Appold Market Watch - Week ending 17 January 2025
Market Update & Industry News - Week ending 17 January 2025
🔷 Italy’s largest bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, conducted its first proprietary digital assets trade, purchasing €1 million worth of Bitcoin. This marks the bank’s entry into the digital asset space, following recent regulatory clarity provided by the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework.
Appold view: The move highlights how the EU's MiCA framework is providing the regulatory certainty needed for traditional financial institutions to engage with cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. This development signals a broader trend of convergence between traditional banking and digital finance in the region.
🔷 Deutsche Bank partnered with ZKsync to explore Ethereum-based layer 2 blockchain solutions to address compliance challenges using public blockchains within regulated financial systems. According to a Bloomberg report, the layer two solution will allegedly integrate with Ethereum while maintaining alignment with financial compliance requirements.
Appold view: The Layer 2 scaling solution is designed to scale and reduce transaction costs while maintaining security on the Ethereum network by bundling transactions into a single batch. This partnership implies that Deutsche Bank’s blockchain of choice at this stage is Ethereum.
🔷 Stablecoin issuer, Tether.io, announced its founders are finalising a move to El Salvador, following the country’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender. This relocation aligns with El Salvador’s strategy to establish itself as a global hub for digital asset innovation. Tether’s presence is expected to bolster the nation’s blockchain infrastructure and attract further investment in the sector.
Appold view: This is good PR for El Salvador. Bitcoin was bravely adopted as legal tender in 2021, which has yielded mixed results. Daily transactions in BTC remain limited, but this is most likely because individuals want to hold BTC rather than spend it, particularly where there has been high capital appreciation in the asset.
🔷 Switzerland’s state-owned bank, PostFinance, introduced Ethereum staking services, enabling customers to earn rewards by supporting Ethereum’s proof-of-stake network. The retail bank has offered its customers the opportunity to earn passive income by staking Ether for a fixed minimum term of 12 weeks with the ability to sell the staking rewards.
Appold view: In April 2023, PostFinance partnered with Sygnum Bank, a FINMA-regulated digital asset bank. The collaboration enables PostFinance to leverage Sygnum’s infrastructure in the digital asset space.
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