The breaking news of last week:
Bull News of Last Week
1. Key Word: Credit Suisse, Liquidity
UBS agreed to buy rival Swiss bank Credit Suisse for 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.23 billion) and agreed to assume up to $5.4 billion in losses, in a shotgun merger engineered by Swiss authorities to avoid further market-shaking turmoil in global banking.
2. Key Word: Russian State Duma, Central Bank Digital Currencies
According to local media reports, the Russian State Duma approved draft laws establishing a system to issue and regulate central bank digital currencies (CBDC) in a first reading on March 16.
Additionally, the Parliament approved the first reading of a bill that makes changes to the Russian Civil Code and defines the digital ruble as “non-cash money.” It also establishes rules around wallet agreements and the inheritance of digital currency.
3. Key Word: Fed Policymakers, Raise Interest
WSJ: The Federal Reserve approved another quarter-percentage-point interest-rate increase but signaled that banking-system turmoil might end its rate-rise campaign sooner than seemed likely two weeks ago.
4. Key Word: BTC futures contracts, Yearly High
The dollar value locked in the number of open bitcoin (BTC) futures contracts is rising, signifying increased speculative interest in the market and potential for price volatility.
Data from Coinglass shows the nominal value of open interest has reached a yearly high of $12 billion, marking a 7% gain for the month.
5. Key Word: Warren Buffett, Banking Crisis
Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s Warren Buffett has been in touch with senior officials in President Joe Biden’s administration in recent days as the regional banking crisis unfolds.
There have been multiple conversations between Biden’s team and Buffett in the past week, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.
6. Key Word: ARB, Airdrop
Arbitrum’s token airdrop started off in a frenzy that broke multiple websites, and yet more than 428 million ARB tokens are left to be claimed, according to blockchain analytics firm Nansen.
7. Key Word: ARB, Airdrop
Arbitrum, a layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum, announced the airdrop of its ARB governance token on March 16, with eligible receivers expected to get the token by March 23. The hype around its airdrop has now helped another layer-2 solution, zkSync, to see significant week-over-week growth.
According to data from crypto on-chain analytic firm Nansen, more than 39,000 addresses have bridged over $871 million to zkSync in the last seven days. The number of addresses bridging to zkSync has swelled by 5x in the last week.
Bear News of Last Week
8. Key Word: Crypto ads, Belgium
Crypto ads in Belgium must be accurate and warn investors of the risks under new laws announced by the country’s financial regulator Monday.
Powers published in Belgium’s Official Gazette on Friday mean any mass-media campaign to promote a digital currency would have to be submitted to the Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) 10 days in advance, allowing the regulator to intervene if needed.
9. Key Word: IRS, Tax NFTs
The IRS plans to tax some NFTs as collectibles — and the rich would pay up to 28% on profits. The IRS plans to tax non-fungible tokens as collectibles, the agency said in a notice Monday. Collectibles carry a top long-term capital gains rate of 28%.
10.Key Word: US Prosecutors,Banking System, Regulation
US prosecutors on Thursday announced eight charges against Kwon, including securities fraud, wire fraud, commodities fraud and conspiracy. Kwon, 31, was arrested in Montenegro earlier on Thursday along with another South Korean citizen, the European country's interior ministry said.
10. Key Word: South Korea Prosecutors,Do Kwon
South Korea prosecutors say Serbia ready to help fraud investigation into Terra’s Do Kwon
Prosecutors flew to Serbia earlier this month as part of an investigation into Terraform Labs chief Do Kwon, who faces fraud accusations related to the US$40 billion collapse of his Terra-Luna cryptocurrency project in May last year.
Events coming in this week
1. EOS EVM will launch the final testnet on March 27;
2. The US House of Representatives panel plans to hold its first hearing on the collapse of SVB and Signature on March 29;
3. Twitter will open source all the code used for tweet recommendation on March 31;
4. Russia's digital ruble will launch consumer pilot on April 1.
