Every Sunday we discuss the most important crypto news of the week. For several weeks now, the news has been full of problems with different governments, and last week was no different. It caused a number of striking price fluctuations.
Bitcoin decreases by Federal Reserve
For example, the Federal Reserve announced last Thursday that it would raise interest rates again in the United States, although not every central bank voter agreed.
Meanwhile, the bitcoin price shot to its highest point in just over a year, but this was short-lived. The market probably took the news from the Fed and the well-performing US economy badly. The price fell nearly 5% that day, the biggest drop for BTC of the week.
Fear of exchanges, Bitvavo and Coinmerce are growing
After the problems at various crypto exchanges last year and in the course of this year, the market hopes that the problems are now over. Unfortunately this turns out not to be the case. For example, Coinbase is accused of knowing perfectly well that certain cryptocurrencies would be unregistered securities. The company would now have shot itself in the foot.
The Asian exchange Huobi may also be about to collapse. The bitcoin reserves have plummeted by 90%, and the supply of other coins such as ethereum and USDT is also not good. Furthermore, the United States Tax and Customs Administration wants Kraken to share more customer data. This should prevent tax evasion.
Meanwhile, the Dutch exchanges Bitvavo and Coinmerce, opportunities in trouble at exchanges. Bitvavo announced that it has already received tens of millions of euros in crypto from former clients of Binance. The company helps customers make the switch. Coinmerce already has hundreds of thousands of customers.
Crypto hacks, crime, censorship and Russia
Furthermore, there is still war in Ukraine. You might expect that Russia doesn’t have much use for crypto because the country is subject to heavy sanctions, but nothing could be further from the truth. Since the start of the war, it has already received almost $ 20 million in crypto donations. So not only Ukraine is supported.
Russia is notorious for the many malicious hackers who do their work from this country, but unfortunately hacking knows no borders. In Canada, two teenagers were arrested this week for stealing about $ 4.2 million in bitcoin and ethereum. For this they used the hacking method ‘spear fishingand pretended to be Coinbase customer service agents. Meanwhile, another hacker has remarkably apologized for his actions.
Ethereum also ran into problems due to a hack by activists. The emphasis is on ‘even’, because it only lasted 12 seconds. Still, this is very unfavorable for financial infrastructure, and it did a good job of exposing the underlying problem of censorship and a lack of decentralization.