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

While today the UK celebrates the late May bank holiday, last week crypto got to celebrate the closest thing it has to an annual celebration, with its reflection on Lazlo Hanyecz’s first use of BTC in a commercial transaction.

The consolidation that we expected to see in the crypto market this year has started to take shape, delayed possibly by the onset of COVID19 around the world. Nevertheless, it was Genesis acquiring custodian Vo1t that got journalists wondering who would be next.

This news could feature on a call that Goldman Sachs will host this week about the economy, and crypto’s place in it. Wall Street banks have been steadily warming to crypto, so watch out for any big moves from the great vampire squid.

Finally, 50 original BTC moved from a wallet that lay dormant since the first month of the blockchain’s operation - causing immediate speculation that Satoshi himself was behind the tx. Unfortunately there is no further evidence to support such a claim.

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.

Crypto ‘gray’ markets could be unintended consequence of FATF travel rule

Applying this rule to crypto is complex since it involves grafting something like SWIFT’s interbank messaging standards onto a system designed to be pseudonymous

Regulatory consultant Sian Jones, who chairs the InterVASP messaging standards group, said a shadow network of unregulated exchanges might be created, operating from countries that have not yet implemented the FATF recommendations

Read More

Stablecoin demand reaches ATH amid COVID-19

The value of assets for all stablecoins, of which Tether has the lion’s share at 85.1%, surpassed $10bn for the first time last week, having surged by over 70% since the beginning of February

According to researcher Messari, stablecoins added nearly as much market cap in Q1 2020 as they did in all of 2019

Read More

LMAX CEO says household names will enter crypto

The next two years will be critical for institutions entering crypto, according to David Mercer, CEO of LMAX, and the much-awaited wave of interest will be driven by the customer

Currently, big players don't want to hold crypto, but that's changing as the credit of the asset class grows. Mercer said factors are moving in the right direction

Read More

Latest Coin News

BTC

• Price Analysis: The trading action in the near term is likely to remain sideways with a consolidation between $8,700 and $8,800
• PJT on BTC: Bitcoin is now the macro bit bet
• Russia proposes 2M Rub fine and 7 years in jail for illegal crypto use

ETH

• Price analysis: The daily chart shows Ethereum trading above the moving averages
• Staking will turn Ethereum 2.0 into a functional store of value
• Ethereum privacy protocol takes foot off brake with entirely immutable contracts

XRP

• Price Analysis: price bounces off last week’s support at $0.19 but recovery stalls under $0.1950
• Ripple joins Cross Border working group with SWIFT and Microsoft
• Ripple and Chris Larsen make waves with COVID-19 donations in Bay area

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