Appold Market Watch - Week ending 4 October 2024

Market Update & Industry News - Week ending 4 October 2024

🔷 Financial messaging system, Swift, announced plans to integrate cryptocurrency for cross-border transfers by 2025. The initiative aims to enable seamless transactions between traditional banking systems and digital assets, ensuring interoperability across different financial infrastructures.

Appold view: When the global leader in financial messaging makes such an announcement, it highlights the increasing demand and acceptance for this asset class. For cross-border payments, we observe stablecoins as being by far the most active. 

🔷 Global exchange, Coinbase, announced it would delist non-compliant stablecoins that do not meet the regulatory requirements outlined in the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) legislation by the end of December this year. European Economic Area (EEA) users will be offered conversion options to MiCA-compliant stablecoins

Appold view: This could shake up the stablecoin market as the most active stablecoin, Tether (USDT), has yet to meet MiCA regulatory requirements. This could improve MiCA-complaint stablecoins, such as Circle’s USDC. Coinbase is not alone; other exchanges in the EEA are preparing a similar delisting programme.

🔷 The Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) launched a digital securities sandbox to facilitate the development and testing of new technologies within the UK financial market. The sandbox aims to help firms issue and settle digital securities using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), providing a controlled environment for innovation while ensuring compliance with regulatory standards.

Appold view: The published information is still a little vague and needs firming up, but overall, it’s a step in the right direction for UK innovation and we anticipate strong participation from regulated entities. 

🔷 Digital asset manager, Bitwise Inc, filed for the first XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the US, offering investors direct exposure to XRP, Ripple’s native token. The ETF would track the performance of XRP, allowing investors to trade it on traditional stock exchanges

Appold view: It’s good to see Bitwise expanding its ETF product range. We doubt that demand is particularly strong at this stage, but it’s clearly strong enough for Bitwise to make attempts to add it to its product suite.

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