The Friday Focus: Issue 40

Jul 01, 2022

Welcome to our Friday newsletter. Here you find the most exciting crypto content from the previous week - curated for you by us.

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Weekly happenings

Crypto regulation has long been unclear in Europe, but the EU has now reached a provisional deal that will regulate the crypto industry within the entire union. Meanwhile, the Basel Committee proposes that banks shouldn't be allowed to have more than 1% of their assets in bitcoin.

The dust has far from settled in the crypto industry as contagion effects continue to play out. The crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital has started its liquidation process after defaulting on a massive loan from crypto lender Blockfi. Both crypto exchange FTX and crypto lender Ledn are allegedly attempting to acquire the struggling Blockfi.

The financially solid FTX also considered buying failed crypto lender Celsius but walked away from the deal after seeing the state of their finances. Celsius' finances don't seem to have scared Goldman Sachs, as the investment bank raises money to buy their assets.

Grayscale had its application for converting its bitcoin trust into a spot bitcoin ETF rejected and is now suing the SEC. European customers have a myriad of bitcoin spot ETP alternatives and will soon have two more, one in the Netherlands and one in Switzerland.

Overleveraged crypto market participants have gone down one after another, and many speculate that the bitcoin miners are next, as they have almost $4B in loans. The bitcoin mining industry continues struggling with regulators in New York, as the power generator turned bitcoin miner Greenidge was denied a renewal of its operating permit. On the positive side, Samsung is starting trial production of its 3nm chips, letting one of their bitcoin mining customers be the first to test the product.