What’s Happened in the Crypto World This Week?
It’s another Sunday and the Cryptosx editorial team brings you another edition of the landmark events that shaped the cryptocurrency markets and the blockchain world at large during the past week.
Price Watch
The Crypto market witnessed a bit of a slow down after a strong start in the first two weeks of October, which saw enthusiasts quickly dub it the month of “Uptober”.
Cryptocurrency News Flash
- US-FDIC To Explore New Ways for Banks to Hold Crypto Deposits
- Tesla Mulls Over Accepting Bitcoin Payments ‘in the Future’
- Ethereum Hits New All-Time High After New PoS Upgrade Success
- Financial Action Task Force Releases New Recommendations on Crypto
- El Salvador Adds Another 420 Bitcoin to Its Treasury
US-FDIC To Explore New Ways for Banks to Hold Crypto Deposits
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is reportedly working with the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to explore policies on how banks can engage in activities involving cryptocurrencies.
According toFDIC Chairman, Jelena McWilliams, the regulator plans to issue a series of policy statements in the coming months. McWilliams detailed that her objective is to “ provide clear guidance to the public on how our existing rules and policies apply to crypto assets, what types of activities are permissible for banks to engage in, and what supervisory expectations we have for banks that do engage in such activities.”
Addressing stablecoins, McWilliams said they should be subject to tailored oversight as they need to be backed 1-to-1 by safe, highly liquid assets if issued outside the banking sector.
Tesla Mulls Over Accepting Bitcoin Payments ‘in the Future’
Electric car maker Tesla has revealed that it “may in the future restart the practice of transacting in cryptocurrencies” in its quarterly filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
During the first quarter of the year Tesla, helmed by Elon Musk, started accepting bitcoin payments for its electric vehicles and invested $1.5 billion in the flagship cryptocurrency. It stopped supporting BTC over environmental concerns related to cryptocurrency mining.
In its recent filing, Tesla said: “We believe in the long-term potential of digital assets both as an investment and also as a liquid alternative to cash.”
Musk said earlier this year the company would start accepting bitcoin payments again if mining became more environmentally friendly, with at least half of the hashrate coming from renewable energy sources. The Tesla CEO has also recently revealed he personally owns BTC, ETH, and DOGE.
Ethereum Hits New All-Time High After New PoS Upgrade Success
Ethereum’s price has hit a new all time high (ATH) this week following the Altair Beacon Chain update that was successfully launched on the network after 98.7% of nodes upgraded to it. The Altair upgrade to the Beacon Chain marks another step taken toward the network’s transition to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm.
The cryptocurrency’s price has also been rising thanks to the boom in decentralized finance and non-fungible tokens on top of its network, as demand for these products leads to higher demand for ETH transactions, paid for in ether.
The daily issuance of Ethereum has, on a few occasions, gone negative thanks to the network’s EIP-1559 upgrade. The upgrade changed Ethereum’s monetary policy by burning part of the transaction fees in every new block that previously belonged to Ethereum miners in an effort to alleviate the fees for network users.
Financial Action Task Force Releases New Recommendations on Crypto
Global Anti-Money Laundering Watchdog — The Financial Action Task Force (FAT-F) has released revised cryptocurrency guidance containing clarifications on who falls under its recommended requirements. The global anti-money laundering watchdog acknowledged that services should be analyzed based on what they provide rather than whether they fit into the nomenclatures it provided.
The FATF’s guidance reads:
“The obligations in the FATF Standards stem from the underlying financial services offered without regard to an entity’s operational model, technological tools, ledger design, or any other operating feature.”
The new guidance clarifies what constitutes a virtual asset, or VA, noting it isn’t just a digital representation of value, as VAs also have a tradable or exchangeable component. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), as such, do not appear to constitute VAs.
The FATF also said decentralized applications are not virtual asset service providers, since the standards applied on these entities do not apply to the underlying software. The operators of DeFi protocols, on the other hand, likely are considered virtual asset service providers.
El Salvador Adds Another 420 Bitcoin to Its Treasury
The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has revealed that the country’s government took advantage of the recent price drop to add an additional 420 BTC to the nation’s treasury. Bukele tweeted it “was a long wait, but worth it.”
Shortly after the purchase, Bukele tweeted out that El Salvador was already making profit off of the BTC it bought, with the price of the cryptocurrency moving up around 0.4% in the time between tweets.
The purchase brings the country’s total to 1,120 Bitcoin bought at an average purchase price of $53,300. The first BTC El Salvador purchased was on September 6, when it first acquired 200 coins after making Bitcoin legal tender in the country.
El Salvador’s Central Bank chief, Douglas Rodriguez, has said the country is investing in Bitcoin with the expectation that the cryptocurrency will stop being seen as a speculative asset and become a legitimate payment system.
Visit Cryptosx.io to invest securely in Cryptocurrencies, Security tokens and other digital assets.
