“It’s going to be very obvious that every bank has to become a crypto bank,” says bank CEO to get first federal charter for digital assets

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Happy Thursday! Welcome to Distributed Ledger, our weekly crypto newsletter. I’m Frances Yue, Crypto Journalist at MarketWatch, and I’m going to bring you the latest and greatest digital assets this week so far as December is in full swing. Find me on Twitter at @FrancesYue_ to post comments or discuss crypto.

Crypto at a glance

Bitcoin BTCUSD, + 0.21% fell this week amid omicron, the variant of the coronavirus first identified in southern Africa and has now been detected in the United States The cryptocurrency has fallen sharply ‘about 2.8% in the past seven days, recently trading above $ 57,000 according to CoinDesk data. Ether ETHUSD, + 0.96% has risen around 3.1% over the past seven days, recently trading above $ 4,500.

Dogecoin DOGEUSD, -0.39% registered a loss of 4.3% in the last seven days, while Shiba Inu, the coin created on the basis of the same dogecoin, registered a gain of around 11% over the last seven days. of the last seven days.

Crypto Metrics Biggest Winner Price 7 Day% Return Terra $ 64.8 53.1% Stacks $ 2.62 24.7% Ankr $ 0.14 16.7% Siacoin $ 0.023 10.8% UNUS SED LEO $ 3.35 8.04% Source: CoinMarketCap.com as of Dec 2 Lowest price% 7-day return WAX $ 0.62 -24.2% Harmony $ 0.24 -23.6% Enjin Coin 3 , $ 38 -20.74% Loopring $ 2.66 -19.7% loTeX $ 0.15 -18.1% Source: CoinMarketCap.com as of December 2 Crypto banks?

Nathan McCauley, co-founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital, a digital asset platform that provides crypto custody, trading and staking services to financial institutions, said he expects to see more banks will provide crypto-related services for years to come. In January, Anchorage Digital Bank became the first federally chartered bank for digital assets.

“I think by the end of 2022 it will be very clear that every bank needs to become a crypto bank because enough will have embraced” crypto, McCauley said.

“Your local bank branch, whether it’s a credit union or a large banking conglomerate, will most likely offer some sort of crypto investment product,” according to McCauley. Such offers will be driven by growing retail demand, McCauley said.

“And it will be regulatory clarity coming from Washington and the United States. It will be more obvious which banks are allowed to do this, ”McCauley said. “And as long as they put the right controls in place, work with the right partners, they will be able to create services of this nature. “

Meanwhile, Anchorage has seen increasing institutional demand for blockchain gaming tokens such as Decentral and MANAUSD, -1.88%, decentralized finance, or DeFi, tokens like Maker MKRUSD, -2.48%, Uniswap UNIUSD , -3.68% and Sushiswap, and also non-fungible token or NFT related coins, such as NFTX.

“The demand for these kinds of coins is coming from buy-side investors who have a particular thesis on the growth of Web 3.0,” said McCauley. Web 3.0 refers to the next stage in the evolution of the Internet.

“Basically the way we think of Web 3.0 now is that it’s going to be that kind of endless game, where an endless amount of technological advancement is happening across a wide range of different industries, and we’re only seeing the very beginning of it. that, ”McCauley said.

Risk asset or inflation hedge?

As bitcoin has tended to move in the same direction as the stock market recently, cryptocurrency trades more as a risky asset, rather than a hedge against inflation, according to some analysts.

“I never bought into the inflation hedging story.” Craig Erlam, Senior Market Analyst at [currency] OANDA trading platform, told MarketWatch in a telephone interview. “I just don’t see enough evidence. And I think having limited pieces is not enough [for bitcoin] be a hedge against inflation and certainly not enough to be a safe haven.

“When we saw the markets valuing inflation a lot more, especially because central banks oppose rate hikes, gold jumped and bitcoin jumped and then fell again,” Erlam said. “I think that was a sign that in times of real need the inflation hedging story is starting to seem a little misguided.”

Over the next month, omicron’s influence on global investor risk appetite and government responses will likely have the biggest impact on the price of bitcoin, according to Erlam. “If we see that omicron is vaccine resistant, that it’s much more violent, and it’s much more transmissible, then I think we’re going to see significant risk aversion in the markets.” In this scenario, the price of bitcoin “could be hit pretty hard,” Erlam said.

