Tesla Sold 75% of BTC Holdings, Crypto Market Reclaims $1T, Ethereum Merge 90% Complete: This Week’s Recap

The past seven days were very eventful, and, fortunately, the week ended up in green. The total cryptocurrency market capitalization reclaimed the coveted $1 trillion level and is currently sitting at $1.1 trillion. This comes on the back of considerable increases across the entire market.

Starting with Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency is up 14% in seven days. At the time of this writing, BTC trades at around $23,500, up 4.5% daily. This time last week, it was sitting at $21K, and it was mostly up only from then on. The weekly high was charted on Wednesday when the price soared above $24K.

However, during this quarter’s earnings report, Tesla revealed that it sold “approximately 75% of its Bitcoin purchases into fiat currency.” Inevitably, this shook the market, and the price tumbled to $22K. Interestingly enough, the dump was somewhat contained, given the magnitude of the news, which further strengthens the prevailing narrative that the ongoing recovery rally might continue.

Elsewhere, during this year’s edition of EthCC – an Ethereum-oriented conference held in Paris – Vitalik Buterin revealed that the job on the Ethereum 2.0 merge is “90% complete.” This will effectively end the Proof of Work era of the protocol and see it transition to Proof of Stake – a move that will considerably decrease its emittance rate and the supply hitting the market.

The rest of the market is also painted green. Binance Coin (BNB) is up 13.2%, ADA – 13.5%, SOL – 15.6%, DOT – 14.6, SHIB – 14.3%, MATIC – 25%, and so forth.

It’s interesting to see how the next week will shape up as the Fed’s July meeting is scheduled for the 26th and the 27th, and they’re expected to announce yet another rate hike to curb inflation.

Market Data

Market Cap: $976B | 24H Vol: $114B | BTC Dominance: 40.8%

BTC: $20,654 (-3.7%) | ETH: $1,227(-1/2%) | ADA: $0.43 (-8.3%)

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This Week’s Crypto Headlines You Can’t Miss

Former Coinbase Product Manager Accused of Insider Trading. In what seems to be a first for the cryptocurrency industry, a former Coinbase product manager has been accused by the US Department of Justice of insider trading. He was allegedly giving information about coin listings and selling them during the hype.

Lummis-Gillibrand Crypto Bill Likely to Remain on Backburner This Year. One of the most proactive cryptocurrency regulation proposals has been put on the backburner. It appears that US policymakers continue procrastinating when it comes to setting forth clear-cut laws for the industry.

Tesla Sold $936 Million of its Bitcoin Holdings in Q2. According to the Q2 2022 earning report that was released earlier this week, Tesla sold almost all of its BTC into fiat currency. The company converted approximately 75% of its purchases into fiat.

Coinbase Held No Exposure to 3AC, Voyager, or Celsius. The leading US-based cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, had no exposure to Voyager, Celsius, or Three Arrows Capital. The company revealed this in a blog post earlier this week, saying that the risk these entities took was “too high and too concentrated.”

Minecraft Creators Will Stop Supporting In-Game NFTs. One of the most popular computer games – Minecraft – will not support in-game non-fungible tokens. The company behind it said that enabling NFT support would divide their community – a situation they don’t want to allow.

Polygon Launches zkEVM Scaling Solution for Web3 Adoption. Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution, Polygon, has launched its zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM). This is a new Ethereum-equivalent scaling solution that takes advantage of zero-knowledge proofs to enhance scalability and throughput.