Bitcoin Price May Hit $100K by Year End: Standard Chartered Bank

This Week In Crypto

• Bitcoin price may hit $100k by year end, Standard Chartered Bank says. The bank said that the climb to $100,000 could be driven by the recent banking sector crisis that helped to re-establish bitcoin’s ($BTC) use as a decentralized scarce digital asset. The report also noted one of the drivers is the broader macro backdrop for risky assets gradually improving as the Fed nears the end of its tightening cycle.

• Republicans’ stablecoin bill draft would expand states’ powers. Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee unveiled their version of a draft stablecoin bill that would provide a narrower focus overall and a bigger role for state regulators* than a prior proposal. The GOP document makes a number of changes to draft legislation that was released by the panel ahead of a subcommittee hearing last week.

• Tether recoups almost all of market value lost during crypto meltdown. The stablecoin operator had assets totaling around $81.4 billion* backing its USDT token as of Monday. The amount reached a peak of about $83 billion last May, when the unraveling of Terra prompted investors to dump cryptocurrencies across the board.

• Circle CEO warns of active and accelerating de-dollarization. There's a very active de-dollarization taking place around the world right now, says Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of stablecoin issuer Circle. He says there are risks in the U.S. banking system, risks with the U.S. government itself, a geopolitical imposition on many parts of the world, and the desire for alternative payment systems all around the world.

• Zodia Custody, Standard Chartered’s crypto-focused unit, raises $36 million. Zodia Custody, a crypto-focused subsidiary of Standard Chartered, raised $36 million as it pursues international expansion. SC Ventures, the venture arm of Standard Chartered, and Japanese conglomerate SBI Holdings provided the bulk of the capital, alongside other unnamed investors.

• Hong Kong regulators to unveil crypto exchange license guidelines in May. Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission intends to publish guidelines on its licensing regime for crypto exchanges in the coming month. That follows a consultation process on the new regime that garnered more than 150 responses.

• NFT collectors capitulate as downturn drags on. Losses on secondary sales are averaging 1,000 ETH ($1.9M) per day, with spikes as high as 3,000 ETH, according to NFTstatistics. In the past 30 days, blue-chip NFTs like CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and Moonbirds have experienced drops of 18%, 16%, and 13%, respectively.

• CAKE plummets on syrup pool unlocks. The governance token of PancakeSwap, DeFi’s second-largest exchange with $2.6B in trading volume over the past week, has taken a beating this week after a large number of tokens entered circulation. The PancakeSwap team and the BNB Chain ecosystem at large are trying to figure out how to offset the selling pressure that comes with the increased supply.

• Bitcoin's negative correlation with dollar index strengthens ahead of U.S. GDP data. The negative correlation has strengthened, reversing the brief let-up witnessed in late March, and indicating scope for accelerated gains in the cryptocurrency in the case of a continued dollar slide following the release of the U.S. GDP data on Thursday.

• Ethereum Shanghai upgrade brings record inflow of 572K ETH staked in a week. Investors deposited some 571,950 ETH tokens into staking contracts, worth more than $1 billion, according to Dune Analytics. This was the largest weekly token inflow in ether ($ETH) staking’s almost two-and-a-half-year history. Institutional staking services drove the deposit surge in ETH staking.