. Bunni DEX was hacked losing $8.4M after a flash loans attack, and it is shutting down permanently now. Mt. Gox pushes back creditor repayment deadline to October 2026.
Joke of the week: Market crashing and BNB decided to reach new ATH of $1730. Kind of a bummer, as I sold all my BNB for 180 decades ago. China Renaissance wants to raise $600M to buy and hold BNB. And now BNB Chain announced a $45M Reload airdrop for the users who traded memecoins during the past week massacre. A HK subsidiary of China Merchants Bank tokenized its $3.8B money market fund on BNB Chain. After all, Binance controls 53% of the global volume of cryptocurrency. Trump's pardon of CZ sent crypto into overdrive and BNB spiked once more. With +6.4B marketcap increase and Ondo bringing stocks to BNB, there is place for more gains.
All the best,
George
Why not...
...have fun and win rewards on my favourite blockchain games (Splinterlands- a Hearthstone-like card game) (Golem Overlord - a Play2Earn game on Hive) (Upland - a real-life virtual land) (Holozing - a Pokemon-like game)and ( Chain of Legends - with a hint of Heroes of Might and Magic).
...get crypto while writing on the Publish0x blog, using the Presearch search engine to maximise your income with PRE tokens. Use Torum instead of Twitter. I am also writing for crypto on Hive.
Posted Using INLEO
