Bitcoin and Ethereum appear to be on track to hit new highs after recent gains. Elsewhere, the cryptocurrency and NFT spaces had a lot of action this week
US eclipses China as home to Bitcoin mining
Cambridge University researchers on Wednesday released data confirming that the US is now responsible for the biggest Bitcoin mining power – a third of the total hashrate. The Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance report indicated that the US Bitcoin hashrate has increased by 428% since September of last year.
The data also showed that the US had a 35.4% share of the Bitcoin hashrate at the end of August this year. China has been its own villain in reducing the hashrate, given how hostile the government has made it to cryptocurrency in general. The country's government, through the People's Bank of China, has drastically changed the cryptocurrency scene in the country, intensely cracking down on mining and the cryptocurrency trade.
From an approximate 75% share of Bitcoin in the hashrate in 2019 to 44% in May, the Chinese proportion dropped to zero in July of this year. Miners fled en masse from the Chinese region to other less hostile regions, and US states such as Texas have been favorite destinations.
ARK Invest Analyzes Future Bitcoin ETF
ARK Invest of Cathie Woods has joined the list of companies seeking SEC approval to offer an ETF. The investment firm would have partnered as a merchant with Alpha Architect as an ETF issuer and 21Shares as a sub-advisor. Records made on Wednesday indicated that the proposed product will be strictly traded in futures rather than directly in cryptocurrencies.
The recent bias towards cryptocurrency futures makes sense, as SEC chairman Gary Gensler previously suggested that futures-based ETFs would receive greater consideration for approval. Experts predicted that there could be a Bitcoin ETF arriving before the end of the year.
Rumors of possible approval around the corner contributed to raising the price of Bitcoin, which is currently trading at around $59,000. However, not everyone is optimistic about approval soon, as Todd Rosenbluth of the CFRA told CNBC that approval could be delayed until the first quarter of 2022.
Vladimir Putin sees value in cryptocurrency
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he sees cryptocurrency as a unit of account in the future, arguing that digital assets are too premature for such use now due to their volatility. In an interview on Wednesday with CNBC's Hadley Gamble, he added that he sees the use of cryptocurrencies in international payments.
While agreeing that cryptocurrency has value, President Putin was also cynical about the idea of using cryptocurrency to make energy deals, considering that they are unsecured assets. Putin also suggested that, in response to targeted US sanctions, Russia could switch to non-dollar-denominated deals. When asked whether cryptocurrency could offer Russia an alternative to the dollar, the president said it was too early to discuss the use of cryptocurrency in trading energy resources.
However, he acknowledged that, over time, cryptocurrency has the potential to mature enough to be used in trading. In the past, Russia has implemented legal regulations prohibiting the use of cryptocurrencies in making payments, to maintain its currency's sovereignty. In addition, Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseev confirmed this week that the state would not block the purchase and sale of digital assets as China did recently.
TradingView Blocks Last Round of Funding at $298 Million
Price and investment charting platform TradingView received $298 million from its latest funding round led by Tiger Global Management, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. The financing round, which gave the London-based company a $3 billion valuation, was driven by growing interest from retail investors looking to trade in public markets. This round has raised the largest amount to date, having raised only a total of about $40 million in its previous funding rounds.
The financial information platform has been around for ten years and currently has 30 million monthly users in over 180 countries where the platform is accessible. A significant part of the growth TradingView is seeing has come from a 237% increase in visitor numbers and a 400% increase in newly created accounts over the past eighteen months.
TradingView tracks the performance of various asset types while providing a social forum for user discussions. The latest capital injection will help the company extend its goal of improving informed financial business decisions through global expansion, according to co-founder and CEO Denis Globa.
'Coinbase NFT' waiting list reaches 1.5 million users
Coinbase's peer-to-peer market for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has already amassed more than 1.5 million users on its waiting list, despite being announced only on Tuesday, the same day as the one mark. million was also hit. The cryptocurrency exchange said that users would be able to trade and mint their own NFTs on the platform: 'Coinbase NFT'.
These interested user numbers are demonstrating growing interest in the NFT industry, which posted $10 billion in sales volume in the third quarter, compared to $1.3 billion in the second quarter of this year. The NFT space has seen tremendous growth in just a few months and Coinbase is setting itself up properly to kill it. The entry of cryptocurrency exchanges into the NFT market is expected to have an impact on investor entry into NFTs.
The 1.5 million users on Coinbase's waiting list far surpassed the 261,000 users in the OpenSea market. Coinbase's announcement followed Monday's FTX revelation that it would launch a Solana-based NFT market. The exchange also detailed that it is planning to add support for Ethereum tokens soon.
The post Weekly Report: Centralized Exchanges are Joining the NFT Space appeared first on Bitcoin Guide .