Last Week in Review: Bitcoin posted a new yearly high

The highlights from last week’s headline grabbers. All the important news, numbers and events from the world of crypto in one place. 

News from the block

🟠 Bitcoin posted a new high for 2023

• The market leader had a brief peek above $31K, a new high for the year, before retracing to $30K where it continues to trade. 
  

• Analysts have named the rally that pushed the cryptocurrency to new highs for 2023 the “BlackRock pivot”. The rally followed BlackRock announcing its plans to apply for a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 
  

• Bitcoin is up more than 13% in the past week. 
  

📈 Rising signs of credit stress in the US, says banking regulator

• US Banks should be “on the balls of their feet” regarding credit risk management, says one regulator. 
  

• In a new statement from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Michael J. Hsu says that signs of stress are appearing in consumer credit and in commercial real estate markets.
  

• Billionaire real estate entrepreneur Jeff Greene also issued a warning that rising interest rates could cause significant damage to investors and US banks, The Daily Hodl reported. 
  

⏩ SAP testing payments with USDC 

• The software giant is testing Circle’s Ethereum-based USDC stablecoin for clients to send payments faster and cheaper. 
  

• “Cross-border payments are a hassle for many small and mid-sized enterprises with international business partners. Expensive – up to 50 USD per transaction, slow – up to 7 days to transmit the money, and non-transparent – you never know the status of the transaction,” the company said. “These major challenges can get solved with Digital Money as a means of settlement and Blockchain as the underlying technology.”
  

• A stablecoin like USDC is pegged 1:1 to USD  and collateralised against cash holdings or short-term government securities to avoid fluctuations and keep its value “stable”. 
  

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TL;DID read

What is the difference between a spot BTC ETF and a futures BTC ETF? 

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Crunching the numbers

💰 8.59 trillion – BlackRock’s total assets under management 

🛝 $188 million – The amount of cash inflows into bitcoin-related investment products last week, the highest in over a year  

🛜 8 – Where Silicon Valley places in the latest CoinDesk Crypto Hubs 2023 list. Singapore sits in second and first place goes to Zug, a town in Switzerland where Ethereum was created 

💎 11% – The current concentration of large bitcoin holders, investors that each own between 0.1 and 1% of all bitcoin supply  

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Crypto trivia