Weekly News 9/28/2021: China bans crypto-assets again

Banks and Institutions

For the seventh time since 2013, China bans Bitcoin

he People’s Bank of China (PBC) has declared crypto exchanges as well as any derivatives will now be considered illegal activities. CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap and TradingView have become inaccessible, e-commerce giant Alibaba has stopped selling hardware for crypto mining, and the USDT price against the yuan has dropped by 7%.

Biggest investors are moving away from Bitcoin to Ethereum derivatives

US investment bank JPMorgan has revealed the gradual attraction of institutional investors to Ethereum derivatives, who are gradually moving away from Bitcoin in return. Premium on Ethereum futures contracts is 1% above the price, proof that demand is pulling the price up.

Kentucky orders Celsius to stop offering interest-bearing accounts

Previously rebuffed by the state of New Jerset and Texas, Celsius has been forced to back down on its high interest account offers. Meanwhile, the BlockFi platform has received a similar ban from 5 US states, highlighting the danger that such products pose to investors.

Cryptoactive ecosystem

Is this the end for NFTs?

NFT sales have been falling since the end of August. 73% of NFTs on OpenSea have seen only one transaction in 90 days. Despite the large sales that have been reported in the media, the market is reportedly very illiquid: daily transactions have dropped from 130,000 to 40,000. Some observers are no longer hesitating to predict the end of this market by drawing parallels with the ICOs of 2017.

China’s largest Ethereum mining pools close their doors

The second and fourth largest Ethereum mining pools, Sparkpool and BeePool, will cease services after a severe crackdown on mining and crypto-asset ecosystem by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC). As a result, Ethereum’s hash rate, the speed at which transactions on a blockchain are validated, dropped by more than 8% in 24 hours.

Aave Arc, a platform derived from Aave, prepares its launch

Aave Arc is an Aave platform clone, but with a special feature: account owners are authenticated, which helps to comply with money laundering regulations. Aave hopes to attract institutional investors to use its credit services. It would be the first DeFi platform to comply with these regulations.

Twitter introduces a bitcoin tip system for iOS users

The famous social network has officially rolled out a bitcoin tipping service via the Lightning Network. Twitter users will be able to fund their favorite creators through the service, and integrate their crypto address to send and receive bitcoins via the Strike financial app. For now, the service is only available to iOS users.

Andre Cronje launches NFT trading platform

Yearn Finance’s creator is a direct competitor of OpenSea, creating the Artion platform. The site will offer identical features to OpenSea except for some details: Artion will not take any transaction fees, and will operate on the Fantom blockchain with extremely low commission costs. For André Cronje, "it’s not about money, it’s about sending a message".

dYdX exchange’s derivatives volume exceeds Coinbase’s

Chinese traders are flocking to decentralized exchanges, particularly dYdX. The platform has seen its transactions exceed $4.3 billion over the past 24 hours for the first time, compared to $3.7 billion for Coinbase. This volume rise is due to China’s new repressive wave, and the uncensorable nature of decentralized exchanges like dYdX.

Bitcoin whales’ activity at its highest level

Despite Bitcoin’s relative decline over the past month, the largest holders are buying more than ever before, with record BTC/USD trades of up to $60,000, and more than 10 billion transactions involving over $10 million. These amounts are even higher than when BTC’s price was around $55-60,000.

Some figures

• Europe is becoming the largest crypto-related economy with $1 trillion traded in one year.
• Lightning Bitcoin nodes reach a 15,600 record, a 160% increase in one year.
• One-third of Salvadorans are "actively" using the Chivo wallet after just three weeks of operation, according to President Bukele.
• Dogecoin remains very popular, despite transaction numbers being at their lowest level since 2017.
• 65% of U.S. workers are willing to be paid in Bitcoin, Ethers or Dogecoin.