$BTC 24 Hour High $22,450.13
$BTC 24 Hour Low $21,655.24
$ETH 24 Hour High $1,778.02
$ETH 24 Hour Low $1,690.79
Happy Mid-Autumn Festival from HKbitEX! Hope you had a wonderful holiday. Highlights from the week:
- Final countdown to the Merge begins
- Cardano’s own upgrade scheduled for end of Sept
- Binance will convert users’ USDC into its own stablecoin BUSD
- Singapore’s biggest bank DBS backs crypto despite market slump
- Animoca Brands confirms $110mn funding deal with Temasek, Boyu and CGV
- Bank of Russia agrees to legalize crypto for cross-border payments
The $BTC and $ETH market
Bitcoin (BTC) starts a pivotal week on a firm footing as bulls succeed. It stayed higher into the Sept. 10 weekly close as optimistic forecasts favored the level of $23,000 next. The Ethereum Merge and fresh United States inflation data were the top catalysts expected to influence the market.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD hitting $22,481 on Bitstamp, its highest since Aug. 19. The pair had held on to gains over the weekend, with a declining US dollar providing a catalyst for risk assets at the start of the week.
With less than 6 days until the Merge, Ethereum’s dominant ascent continues with the ETH/BTC ratio reaching 0.085 – the highest level since December. Less inspiring, however, was the price action in Ether, which lost ground on the day despite continued hype around The Merge.
Cardano has set Sept. 22 as the date for its Vasil mainnet upgrade, founder of the blockchain Charles Hoskinson announced on his YouTube vlog Friday. The hard fork was originally scheduled for June of this year and rescheduled twice.
Mainstream adoption & What’s in the news…
Binance, the largest crypto exchange by volume, will start converting any existing user balances and new deposits of USD Coin (USDC), Pax Dollar (USDP) and True USD (TUSD) into the company’s own stablecoin, according to a statement published on Monday. The conversion is scheduled to begin Sept. 29.
Singapore's largest bank, DBS, aims to expand its cryptocurrency and digital assets offerings to 300,000 new clients in the face of the crypto bear market, according to a Financial Times report on Tuesday.
The Bank of Russia, the country’s central bank, has reportedly admitted that cross-border payments in crypto are inevitable in the current geopolitical conditions.
The Russian central bank has been rethinking the approach to regulating crypto and agreed with the finance ministry to legalize crypto for cross-border payments, the local news agency TASS reported on Monday.
Game software and venture capital company Animoca Brands confirmed on Thursday that it has clinched a $110 million funding round, backed by Temasek, Boyu Capital and CGV Capital.
The raise comes in the form of a convertible note issuance, which may or may not be converted into equity at a later date. This fundraising method is sometimes used in the event that a company does not want to dilute its own shares or was unable to raise equity capital.