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

So that happened. The ultimate FUD event: global markets experience extreme volatility and governments scramble to respond. Hello QE4.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) is beginning to have an impact on daily life here in the UK. For those not directly effected, it’s merely an annoyance of constant news coverage and grocery store insufficiencies. Though that could change in the coming weeks. For us at Copper we’d like to reassure our clients that it’s still business as usual. You can read our full statement here.

We’re also beginning the first in a series of 12 deep-dives into the institutional side of crypto-assets. Our inaugural issue looks at structured products, and why they’re so hard to achieve.

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.

Derivatives market liquidations push insurance funds to all-time high

• Such market occurrences have led BitMEX's Insurance fund to hit an all-time high of 36,493 BTC. At the same time, the insurance fund maintained by Deribit has been slashed almost by half
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• As of the time of writing, a staggering $1.6 billion had been liquidated on BitMEX, boosting the exchange's insurance fund in the last 24 hours

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Crypto lenders demand collateral as market buckles

• The budding market for cryptocurrency-backed loans met its first big stress test this week as bitcoin dropped 40% and lenders demanded additional collateral from borrowers
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• Genesis Capital called an additional $100 million of collateral from its selective pool of about 40 clients. Rival Celsius Network–which lends to 225 institutions–has seen margin calls in the hundreds of millions

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Why are structured products in Bitcoin so hard to achieve?

• Sophisticated investors looking to hedge their risks are still lacking in institution-tier investment products linked to the world’s largest cryptocurrency
• The nature of Bitcoin being on global and largely unregulated exchanges adds to US regulatory push back in accepting complex derivative products to be traded on the nation’s largest securities exchanges

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Latest Coin News

BTC

• Price Analysis: Bitcoin dives below $5,000 amid growing selling pressure.
• Bitcoin CME futures volume dropped — did institutions jump ship?
• Bitcoin miners facing double whammy of reward cuts after plunge.

ETH

• Price analysis: Ethereum price enters the new week in consolidation above $120.
• Daily transaction fees on Ethereum hit $564,000 amid network congestion on Thursday.
• Thursday’s market madness strained Ethereum’s killer app: DeFi.

XRP

• Price Analysis: Paralysed between stacks of resistance and support areas. 
• Ripple court ruling may expand legal action potential against crypto. 
• Ripple labs could face more law suits after California ruling. 

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