June 1, 2023

Bitcoin and the broad cryptocurrency market sold off for the second consecutive day on Thursday with fears over inflation and continued rate hikes resurfacing. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the debt ceiling deal Wednesday night and the bill now moves to the Senate for its approval. Bitcoin was down 1% on the day to $26,800 and has lost more than 6% over the past month. While new eurozone data showed that inflation fell more than expected to 6.1% in May from 7% in April, European Central Bank President, Christine Lagarde signaled that additional interest rate rises are needed. “We need to continue our hiking cycle until we are sufficiently confident that inflation is on track to return to our target in a timely manner,” she said in a speech on Thursday. 

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is reaping the benefits of staying in Canada after rivals such as Binance and OKX set withdrawal plans. Kraken told CoinDesk its customer deposits in the country grew by 25% in the weeks following Binance’s announced departure in early May, and the exchange saw a fivefold increase in downloads of its two mobile apps for Canadian clients within a week of OKX saying in March it planned to leave. Canada tightened its regulatory framework for digital asset trading earlier this year, resulting in an exodus of some of the largest crypto exchanges. Alongside Binance – the globe’s largest exchange by volume traded – and OKX, Paxos, Blockchain.com and Deribit also all announced their departures. The most recent exit announcement was from Bybit earlier this week. 

Bankruptcy claims exchange OPNX – founded in part by the principals of failed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) – has issued a new governance coin dubbed "Open Exchange token" (OX), which is designed to reduce trading fees on the platform. The exchange's existing native token, FLEX, surged by 16% after it was revealed in the whitepaper that FLEX can be converted for OX at a ratio of 1:100. OX is an ERC-20 token with a maximum supply of 9.86 billion. At press time, around 100 people have either minted or bought the asset, according to Etherscan. The OPNX exchange was co-founded by 3AC’s Kyle Davies and Su Zhu, along with executives from failed crypto lender CoinFLEX. 

Crypto assets should be treated as securities by default, and the autonomous organizations that govern decentralized finance (DeFi) should be granted legal status, according to a study commissioned by lawmakers at the European Parliament and published on Tuesday.

The report comes as the European Union finalizes its Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation, and considers whether a sequel will be needed to cover additional sectors like DeFi, staking and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

All crypto assets should be deemed a transferable security – implying they would fall under the EU’s tough governance and authorization rules that apply to traditional stocks and bonds – unless and until a national regulator says otherwise, the report says.