📉 Price volatility decreases; all eyes on US debt ceiling agreement 🤝

Crypto markets trade flat as traders seek triggers for directional breakout

Crypto markets remained range bound last week, with the overall market cap staying below the $1.2 trn mark. In sharp contrast to the week before, there was a major decrease in price volatility during the course of the week as traders were patiently awaiting triggers for directional moves. BTC and ETH have traded flat across the week and are anchored around the $27k and $1.8k levels. On the macro front, all eyes are on the hopes of bipartisan agreement on lifting the debt ceiling in the US, which could result in a rally across "risk-on" assets.

Last week saw the annual BTC Conference take place in Miami, with lots of industry and even political participation, with the highlight being Lightning-powered Strike app's launch in 65 countries! However, the biggest BTC-related development was around Tether's USDT Reserves. The stablecoin major would allocate BTC as part of the reserves backing the stablecoin, drawing comparisons with a similar announcement from algorithmic stablecoin UST Terra last year!

There was a lot of token-specific action, with Ripple's XRP drawing much attention throughout the week and surging 10%, as it announced its $250-million acquisition of crypto custodian Metaco, speculation of a "suitable" verdict against the SEC, and also the launch of CBDC platform. Another major gainer was Liquid Staking Protocol Lido's LDO, surging 20% as the community proposed new changes for staking and buyback, including a revenue-sharing parameter that would redirect 20-50% of “future Lido DAO revenue from the protocol treasury to stakers of $LDO.”

Litecoin was another token that witnessed a sharp increase in prices as "Digital Silver" approached its scheduled halving of mining rewards. Web3 gaming too, got a big boost last week as Axie Infinity was finally able to list its game on the Apple App Store and resulting in an above 10% jump in AXS prices!

Before we conclude, here’s a quick look at other important news updates from last week's crypto world.

Attacker rocks Tornado Cash DAO with vote fraud

Decentralized crypto mixer Tornado Cash suffered a setback on Saturday as an unidentified attacker managed to gain full control of the governance through a malicious proposal. At 3.25 ET on May 20, an attacker successfully granted 1.2 million votes to a malicious proposal. Given that the proposal received more than 700,000 legitimate votes, the attacker gained total control over Tornado Cash governance. (Source: Cointelegraph)

Strike to shift global HQ to El Salvador

Bitcoin payment provider Strike is relocating its global headquarters to El Salvador and is expanding its services to 65 countries. The company currently serves only the US, El Salvador, and Argentina. Strike’s chief executive Jack Mallers said the shifting of the headquarters was a response to the growing anti-crypto regulatory crackdown in the US. (Source: Cointelegraph)

Ripple launches CBDC platform

Ripple is launching a proprietary platform for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Central banks, governments, and financial institutions will be able to develop their own digital currencies using the platform built on the same technology as the XRP Ledger (XRPL). It draws on Ripple’s Private Ledger, which was used for CBDC issuance in 2021. (Source: Decrypt)

New crypto rules get the nod from EU ministers

The European Union became the first major jurisdiction in the world to pass crypto regulations by unanimously approving the Markets in Crypto Assets regulation (MiCA). It also agreed to new anti-money laundering measures on crypto fund transfers. The new regulations are a result of EU looking to regulate the crypto-asset sector to safeguard investor interest. (Source: CoinDesk)

Ledger continues to defend recovery system

Crypto wallet maker Ledger dug itself into a deeper public relations hole on Wednesday when its support team said in a now-deleted tweet that "technically speaking it is and always has been possible to write firmware that facilitates key extraction," thus allowing the company to extract its users' keys. Earlier, Ledger Support sent a couple of tweets that likely did little to assuage its users' concerns, suggesting that it could make its customers' assets vulnerable in any way it wanted to, but has – thus far – not done so. (Source: CoinDesk)

HashKey Group to raise up to $200M

Digital asset financial services firm HashKey Group plans to raise funds at a $1 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported. The firm is in preliminary talks to raise between $100 million to $200 million, the report said. The company is looking to capitalize on Hong Kong’s re-emergence as a potential crypto hub. (Source: CoinDesk)

That’s it for now. Thanks for sticking around.

See you later, folks! 👋

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