Appold Market Watch - Week ending 25 April 2025

Market Update & Industry News - Week ending 25 April 2025

🔷 Cantor Fitzgerald, SoftBank Group Corp., Tether.io, and Bitfinex are partnering to launch a new Bitcoin (BTC) investment vehicle modelled after Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy. Nasdaq: MSTR). The venture, to be named 21 Capital, will reportedly be seeded with $3 billion worth of BTC: $1.5 billion from Tether, $900 million from SoftBank, and $600 million from Bitfinex.

Appold view: 21 Capital looks set to challenge MSTR’s position as the go-to stock for Bitcoin exposure. With a $3bn BTC Seed and without MSTR’s complexity of running a software business, this cleaner and more transparent structure, backed by major digital asset firms, will most likely fragment MSTR’s market dominance to date.

🔷 The U.S. Federal Reserve has withdrawn guidance that required state member banks to provide advance notification of planned or current digital asset activities. State member banks’ digital asset activities will now be monitored through the Federal Reserve’s normal supervisory processes.

Appold view: These directives had hampered and deterred the ability of Federal Reserve state member banks to engage in such activities. Their withdrawal now opens the door for greater innovation by these banks in the digital asset space.  

🔷 The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) convened a digital asset policy roundtable, focusing on custody rules and addressing regulatory gaps. The roundtable, the second in a four-part series convened by the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, is the first to occur since digital asset proponent Paul Atkins was sworn in as SEC Chairman earlier this week.

Appold view: Although the SEC’s approach to digital asset regulation has changed substantially in recent months, these policy roundtables specifically have delivered more on soundbites rather than noteworthy policy outcomes.

🔷 PayPal and Coinbase announced an expansion of their existing partnership to increase the adoption of PayPal’s USD stablecoin, PYUSD. Coinbase users will be able to buy, sell, and trade PYUSD with no platform fees and redeem PYUSD 1:1 for US dollars directly on Coinbase’s platform.

Appold view: PayPal will hope this partnership brings greater traction to PYUSD, which has seen mixed success since its launch in August 2023 and faced stiff competition from USDC and USDT, which have much larger market capitalisations.

#Marketwatch #Blockchain #Investments