ProShares (which holds the first bitcoin ETF), has now applied for a waiver to restrict how many bitcoin futures individuals can buy from the fund. If it can’t go ahead with the waiver, it plans to introduce instruments like swaps or later-dated contracts to get around the issue.
A small signal of the ever-increasing accountability of bitcoin is that the first US public pension plan has now invested in bitcoin. The Houston Firefighters’ Relief and Retirement Fund purchased $25 million of bitcoin out of the $4 billion of assets it holds in total.
However, it seems that the unexpected star of last week turned out to be Shiba Inu. The coin was originally launched as another meme token to rival dogecoin back in August 2020, and its first bull run happened in the crypto surge this May. However, its value dropped promptly back down, and it’s only over the last week that a sudden spike has taken place. What’s behind the change? It could be due to rumors Robinhood plans to add it to the app, or tweets from Elon Musk.
In the global race to launch central bank digital currencies, Nigeria could be about to enter the game. The Central Bank of Nigeria has announced plans to launch a new digital currency, called eNaira (the Nigerian currency is called the Naira). It’s quite the turnaround considering the country prohibited crypto transactions earlier this year, so it will be interesting to see how things progress.
Last week saw another success story for NFTs, many of which have reached impressive prices in auctions throughout the year. The latest is a rare whisky Macallans scotch whiskey set, which reached $2.3 million, on the specialist marketplace Metacask. This is an example of how NFTs can be used not just for digital art but also to digitally transfer ownership of a physical item.
Another positive story of the week is that the decentralized exchange ZkLink made $8.5 million in funding. This will help in its quest to become the first exchange of its kind to enable one-click, cross-chain transfers across different kinds of chains (different cryptocurrency protocols use different blockchains). This would make the experience of using decentralized exchanges much simpler for users.
The latest of a never-ending stream of regulatory problems in the blockchain world, there are rumors that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is investigating Polymarket — the biggest DeFi prediction market. This is due to claims that users on the platform are trading swaps and binary options, which isn’t allowed since Polymarket isn’t registered with the CFTC. It had recently emerged that the protocol was trying to reach a $1 billion valuation, which now seems unlikely to happen any time soon.
Holdings and Performance
Remember, this is not investment or trading advice. Do you own research before investing. Cryptocurrencies are very volatile and you can lose all of your money.