Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.
Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) kicked off the weekend with prices slightly higher than seven days ago. BTC is currently trading for $25,815, an increase of roughly 0.6%, while ETH is priced at $1,630, up 0.8%. Most of the top 30 cryptocurrencies by market cap have seen similar, small gains, apart from Stellar (XLM) which has jumped 10%, trading for $0.124846. The surge was sparked by a tweet from Stellar’s team, saying “Something cool is dropping in 10 days”.
This week saw a return to the usual flurry of adoption announcements, although progress on crypto in Washington was limited. On Monday, London Stock Exchange Group revealed plans to build an exchange offering tokenized versions of traditional assets. That same day, ECB executive board member Fabio Panetta criticized stablecoins issued by private companies like PayPal.
South Korean financial giant Hana Financial Group partnered with crypto custodian BitGo on Tuesday. Visa also extended settlement options to USDC on the Solana blockchain, working with merchant acquirers Worldpay and Nuvei to allow them to settle using the coin instead of fiat.
On Wednesday, the Financial Accounting Standards Board voted unanimously to change the way companies disclose crypto holdings. The new rules take effect in 2025. Thursday saw the IMF and FSB release a white paper discussing the need for a comprehensive policy and regulatory response for crypto assets. The authors acknowledged that crypto does not currently pose a risk to the financial system, but warned that widespread adoption could undermine the effectiveness of monetary policy. They suggested safeguarding monetary sovereignty, guarding against capital flow volatility, and adopting unequivocal tax treatment of crypto assets.
