Top Stories of The Week
Coinbase predicts trillion-dollar stablecoin era by 2028
The total US dollar-pegged stablecoin market is projected to swell to $1.2 trillion by 2028, spurred on by comprehensive crypto regulations in the United States, according to crypto exchange Coinbase.
Coinbase said the projections mean the US Treasury issuance would have to be $5.3 billion per week over the next three years to satisfy demand from stablecoin issuers, who use short-term US Treasury bills as backing collateral for their digital fiat tokens.
This issuance schedule would cause a minor and temporary drop in three-month Treasury yields of about 4.5 basis points, contrary to analyst predictions that demand from stablecoin issuers will significantly reduce the interest on US government debt. Coinbase wrote in a market report:
“We think the forecast doesn’t require unrealistically large or permanent rate dislocations to materialize; instead, it relies on incremental, policy-enabled adoption compounding over time.”
Kanye West YZY sniper wallet linked to $21M LIBRA extraction scheme: Analysts
An onchain investigation by pseudonymous analyst Dethective linked a wallet that sniped the Kanye West-themed token YZY to another set of wallets behind the LIBRA token, suggesting that the same operator extracted tens of millions of dollars using insider knowledge.
In a series of X posts on Thursday, Dethective revealed that a YZY sniper wallet managed to buy $250,000 worth of tokens at just $0.20, far below the price most traders paid. Within minutes, the wallet secured over $1 million in profit, which was later funneled into a treasury wallet.
The same treasury wallet had also received large sums from wallets tied to LIBRA’s launch six months ago. Two “Libra sniper” wallets extracted a combined $21 million. In total, nearly $23 million was pulled across the YZY and LIBRA launches, with funds later moved to Kamino or Binance.
“We can be sure this is someone with clear inside info,” Dethective wrote. “The proof is that he did not snipe any coin besides $YZY and $LIBRA and he was prepared with huge size.”
Bitcoin’s 4-year cycle may not be dead after all: Glassnode
Bitcoin’s recent price action may still be tracking its historic four-year halving cycle, despite some market predictions that increasing institutional interest will break the pattern, according to onchain analytics firm Glassnode.
“From a cyclical perspective, Bitcoin’s price action also echoes prior patterns,” Glassnode said in a markets report on Wednesday.
Glassnode said several factors suggest that the Bitcoin cycle may be further along than the market assumes.
Profit-taking among long-term holders — those holding Bitcoin for more than 155 days — is now “comparable to past euphoric phases, reinforcing the impression of a market late in its cycle,” it said.
Glassnode also pointed to weakening demand, with capital inflows into Bitcoin “showing signs of fatigue.” Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have posted outflows of about $975 million over the past four trading days, according to Farside Investors.
Harvard economist admits he was wrong about Bitcoin crashing to $100
Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff, who once predicted Bitcoin would more likely crash to $100 before it hit $100,000, admitted that a lot has changed since his comments seven years ago, though he seemingly still hasn’t come around to Bitcoin.
“Almost a decade ago, I was the Harvard economist that said Bitcoin was more likely to be worth $100 than 100K. What did I miss?” Rogoff wrote on X on Wednesday, referring to a segment on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in March 2018.
Rogoff is a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and also author of Our Dollar, Your Problem, a book published in May.
In 2018, Rogoff said that government regulation would trigger a drop in Bitcoin prices.
Philippine bill charts path to strategic reserve with 10,000 Bitcoin
The Congress of the Philippines is weighing a proposal that could see the country’s central bank establish a strategic reserve of 10,000 Bitcoin, positioning the country among the first in Southeast Asia to adopt Bitcoin as a strategic asset.
A House of Representatives bill filed by Camarines Sur Representative Migz Villafuerte in June made headlines on Thursday, as it aims to mandate the Banko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), the country’s central bank, to purchase 2,000 Bitcoin annually over a five-year period.
The bill, called the “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Act,” aims to mandate the BSP to buy 10,000 Bitcoin worth $1.1 billion at current market prices. The bill states that the asset would be locked in a trust for at least 20 years. This would mean that the coins could not be sold, swapped or disposed of, except for when retiring government debt.
Winners and Losers
At the end of the…
cointelegraph.com