August 5th

Current Bitcoin Price: $22,967

Bitcoin price has traded within a $1,000 range over the last 24 hours, finding balance around the $23,000 once again to end the week.

Top-20 altcoins have creeped upwards slightly, as Ethereum and BNB each gain 3%, XRP remains unchanged and Ethereum Classic leads the way with a 4% advance.

The Bank of Thailand (BoT) will pilot a "Retail" central bank digital currency (CBDC) by the end of 2022, testing the currency in cash-like activities with around 10,000 users. The Bank of Ayudhya, Siam Commercial Bank and 2C2P will all be involved in the pilot.

The pilot adds to a plethora of CBDC-based projects conducted by the BoT, which includes wholesale CBDC projects and CBDC testing with corporates. It will also host a CBDC Hackathon today, with private sector and public participation.

Tron founder Justin Sun has voiced his support for the primary Proof-of-Work (PoW) fork of Ethereum, as the network's "Merge" to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) in September draws closer.

Sun, in control of more than 1 million Ether, has pledged a portion of any hard-forked PoW tokens to development and community on the PoW version of the platform. His exchange, Poloniex, will also support trading of both the PoW and PoS tokens.

WazirX, an Indian crypto exchange owned by Binance, has had accounts with $8 million frozen by India's Enforcement Directorate (ED), in a money-laundering investigation.

The exchange has been under investigation since 2021 for alleged money laundering linked to Chinese loan apps with connections to digital lending in India.