#23 Crypto Monopoly?
Approaching Merge, India's Digital Coin Pilot Run, Russia goes the crypto way
By Muskaan Sethi and Jayesh Singh
gm guys!
For the first time through the chilly winter, Bitcoin and Ethereum had a great week.
ETH rallied hard days before the merge event to proof of stake. It shot up 10.9% over the week and is currently worth $1,726. On the other hand, BTC enjoyed a steady 7.3% recovery over the last seven days.
Let’s walk through the stories of this week.
This week in the cryptic land🤔
Merge is around the corner🚀
Ethereum has finally completed what its developers say was the final rehearsal before the actual Merge. The team has been conducting tests after tests to ensure that the merge goes smoothly.
Last week, Bellatrix, a key pre-merge upgrade, the Ethereum network encountered some hiccups, but the final shadow fork this week was successfully deployed with no issues surfacing.
Russia’s crypto solution💥
Russia is developing its cryptocurrency strategy, to get past Western sanctions. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the West severely sanctioned the country. To avoid using dollars and euros, Russia is aiming to "build bilateral platforms" with "tokenized instruments." Its access to the dollar and euro markets is now restricted, which is negatively impacting the nation's economy. The Russian government is considering stablecoins as a means of payment with supporters.
Crypto Monopoly?😕
Web3 was built on the bedrock of decentralisation, promising to end monopolistic structures. Binance’s latest move has raised questions over this proposition.
Binance has announced that it would begin auto-converting existing and new deposits of USDC, USDP, and TUSD stablecoins into its native BUSD—effectively delisting three rival stablecoins.
While this will not affect the users’ choice of withdrawal since they will be able to withdraw funds in any of those stablecoins, deleting competitors is not a move well received by the web3 community.
How’s India holdin’ up?
India’s first virtual influencer📸
What's popping - Meet Kyra, India’s first virtual influencer, made by the Influencer marketing agency TopSocial India. With 188,000 followers, Kyra has collaborated with boAt Lifestyle to market its products.
She also became the first virtual influencer to grace the digital cover of Travel + Leisure Magazine
Bottomline - Indian market has a huge appetite for media and tech adoption. Besides, consumerism in India is driven by the trust factor, which is often the primary proposition of online influencers. It will be interesting to see how virtual influencers in India drive sales for their clients and whether this trend can go mainstream.
RBI to launch its digital coin🏦
RBI says that it is mulling over the idea of launching India’s digital currency as a pilot project this year. Though, the central bank has said that they aim to give viable alternatives and not go for a cashless society.
While it is too early to predict the impact of greater regulation on stablecoins, coexistence and balance between the currencies seem to be the future.
What else are we nibbling on?
With the 2022 Football World Cup just months away, FIFA has announced it will launch an NFT platform, FIFA + Collect, for soccer-themed digital collectables.
Binance US has become the latest major crypto exchange to launch Ethereum staking on its platform, before the ETH Merge.
That’s it for this week folks. We’ll see you next week with more interesting content. We’ve also been revamping our structure, so, you can expect to enjoy richer content in the forthcoming weeks.👋
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