July 7, 2023

Bitcoin (BTC) has witnessed a choppy trading week, mostly remaining between the $30,000 and $31,000 levels. A breakout above $31,000 was quickly snuffed out on Thursday after a blowout ADP jobs report – 497,000 jobs added in June versus 220,000 expected – sent bitcoin tumbling more than 3% to below $30,000. With markets now awaiting government employment numbers for June later Friday morning, bitcoin is trading around the $30,100 level. The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares, excluding Japan, extended the prior session's weakness to drop to a five-week low, while U.S. stocks registered notable losses after the ADP number raised concerns of higher interest rates. In other markets early Friday, gold edged up to $1,914 per ounce and the yield on the 10-year Treasury note stood at 4.02%, down 6 basis points from Thursday's four-month high. The dollar index, which gauges the greenback's exchange rate against major fiat currencies, consolidated on overnight losses near 103.00.

Any U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approval of a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) will not be a game changer for crypto markets, JPMorgan said in a research report Thursday. Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou and team note spot bitcoin ETFs have existed for some time outside of the U.S. in Canada and Europe, but have failed to generate much in the way of investor interest.They also noted that bitcoin futures funds in the U.S. haven’t seen a lot of interest either, even amid investor outflows from gold ETFs over roughly the past year. The SEC, of course, has yet to approve a spot bitcoin ETF. Optimism about approval is running higher now, though, as the most recent spate of applications have attempted to address some of the agency’s concerns.

At least three senior officials have departed embattled crypto exchange Binance this week as the company prepares to defend itself on multiple fronts, Fortune reported on Thursday. Binance General Counsel Han Ng, Chief Strategy Officer Patrick Hillmann and Senior Vice President for Compliance Steven Christie are among those that have resigned, a source familiar with the matter told Fortune. In addition, Binance’s Global Vice President of Marketing and Communications Steve Milton left the company in June, according to his LinkedIn profile. Their departure follows Senior Director of Investigations Matthew Price's recent decision to part ways with the exchange. Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, brushed off the news, tweeting: “More FUD about some departures. Yes, there is turnover (at every company). But the reasons dreamed up by the 'news' are completely wrong. As markets and the global environment for crypto changes, as our organization evolves, and as personal situations change, there is turnover at every company.”

Citigroup Inc., HSBC, BNY Mellon and other global financial giants have been experimenting with what they call a “regulated liability network” for conducting round-the-clock, wholesale payments using shared ledgers, and a paper released Thursday suggests the system has potential.

Fitting somewhere in the middle of the debate between central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and private stablecoins, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s New York Innovation Center (NYIC), which has collaborated on the project since last year, concluded that “the network has the potential to deliver improvements in the processing of wholesale payments due to its ability to synchronize U.S. dollar-denominated payments and facilitate settlement on a near-real time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week basis.”

“From a central banking perspective, the proof of concept was conducive to exploring tokenized regulated deposits and understanding the potential functional benefits of central bank and commercial bank digital money operating together on a shared ledger,” said Per von Zelowitz, director of the NYIC, in a statement. 

- Omkar Godbole