Looking back at last week’s biggest news, including price analyses for BTC, ETH, and XRP.

The growth of blockchain as an industry is perhaps reflected in no better place than Hong Kong, where a recent report shows that nearly 40% of all new firms in the fintech space are aligned in some way to DLT.

Meanwhile, the Marshall Islands are vying to become the first to launch a CBDC. The project is in an 18-month run up phase, which will see the country release a preliminary token. Many central banks will no doubt be observing this project with keen interest.

Finally, the fine folks at Bloomberg are making a bold prediction (based on data, mind you) that BTC will hit $20k this year. With the one caveat that, “something needs to go really wrong for Bitcoin not to appreciate”. Not sure if they’ve looked outside lately, but 2020 has basically been defined by things “going really wrong”. Still, they’ve got 6 months for their charts to be proven right.

Below is our weekly roundup of industry and coin specific news. If you’d like to get in touch with us about any of our products or services, we look forward to hearing from you. Just send us a note.

New Report: Can Decentralised Applications and Stablecoins contend with the financial sector?

DeFi is a movement still in its infancy but ripe with potential to massively disrupt the traditional financial sector. This is according to new study by Copper which examines how the meteoric rise of DeFi is permeating the traditional finance sector.

Read More

Decentralized finance platform Celsius crosses $1 billion in crypto deposits

Major crypto lender Celsius has surpassed $1bn in total cryptocurrency deposits less than two years after launching its mobile app and acquiring more than 110,000 active users. According to the press release, the DeFi platform has paid more than $17m in interest rewards to its clients to date, and over $12m in BTC interest.

Read More

Crypto derivatives volumes hit a $602 billion all-time high in May

Cryptocurrency derivatives volumes hit a new all-time high of $602 billion during the month of May, up 32% from April. According to CryptoCompare’s May 2020 Exchange Review, total spot volumes increased 5% to $1.27 trillion in May, which means derivatives represented 32% of the market, compared to 27% in April.

Most of the trading in derivatives came in leading exchanges in the space: BitMEX, Binance, OKEx, and Huobi. The largest exchange by derivatives trading volume e was Huobi, trading $176 billion last month after seeing volumes rise 29% in April.

Read More

Latest Coin News

BTC

• Price Analysis: Sideways trading action takes precedence over the weekend session
• Billionaire Tim Draper is giving out $1 million in Bitcoin
• VanEck’s MVIS and CryptoCompare launch Bitcoin Benchmark Rate 

ETH

Price analysis:

• ETH/USD is dealing with low trading activity; a situation that is likely to continue in the near-term
•  
• Vitalik Buterin calls Ethereum’s layer 2 scaling strategy a success 
• Federal Reserve endorses Ethereum-backed alternative to Libor

XRP

• Price Analysis: The triangle breakout depends on the bulls’ ability to hold above the trendline support in the short term
• XRP volume for Mexico and Australia reaches all-time high 
• XRP may be poised to decouple from Bitcoin, says crypto market analysis firm

Subscribe today to receive these updates directly to your inbox every Monday morning.