Last Week in Review: Second-largest bank failure in US history, and new all-time high for BTC transactions

by Team Luno
· 3 minute read

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

🏦 First Republic Bank fails in 2nd-largest collapse in US history

  • Regulators stepped in over the weekend as another US bank collapsed, possibly due to pressures related to high interest rates, as reported by the Financial Times. 
  • The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) coughed up $13 billion to cover the bank’s losses, while JP Morgan purchased First Republic’s assets.

  • The deal comes less than two months after the failure of Silicon Valley (SVB) and Signature Bank, which many analysts believe was a major driver of the rally that sees the leading crypto up by roughly 40% since the SVB collapse. 

🟠 Bitcoin records new all-time high transactions 

  • The Bitcoin network recorded 568,300 transactions on Sunday last week, nearly 78,000 more than its previous peak during the top of the 2017 bull run, as noted by Blockworks.

  • Around 54% of these transactions were from ordinals, or Bitcoin NFTs as these types of transactions have become known.  

  • An ordinal is essentially a transaction with extra data attached to it. This data can represent text, music or art, but, eventually, also other types of cryptocurrencies. It means that the Bitcoin network may one day be able to host a stablecoin or other cryptocurrencies. 

⚡ Lightning on Bitcoin 1000 times cheaper than legacy payments networks

  • Data from Glassnode shows that Bitcoin’s Lightning Network is reportedly 1,000 times cheaper to use than legacy payment networks, according to CoinTelegraph. 

  • The fee charged per 1 BTC sent across the Lightning Network is currently 3,000 satoshis, which is equivalent to a fee charge of 0.0029%.
  • The Lightning Network is a layer-2 network built on top of Bitcoin to accommodate faster and cheaper payments. 

💻 Visa and Deloitte continue their push into crypto  

  • Payments giant Visa is hiring backend developers with experience in public blockchains and stablecoins to join its crypto team as it continues its foray into Web 3 technologies.

  • Blockworks also reported that a search on LinkedIn for crypto jobs based in the US revealed 331 crypto-related roles at Deloitte, most of them posted a week ago. 
  • Deloitte was hired by Circle in January to audit its proof of reserves. Circle is the company behind the USDC stablecoin. 

🐵 Sotheby’s launches NFT marketplace 

  • Auction house Sotheby’s has launched a peer-to-peer, on-chain portal for non-fungible token (NFT) art.

  • The portal, available on Sotheby’s Metaverse platform, supports NFT artwork minted on Ethereum (ETH) and scaling network Polygon (MATIC).

  • Collectors can pay for art and collectibles in either ETH or MATIC. The auction house’s platform will offer a rotating, curated selection of art, starting with 13 leading artists in the digital art world.

TL;DID read

What is a soft landing? 

There’s renewed focus on interest rates this month as investors digest the possibility of another rate hike by the Federal Reserve and what this means for its economy. What exactly does a soft landing for the US economy look like, and why does it matter for the rest of the world? READ HERE.

Crunching the numbers

📈 568,300 – The number of bitcoin transactions on 30 April, a new all-time high. 

🔮 $100,000 – Standard Chartered predicts the price of BTC will reach $100k by the end of 2024.

💰 $13 billion – The amount put up by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to cover the failure of First Republic Bank.

🌅 1,100 – More than 3,000 BTC were revived last week after remaining untouched for more than seven years, with 1,100 of these coins originally bought before 2013. 

⛑️ 384,000 – By how much job openings in the US decreased in March, suggesting a softer labour market, meaning that the aggressive rate hiking by the Fed may finally be working. 

The crypto time capsule

Crypto trivia

Interest rates and crypto? The two are more entangled than you think. Find out why, HERE.

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