It’s been a wild ride for crypto this week!
- Credit Suisse goes down, But Bitcoin goes On.. and On..and ..
- Arbitrum craze is real.
- Fidelity Opens Bitcoin Trading but authorities aren’t happy.
- Bitboy vs SBF, who will win? Nobody cares but investors already lost.
Owl Says ‘Neowwtral’
Another Day, Another Bank Run
It looks like Credit Suisse Group AG, the Switzerland-based global investment bank and financial services firm, caught a nasty case of the bank flu! Their shares dropped a whopping 25% in a single week, enough to make even the most hardened investors catch a cold sweat. But while things looked bad at first, there may be a silver lining – it could mean more gains for Bitcoin and the crypto market!
As the Swiss government attempts to swoop in and save the day for troubled banking giant Credit Suisse, it’s worth remembering all the shenanigans they’ve been accused of getting up to in recent years. In 2014, they pleaded guilty to grand theft auto charges from the US Department of Justice after “borrowing” (wink wink) funds from American taxpayers and meekly driving them off to hide in an offshore bank.
In 2017, Credit Suisse agreed to pay a whopping $5.38 billion for making some less-than-honest representations about residential mortgage-backed securities. Fast forward to 2022 and the bank had a leaky situation when a whistleblower revealed their epic lack of due diligence. Turns out, they had opened and kept accounts for sketchy customers involved with torture, drugs, money laundering, corruption, and all sorts of shenanigans. But Credit Suisse never fails to surprise! In 2021 and 2022, they claimed to have discovered some “material weaknesses” in their financial reporting. No surprise there! They probably forgot to check if the accounts were for Tom, Dick, or Harry Potters!
Arbitrum Airdrop Searches Spike
It’s finally official, the biggest player in the Ethereum’s layer 2 scaling landscape, Arbitrum, is getting its own token! ARB is the new token, and it’ went flying out of the digital wallets on Thursday, March 23.
Google searches for Arbitrum, the largest layer 2 scaling system for Ethereum, have skyrocketed in the past 24 hours. We guess people must be throwing a party to celebrate the Arbitrum Foundation’s airdrop Thursday! China must be really into it, as they’ve completely dominated the “interest by region” category on Google trends – let’s just hope the rest of the world can hold their own in the airdrop.
But be warned! Scammers love a good airdrop as much as the rest of us, so make sure to exercise caution when claiming your tokens.
Fidelity Investments Opens Bitcoin Trading To The Public
Fidelity Investments is now offering a way for you to make your wildest crypto dreams come true – you can now buy bitcoin using the Fidelity Crypto platform! No need to wait in line to get your hands on the hot cryptocurrency that’s been taking the world by storm – just hit the ‘buy’ button and get ready to rock on with your new cryptocoins! But don’t expect to become a cryptocurrency “guru” overnight – you won’t be able to transfer the funds to a self-custody wallet, so you’ll have to play the “wait game” with this one. Oh, and there will be a fee, but Fidelity is calling it a 1% spread and we don’t know what that means
Fidelity’s foray into the wild and woolly world of cryptocurrencies has certainly raised a few eyebrows – if you don’t believe us, just ask the senators who wrote a letter expressing their concerns. “Fidelity Investments has opted to expand beyond traditional finance and delve into the highly unstable and increasingly risky digital asset market.”
But hey, if you’re from the US, 18 and over, and living in an eligible state, it looks like it’s time to get your crypto game on! Who said you can’t have fun with finance?
War Time: BitBoy vs SBF
It looks like Ben Armstrong, aka BitBoy, may have gotten himself in a bit of trouble – it turns out that he was promoting FTX without disclosing the hefty compensation he was getting in return! Not only that, but it looks like the whole gang – presumably including Armstrong himself – had to replace their promotional videos with an apology video… Ouch!
When it comes to promoting crypto exchanges, it looks like Anthony Pompliano can say “I’m late to the party but still here,” while Kevin O’Leary must be saying “oh, c’mooon! I was getting paid $15 million to do this?!”
It looks like Kim Kardashian’s crypto hustle also didn’t pay off this time. The SEC charged the TV celebrity $1.26 million in 2022 for illegally promoting a crypto asset. It looks like Kim should have read the fine print as the upcoming EU Markets-in-Crypto-Assets bill will now charge influencer promoters who don’t disclose compensation with market manipulation – we can only assume that means Kim won’t be getting away with shilling crypto anymore. Let this be a lesson to everyone – you can’t pull one over on the powers that be!
Crypto Market Watch Ft. Goldman Sachs
Woohoo! The crypto world has seen a massive surge—Bitcoin breached $26,000 yet again, and Ethereum reached above $1700! But what made it happen? Well, okay, here’s your answer: the labor market on Thursday showed signs of remaining stubbornly robust, according to the latest jobless claims data.
Edward Moya, senior analyst at OANDA said, Well, it looks like Wall Street has managed to make Bitcoin even higher, even though efforts are being made to quell the banking turmoil, and central banks around the world have their own tightening cycles. The ECB went ahead and gave us a mini-Heart attack with a 0.5% increase, but thankfully the Fed looks like they might only give us one more poke with a rate hike on March 22nd.
Honorable Mentions
Have you heard of the new way to trade tokens? Uniswap V3 has arrived, and it’s the world’s largest decentralized exchange! This exciting development can offer users faster and cheaper transactions, depending on the tokens being used. But it wasn’t an easy journey – there was even a governance proposal in February that talked about how Uniswap could extend its market share by jumping onto the BNB chain. Apparently, a lot of people were worried about stepping on PancakeSwap’s toes.
Cardano has been cookin’ up something delicious and it’s finally ready to serve! The newest update, Node 1.35.6, brings P2P support to the party. Now your nodes can connect without relying on a single server or dev. Just like Mom always said, sharing is caring! This update makes Cardano’s ecosystem even more secure and robust.