Stocks of miners

The Arcane Research mining index, which is made up of 15 of the largest publicly traded and market-capitalization-weighted mining companies, has gained 197% so far in 2021, surpassing bitcoin’s 95% gain, according to a report from Tuesday.

Bitcoin mining company Marathon Digital is so far the best performing in 2021 among all crypto mining stocks, gaining more than 350% since the start of the year, the report notes.

However, “an investment in mining companies carries a much higher risk than an investment in bitcoin itself,” according to the Arcane report. Bitcoin miner Bit Digital has seen its shares drop 70% so far in 2021, as the company relocated operations from China to North America after China began cracking down on mining. crypto.

Similar trends are also occurring in physical assets, as shares of GDX gold miners, -1.20% tend to see amplified moves, relative to the underlying spot gold or futures. on GC00 gold, + 0.47%.

The crypto token called an omicron?

As the omicron variant of the coronavirus grabbed the world’s attention, a namesake cryptocurrency jumped more than 900%, from around $ 65 on November 27 to $ 692 on November 29. The Omicron token recently traded at around $ 322, according to CoinMarketCap.

The cryptocurrency is unrelated to the COVID variant, which also uses the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet. Digital omicron, which is a fork of Olympus, is a decentralized yield farming project launched in early November. Its OMIC token can only be redeemed at the Sushiswap decentralized crypto exchange.

“I think that’s kind of the whole stock economy that we find ourselves in,” Daniel Polotsky, founder and chief advisor of CoinFlip, told MarketWatch. “This project is still a very small project, despite its growth. There could be a lot of sentiment manipulation, ”Polotsky said.

Crypto Executives To Testify Before Congress

On December 8, CEOs of several large cryptocurrency companies will testify before the House Financial Services Committee starting at 10 a.m. ET, reports Chris Matthews of MarketWatch.

The audience is titled “Digital Assets and the Future of Finance” and will explore the “challenges and benefits” of financial innovations.

Witnesses will include Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of crypto exchange FTX, Brian Brooks, former acting currency controller and CEO of Bitfury, Chad Cascarilla, CEO of Paxos, Danelle Dixon, CEO of Stellar Development Foundation and Alesia Haas, CFO of Coinbase Global Inc. COIN, -3.32%.

Crypto companies, funds

In news from crypto-related companies, shares of Coinbase traded down 2.5% to $ 287 on Thursday afternoon. It was down 8.1% in the last five trading days. Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy Inc. MSTR, -3.13%, fell 3.1% to $ 683.9. It has fallen 2.4% in the past five days.

Mining company Riot Blockchain Inc. RIOT, -7.39% of shares fell 7.4% to $ 33, contributing to an 11% loss in the past five days. Shares of Marathon Digital Holdings Inc. MARA, -3.39%, plunged 3.4% to $ 49, contributing to a loss of 5.4% in the past five days. Another miner, Ebang International Holdings Inc. EBON, rose 1.4% to $ 1.5, with a loss of 13% in the past five days.

Overstock.com Inc. OSTK, -0.09% was down 0.7% to $ 84.1. Shares are down 9.4% in the past five days.

Square Inc. SQ shares of -1.21% fell 2.5% to $ 189.5, with a loss of 12.1% in the past five days. Tesla Inc.’s TSLA, at -0.95%, traded 0.75% to $ 1,087, with a loss of 2.6% in the past five days.

PayPal Holdings Inc. PYPL, + 4.37% rose 4.4% to $ 187, as it posted a loss of 0.8% in the past five days, while NVIDIA Corp. NVDA, + 2.20% rose 2.4% to $ 321, with a loss of 1.7% over the past five days.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD, +1.05%, rose 0.86% to $ 150.4 and was down 4.9% in the last five trading days.

In the fund space, ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF BITO, + 0.58%, rose 0.5% to 36.3 on Thursday, while Valkyrie Bitcoin Strategy ETF BTF, + 0.22% rose 0, 3% to 22.4. VanEck Bitcoin Strategy ETF XBTF, + 0.57% rose 0.6% to 56.6.

Grayscale Bitcoin Trust GBTC, + 1.16% rose 0.1% to $ 44.9, with a loss of 2.7% in the past five days.

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