Crypto markets tumbled in dramatic fashion last week, retreating from recent all time highs. Bitcoin even briefly sank to a low of $43,796 on Saturday, the lowest in three weeks.

Though it has been a sea of red across pretty much the entire board, Cardano emerged as a winner, skyrocketing to a fresh all time high of $1.30 and surpassing Tether and Binance’s BNB to move into the third place among the world's largest cryptocurrencies by market cap. According to Messari, ADA is up 732% in the past 90 days.

Perhaps the biggest story in a sea of big stories was Coinbase publicising its S-1 on Thursday. After reading the filing, Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine concluded that "running a crypto exchange is at least 60 times more lucrative than running a stock exchange."

Asset manager Coinshares also announced it is preparing to IPO on March 11th on the Nasdaq First North Growth Market in Sweden, with a potential $3–5bn valuation. The listing would make CoinShares the first major digital asset investment firm to list publicly.

Below is our weekly roundup of industry 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.

This week's top stories

Square goes even bigger on Bitcoin with a new $170m investment, deepening crypto bet

Square purchased $170 million in Bitcoin, further committing to the cryptocurrency. According to the company's fiscal fourth-quarter financial report on Tuesday, Square purchased approximately 3,318 Bitcoins, expanding on its October 2020 buy of 4,709. Square said it represents about 5% of the company’s total assets as of the end of 2020.

The payments company also disclosed that it had conducted $1.76 billion in Bitcoin sales during the fourth quarter of 2020, with $4.57 billion sold for the entirety of last year. Read more

Coinbase reveals Bitcoin investment ahead of public listing

On Thursday, Coinbase’s S-1 Form was made public, revealing key details before Coinbase stock hits the market. According to the filing, Coinbase netted revenue of $1.14 billion in 2020, up from $483 million the previous year. The company also reported net income of $322 million for the year after posting a loss in 2019.

That same day, the exchange also revealed on its blog that it holds Bitcoin and other cryptoassets as an investment on its balance sheet. Read more

JPMorgan says investors could make Bitcoin 1% of portfolios

JPMorgan is the latest Wall Street firm floating the idea of investors using Bitcoin as a way to diversify their portfolios.

Rather than making any big bets on Bitcoin, the bank's strategists recommended a relatively small allocation which wouldn’t take too much of a hit even if the price goes down substantially. “In a multi-asset portfolio, investors can likely add up to 1% of their allocation to cryptocurrencies in order to achieve any efficiency gain in the overall risk-adjusted returns of the portfolio,” strategists including Joyce Chang and Amy Ho wrote in the research note.  Read more

In case you missed it..

⚡️ CoinShares releases DeFi Index Token for institutional investors.

⚡️ MicroStrategy completes another $1bn Bitcoin buy.

⚡️ CoinShares launches physically backed Ethereum ETP with $75m in AUM.

⚡️ Bitfinex, Tether settle with New York's Attorney General for $18.5m.

⚡️ Bitwise AUM hits $1bn, fueled by professional investors.

⚡️ M31 Capital looks to launch a new Bitcoin hedge fund.

⚡️ Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust added over 10,000 ETH during price correction.

⚡️ Grayscale Bitcoin premium flips negative as BTC stays below $50k.

⚡️ Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust premium follows Bitcoin sibling into flipping negative.

⚡️ SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce backs DeFi.

⚡️ DeFi exchange 1Inch expands to Binance smart chain citing ETH gas fees.

⚡️ Stone Ridge adds Bitcoin to its diversified alternatives fund.

⚡️ Kraken to double its valuation to $10bn via funding round.

⚡️ DeFi building block service Furucombo exploited for $14m.

⚡️ On-chain stablecoin volume surpasses $360bn for February.

⚡️ Robinhood adds 6 million new users to its crypto platform in first two months of 2021.

⚡️ Monthly crypto exchange volumes broke $1 trillion for the first time in February.

⚡️ Powell says the Federal Reserve will engage the public on a digital dollar this year.

⚡️ Major Dubai crypto fund to sell $750m worth of Bitcoin to buy Cardano and Polkadot.

From Copper

Avalanche AMA with Copper

Tomorrow our Chief Product Officer, Alex Ryvkin joins the leadership team of Avalanche for an AMA to chat through our recent partnership. Join the discussion on Avalanche's Telegram at 10:30am ET (3:30pm GMT).

Crypto market pullback: An inevitable correction, not the end of bull market

After a euphoric weekend that saw Bitcoin surpass $1 trillion in market cap and Ether surge past $2,000, w/c Monday 22 Feb kicked off with an abrupt change in mood in the crypto markets. With the exception of a handful of digital assets such as SOL and DAI, cryptoassets across the board tanked aggressively.

According to our CFO Ralph Payne, a correction of this magnitude is healthy and was to be expected. “We have seen the crypto market leap from around $850bn in late January to about $1.8trillion over the weekend. There is no asset that will ever just shoot up in a straight line without a pullback.” Read More