This week in crypto we’ve seen Bitcoin miners feeling the pinch, Fidelity launch a crypto trading app for the plebs, Binance injecting $500 million into Twitter, and lots more about Twitter itself. But which rolls have been the freshest from the oven in the past seven days? There’s only one way to find out.
No. 3 – Fidelity to Launch Retail Crypto App
Investment giant Fidelity has been interested in the crypto world since 2018, although the $4.5 trillion company has only ever offered investment solutions for its institutional clients, which of course is no surprise.
This week however it changed tack massively and announced the future launch of Fidelity Crypto, a crypto and stock trading app for retail traders in the mold of Robinhood with 0% commissions. Clearly Fidelity feels that there will be enough of a market wanting to use its platform when the market picks up again for it to roll out the app, which will initially only support Bitcoin and Ethereum, relying on its name to be a selling point.
However, Fidelity Crypto will, initially at least, be a CFD platform, meaning that no actual cryptocurrency will change hands and cannot be withdrawn.
No. 2 – Elon Musk Baking DOGE Into Twitter?
Elon Musk might be about to put his code where his mouth is and bake Dogecoin payments into his new vision of Twitter. A series of cryptic tweets (shock horror) from the new Twitter owner suggests that DOGE payments will be involved somewhere along the line, either as rewards or as payment for tweets, while tweets with Jack Dorsey and Sam Bankman-Fried revealed that Musk is thinking about shifting Twitter onto a decentralized model.
Naturally DOGE spiked on the news, only this time it was for genuine fundamentals rather than mentals just having fun.
No.1 – Bitcoin Miners Staring Down the Barrel
A soaring Bitcoin hashrate isn’t great news for everyone, particularly some of those trying to take part in the gold rush. Ridiculous energy prices plus a stagnant Bitcoin price led this week to three Bitcoin mining companies issuing stark warnings – Argo Blockchian said it was facing financial ruin if it didn’t get fresh investment after a $27 million deal went south; Iris Energy said it was having to renegotiate its loans after its machines were no longer paying the bills; and the world’s biggest miner, Core Scientific, said it was speaking to lawyers over potential bankruptcy.
Only a Bitcoin moonshot or a massive reduction in energy prices can really save these miners now, neither of which seems to be forthcoming.
Honorable Mentions
This week we also learnt that:
- Binance supported Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase to the tune of $500 million, clearly illustrating a crypto influence.
- $28 million was stolen from the hot wallets of Bitcoin options exchange Deribit
- Edward Snowden joined the chorus of people calling out Craig Wright as being a fraud over his Satoshi Nakamoto claims.
We’ll be back next week for another review of the week’s top crypto news.
