Weekly Market Review - March 17th

Njani Ruetsch

We compile the top news stories weekly within the crypto, blockchain, metaverse, and NFT space. The weekly wrap-up covers everything from BTC & ETH updates, recent investments, developments of exciting new projects, and other relevant topics.

Here is everything you need to know for the week of March 10th to 17th.

📈 Weekly BTC and ETH Overview

After arguably one of the most influential two weeks in crypto and the world economy, both Bitcoin and Ethereum rode a rally rollercoaster since the news of three major crypto-banks falling took over global headlines last week.

Bitcoin and Ethereum surged at the beginning of the week when markets opened again reactive to the announcement that Federal regulators would cover failed Silicon Valley Bank customer deposits. BTC was seen trading around $22.5K, up more than 9.7% over the past 24 hours. The rally continues throughout the week, despite the news of regulators closing the third bank in one week, Signature Bank, making it the third largest bank failure in U.S history.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $26.4K, representing a +6.51% increase over the past 24 hours. Ethereum is also in the green, trading at $1.7K, +4.20% over the previous 24 hours.

🗞️ Top Market News

Regulators close crypto-focused Signature Bank. Just two days after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Silvergate Bank, Signature Bank was shut down by New York Regulators. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said bids for the bank must be submitted by Friday. Read more here.
Bank of London confirms bid to rescue Silicon Valley Bank’s UK arm. As the first confirmed bidder, Bank of London is proposing to acquire SVB’s UK subsidiary in hopes of rescuing startups and tech companies affected by SVB’s collapse last week. Read more here.
Binance converts $1 billion in BUSD to Bitcoin, Ether, and BNB. The announcement follows after a rollercoaster of a week for U.S banks. Binance plans to take the funds out of its Industry Recovery Initiative fund. Read more here.
U.S. Treasury Department proposes 30% tax on crypto mining firms. In Biden’s budget proposal at the beginning of the week, a phased-in excise tax is to be implemented based on the costs of the electricity used in crypto mining. The proposal is to phase the tax over the next three years, increasing by 10% each year. Read more here.

🚀 New Project Developments

MOOAR introduces GNT – an AI Generated Content product soon to be released on Solana. Made by STEPNs holding company, GNT allows users to create and mint NFTs on MOOAR. The AI generator requires no previous knowledge of prompt engineering or smart contract deployment. With this new release, MOOAR aims to onboard the next generation of creators through a user friendly UI. Read more about GNT here.
Digital payments company, Stripe, raised over $6.5 billion in Series I funding. Investors include Andreesen Horowitz, Bailie Gifford, Goldman Sachs Asset and Wealth Management, and more. Read more about the funding round here.
Uniswap expands exchange services to BNB Chain. The largest decentralized exchange protocol by transaction volume, Uniswap officially launched on BNB Chain to be able to take advantage of lowe transaction fees compared to Ethereum. Read more here.
MultiverseX announces cross-chain bridge from BSC to MultiversX. Via the AdAstra Portal users can now bridge BSC to MultiversX thanks to the new BNB Chain integration. Read more here.

🔍 More Featured Stories…

Goldman Sachs files for patent focusing on blockchain technology. The patent document states it will allow blockchain technology for joint claims on tokens with the aim of integrating blockchain with its settling mechanism. Read more here.
OpenAI announces Chat GPT- 4. The latest version of the AI is more creative and less likely to invent facts, improving points on which it was previously criticized on. The new version can handle massive tax inputs and remember and act on more than 20,000 words at once. Read more about the upgrade here.
Meta announces plans to stop working on NFT. After announcing to partner with Polygon-supported NFT marketplace last November, Meta has decided to deprioritize expanding into NFTs. Read more here.