A lot happened on the crypto market this past week even though the two biggest cryptos by market cap, Bitcoin and Ethereum, didn’t undergo any significant price fluctuations. By announcing the adoption of Tether not only as legal tender, but as its official currency, Myanmar’s shadow government is claiming back some of its lost power.
Banks continue signing up for blockchain technology in a myriad of ways, while the US Senate grapples with the Infrastructure Bill.
Altcoins
Solana faced additional network slow-down issues, struggling to process transactions for a number of hours. The reason was noise over the SolChicks’ token sale on Raydium. In Ukraine, a program piloting the viability and functionality of an electronic currency will be launched on the Stellar blockchain by Bitt and Tascombank, two major financial institutions.
Finance
The Bank of America lauds Avalanche’s subnet feature, describing it as the driving force behind the large number of projects supported by the platform. Wells Fargo and HSBC have announced that they will be using a blockchain platform to settle some of their foreign exchange transactions. This is necessary to reduce the costs and risks that processing foreign exchange settlements entails.
Mastercard and Consensys entered a partnership to launch ConsenSys Rollups. This will equip major financial organizations with enterprise-grade scalability.
Polygon launches $200M Web 3.0 initiative
Polygon has partnered with Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian’s VC firm, Seven Seven Six, to launch a $200 million initiative. It will support projects at the intersection of Web 3.0 and social media.
Justin Sun resigns from TRON
TRON Foundation founder Justin Sun is resigning, he informed in a letter published on the TRON website. He will dedicate himself to other projects, including as WTO Ambassador of Grenada. Sun also informed that TRON would be dissolved next year.
Politics: stablecoin regulation and more
US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell acknowledged the need to regulate stablecoins to protect US investors. Otherwise, he stated that cryptocurrencies were not a major risk for the financial stability of US markets.
The definition of ‘broker’, which provoked a great deal of controversy in the infrastructure bill, remains a highly contended point. Six senators from both parties sent a letter to the US treasury, asking it to further elaborate on this definition.
The National Unity Government (NUG) of Myanmar, the shadow government, has adopted the stablecoin Tether as legal tender to fund efforts to overthrow the current military regime.
NFTs
Shopify partnered with GigLabs to integrate NFTs into its retail platform. Rarible and Tezos have integrated successfully. This makes Tezos the third blockchain the NFT platform supports in addition to Ethereum and Flow.
