Last Week in Review: The SP500 technically entered a bull market, and US regulation intensifies

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

🦅 Regulatory pressure in the US continues

• The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a US regulator, has continued to put the fight to the crypto industry inside its borders. 

• The SEC is arguing that certain cryptocurrencies listed on exchanges are securities, the same as company stocks, and should therefore be regulated as such.

• Other countries and regions like the EU and South Africa are in various stages of implementing crypto regulatory frameworks. 
  

🐂 The SP500 entered a bull market

• The SP500 saw an end to its bear market and entered a bull phase when it gained 0.6% on Thursday, pushing the index past 20% from the lowest point in October last year. 

• A market technically enters a bull market when a benchmark index such as the SP500 appreciates 20% from its lowest point over a sustained period. The opposite is true for a bear market. 

• Some analysts say it’s too early to start celebrating while others are carefully optimistic. “At the very least, it would suggest that maybe the worst is behind us,” Todd Sohn of Strategas Research Partners told The Washington Post.  

• “To be in a confirmed bull market, we need to see three things: a path to an earnings recovery, a path to the end of the rate cycle, and better market breadth,” said Jurrien Timmer, global head of macro at Fidelity. 
  

💎 Vitalik Buterin lays out Ethereum’s roadmap to success 

• Scale, security and privacy are the three crucial elements that the Ethereum network needs to get right if it’s to succeed, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin noted in a recent blog post. And they need to happen at the same time. 

• “As Ethereum transitions from a young experimental technology into a mature tech stack that is capable of actually bringing an open, global and permissionless experience to average users, there are three major technical transitions that the stack needs to undergo, roughly simultaneously,” Buterin wrote. 

• Transaction costs continue to be a problem, along with transactions appearing publicly, which will be “far too high a privacy sacrifice for many users,” forcing these users into centralised solutions “that at least somewhat hide your data,” he noted. 
  

🤝 USDC stablecoin issuer Circle hires former US regulator 

• Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, has hired Heath Tarbert, the former chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), as its new chief legal officer and head of corporate affairs. 

• “As we continue building a bridge between traditional finance and web 3, Heath’s perspective, legal acumen and global regulatory experience will help us advance the utility value of USDC worldwide,” said Jeremy Allaire, Circle’s co-founder and CEO.

• Tarbert spent 18 months as chairman at the CFTC, the US regulator that oversees the derivatives markets in the US.

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TL;DID read

5 places to keep your money other than a savings account

There’s merit in the trusted way of saving money in a savings account with a bank. It’s familiar, convenient and generally risk-free, but returns can be rather thin compared to other investments. No one’s saying you should ditch the old savings account. After all, it’s working exactly as intended, but there are INVESTMENTS more suited to long-term investing. 

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Crunching the numbers

🔺 20% – The SP500 was 20% off of its bottom last week, signalling the end of a bear market, in the technical sense, at least. 

💾 8 – Analysts have warned that most of the gains in the SP500 have come from eight of the largest companies in the index, the majority of them tech stocks, and that it’s not an accurate indication of equity market health. 

💎 19.09% – Staked share of ETH supply. 

🟠 2140 – The year bitcoin is expected to reach its 21 million cap. 

🪽19.4 million – The number of BTC currently in circulation. 

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Crypto trivia

An illustrated guide of Bitcoin through the years

Who was the first person to trade bitcoin? And what was the name of the first bitcoin exchange? Brush up on your Bitcoin trivia in our illustrated feature about the events that shaped the leading crypto, HERE.