Crypto Global
The crypto news of the week
Dec 21, 2021
The past week has been a roller coaster ride for the cryptocurrency market and has been another exciting week in the crypto space. Here is an overview of the most important events:
Tesla and Dogecoin
Last week, on December 14th, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk announced that Tesla is going to begin accepting Dogecoin. The announcement came just one day after Musk was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year and said that Dogecoin is better suited for transactions than Bitcoin. He tweeted that Tesla will make some merch buyable with Doge & see how it goes. This means Tesla is going to be accepting Dogecoin as payment for Tesla cars.
We all know that Elon Musk is a big supporter of Dogecoin and the price usually spikes in response to Elon Musk tweets and announcements about Dogecoin. After Elon’s announcement, Dogecoin’s price jumped 28% in an hour.
The Fed announcement
In the first week of December, Fed Chair Jerome Powell indicated that the Federal Reserve might bring a faster-than-expected end to quantitative easing. In the following days, the price of Bitcoin fell sharply, declining by as much as 10% over the first weekend of December. Now one of the questions that arises from this is, will a potentially tighter US monetary policy impact cryptocurrencies?
However, the Federal Reserve's surprisingly restrictive turnaround last week saw crypto prices soar for a short while after it announced it would accelerate the reduction in asset purchases. A clear signal that traders may have been concerned about an even more aggressive policy change. Jerome Powell said he wasn't worried about crypto from a financial stability perspective, adding that he believed stablecoins could be useful if properly regulated.
90% of Bitcoin have been mined
As of last week, 90% of all Bitcoin have been mined. 18.9 million coins out of the maximum supply of 21 million are now in circulation. The milestone was reached just 12 years after the first-ever Bitcoins were mined. However, due to the Bitcoin halving schedule, the remaining 10% will take another 100 years before they are mined.
Nike purchased NFT startup
Sportwear NIKE just took a big step into the metaverse by acquiring NFT fashion startup RTFKT. RTFKT uses blockchain technology to create one-of-a-kind digital artifacts. The company leverages non-fungible token (NFT) assets, blockchain authentication, and augmented reality. One of RTFKT’s flagship products is a hybrid NFT/physical shoe collectible. John Donahoe, the president and CEO of Nike said in a statement that the acquisition is another step that accelerates Nike’s digital transformation and allows us to serve athletes and creators at the intersection of sport, creativity, gaming and culture.