June 23, 2023

Bitcoin (BTC) has chalked up a more than 20% price gain since Thursday last week, and may now take a breather. That's the message from crypto services provider Matrixport's Bitcoin Greed & Fear Index (GFI), which has jumped to 93% from under 10% in roughly one week. The index attempts to track the overriding market emotion, with readings above 90% signaling greed, or excess optimism, and those below 10% representing extreme fear or pessimism. "Our Bitcoin Greed & Fear Index has reached exuberant levels in record time. It could be well advised to lock in some gains for short-term traders," Markus Thielen, head of research and strategy at Matrixport, said in an email.

(Matrixport) 

Crypto custody firm Prime Trust has "a shortfall in customer funds" and was unable to meet all withdrawal requests this month, the Nevada Department of Business and Industry said Thursday. The department's Financial Institutions Division, which oversees state-regulated trust companies, ordered Prime Trust to cease all activities that violate Nevada regulations, alleging that the company's "overall financial condition ... has considerably deteriorated to a critically deficient level." Prime Trust is "operating at a substantial deficit" or may even be insolvent, the order said. "On or about June 21, 2023, Respondent was unable to honor customer withdrawals due to a shortfall of customer funds caused by a significant liability on the Respondent's balance sheet owed to customers," the order said.

Banking giant JPMorgan (JPM) has expanded its blockchain-based settlement token JPM Coin to euro-denominated payments, Bloomberg reported on Friday. JPM Coin went live with euro payments on Wednesday, according to the report, which cited the bank's head of coin systems for Europe, Basak Toprak. German tech firm Siemens conducted the first euro payment on the platform. Since its inception in 2019, over $300 billion in transactions have been processed using JPM Coin, making it one of the most extensive uses of blockchain technology by a traditional financial institution. The system allows JPMorgan's institutional clients to make wholesale payments between accounts around the world using blockchain tech.

The price ratio between ether (ETH) and bitcoin (BTC), a commonly watched metric for the biggest cryptocurrencies, sank to a two-month low as a traditional finance giant's plan for a BTC exchange-traded fund (ETF) dramatically shifted sentiment in the industry.

ETH's price divided by BTC's has fallen to 0.0615, according to data from TradingView. The drop reflects bitcoin's far bigger gain this month: a 10% surge versus ETH's 1% increase.

Bitcoin has risen this week as markets more fully absorbed BlackRock's application for a spot bitcoin ETF and re-filings for similar products by well-known financial services firms Invesco and WisdomTree.