Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, ado
Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.
Top Stories This Week
$1T opportunity: JPMorgan becomes first major bank in the metaverse
United States banking giant JPMorgan Chase has taken a dive into what it considers a significant up and coming arena of opportunity: the metaverse. The bank has recently opened a digital lounge called Onyx in Decentraland’s metaverse. Decentraland serves as one of many crypto industry projects utilizing blockchain to provide a digital world experience — in other words, a metaverse.
JPMorgan sees significant potential in the new movement toward digital worlds. “The metaverse will likely infiltrate every sector in some way in the coming years, with the market opportunity estimated at over $1 trillion in yearly revenues,” the bank said in a report. However, to reach its potential, the metaverse movement requires further development in several key areas, the report said.
Onyx is also the name of JPMorgan’s blockchain-based payments system.
FBI is launching team to address crypto exploitation: US Deputy Attorney General
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is putting together a special unit to go after illegal crypto activity, such as ransomware attacks. Armed with experts wielding knowledge of the digital asset space, the Virtual Asset Exploitation Unit will be the FBI’s team on the crypto crime front, according to comments from U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco at the Munich Cyber Security Conference.
“Ransomware and digital extortion, like many other crimes fueled by cryptocurrency, only work if the bad guys get paid, which means we have to bust their business model,” Monaco explained. The new FBI team will act alongside the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, which is headed up by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The DOJ also has plans to fight crypto crime on an international level, according to Monaco.
SEC hits BlockFi with a $100 million penalty, gives 60 days to comply with a 1940 law
BlockFi came to terms with regulators this week in response to resistance from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which had labeled the BlockFi Interest Account as a securities product. Operating since 2019, the offering in question from BlockFi lets users loan crypto and receive notable interest in return.
BlockFi agreed to pay the SEC $50 million as penalty. In addition, 32 U.S. states took action against BlockFi, resulting in a further $50 million that BlockFi must pay to those regions — tallying $100 million total in penalties.
Moving forward, BlockFi has a 60-day period to align the product with the Investment Company Act of 1940. In the meantime, BlockFi will halt onboarding new users until it becomes compliant with the regulation.
Digital ruble trial goes live as Bank of Russia insists on Bitcoin ban
The Bank of Russia announced this week that initial testing for its central bank digital currency (CBDC) was successful after several transfers of the digital ruble were made to Russian citizens. A total of 12 financial institutions participated in the digital ruble pilot program, putting the central bank on track to launch its CBDC program later this year.
The CBDC news came after anti-crypto comments from the head of the Bank of Russia, Elvira Nabiullina, the prior week. Because CDBCs are under the direct control of governments, they differ from traditional cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
Cointelegraph releases Top 100 in Crypto and Blockchain 2022
This week, Cointelegraph unveiled its 2022 list of the top 100 most influential figures in the crypto and blockchain space. The Top 100 includes profiles of people and trends that impacted the crypto and blockchain space in 2021. Each profile also includes an overview of what we can expect from each influencer or trend for the remainder of 2022.
Cointelegraph will unveil the list over the course of the coming days, releasing 10 profiles per day until all 100 are shown. The first group of 10 was revealed on Thursday, with Rekt Capital starting off the list at number 100.
Cointelegraph has released prior installments of its top 100 list in previous years.
Winners and Losers
At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $40,036, Ether (ETH) at $2,790 and XRP at $0.77. The total market cap is at $1.81 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.
Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Rally (RLY) at 18.86%, Neo (NEO) at 13.93% and Qtum (QTUM) at 9.58%.
The top three altcoin losers of the week are IoTeX (IOTX) at -17.58%, Ethereum Classic (ETC) at -16.35% and Theta Network (THETA) at -16.17%.
For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.
Most Memorable…
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