Weekly Crypto Market Roundup - April 17, 2022
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Weekly Crypto Market Roundup - April 17, 2022
Crypto assets tumbled during the week with the total market capitalization hovering around $1.9 trillion on Friday. Macro trends continue to drive the overall direction of the crypto and stock market. Annual inflation rate in the US accelerated to 8.5% in March of 2022, the highest since December of 1981 from 7.9% in February.
Head of the International Monetary Fund warned that Russia's invasion of Ukraine risks eroding the world’s recovery from the pandemic and urged central banks to act decisively to curb inflation before it gets harder to control.
Crypto Sector Performance
Web3 was the worst-performing sector during the week, down -12.57%. The currencies sector declined the least returning -7.8%. Monero (XMR) and Bicoin Cash (BCH) were the only two currencies ending the week in green.
Top News Recap
BlackRock, Fidelity and others to invest $400M in USDC stablecoin issuer Circle - Techcrunch
Near protocol is planning to introduce its own stablecoin called USN - Theblockcrypto
Meta begins to allow sale of digital goods on Horizon Worlds, taking nearly 50% in transaction fees - CNBC
President Biden announces former Ripple adviser as pick for Fed vice chair for supervision at the Federal Reserve - Cointelegraph
Circle will apply for U.S. crypto bank charter in the near future - Bloomberg
Bison Digital Assets becomes the first bank in Portugal to gain approval to offer crypto services - Beincrypto
Ethereum merge has been delayed until the latter half of 2022 - Decrypt
Elon Musk Offered $43B to buy Twitter
Elon Musk’s Twitter bid promoted the company to adopt a “poison pill” defense. This move would allow existing shareholders to purchase additional shares at a discount making it harder for Musk to control a majority of shareholder votes.
Crypto Adoption News
Opera expands crypto browser to iOS for access to 9 blockchain ecosystems
Warner Music partners with the proof of attendance protocol (POAP) for event NFTs - Ledgerinsights
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says Amazon could sell NFTs in the future - The Block
Top Venture Funding Activity
Epic Games raises $2B to 'build the metaverse' - Decrypt
NFT avatar platform Genies achieves unicorn status after a $150M raise at a $1B valuation - Decrypt
Uniswap Labs launches venture unit to invest in web3 projects - The Block
Ignite (Formerly Tendermint) launches $150M accelerator for web 3 projects
CertiK reaches $2B valuation with new funding from Goldman Sachs and others - The Block
Latest Crypto Policies from G20
Source: crypto.com
Other News and Top Reads
The US Government suspects that a North Korean hacking group was behind last month's $600M Ronin exploit - The Block
Russia goes bullish on Bitcoin as finalized bill suggests adopting crypto as legal tender - ZYCrypto
Mozilla will accept crypto donations, but only from proof-of-stake coins
- Coindesk
Lido, one of the largest liquidity pools for Ethereum staking plans to lower requirements to become a validator - Coingape
Crypto lender Celsius will stop paying interest on new deposits from the U.S.
- Celsius
Polygon commits to going carbon neutral in 2022 - Cointelegraph
Central banks in emerging economies look to CBDCs for payment efficiency
- Finextra
Gemini exchange officially launched Its crypto rewards credit card in the United States - CNET