Crypto Gets Political, NFTs Plunge, ETF Flows Rise

Today’s Edition of Weekly Recap: Donald Trump U-turns on Cryptocurrency; the NFT market sees a drop in trade volume; and exchange-traded funds (ETF) are witnessing a resurgence in flows.

Trump pleases the cryptocurrency community

• The Republican Party’s 2024 Presidential Candidate Openly declared support for the crypto industry. In a speech, Trump, four times indicted, urged his supporters to donate digital assets to his campaign.
• Trump is using campaign donations to pay mounting legal expenses.
• Mark Cuban, billionaire and minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks, argued on May 10 that regulators’ tough stance toward the crypto industry is not doing President Joe Biden any favors in the upcoming election.
• SEC Chairman Gary Gensler is a Biden named.
• Meanwhile, political action committee Stand With Crypto announced plans to provide financial support to politicians who aim to protect the interests of the cryptocurrency industry.
• As Trump’s endorsement of crypto gains traction, major financial institution Standard Chartered asserted in a report that voting for a Republican victory in November could benefit Bitcoin (BTC) and the broader crypto industry due to dedollarizationrelaxed regulations and the approval of US spot ETFs.

Global regulatory developments

• Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released plans to enact broad crypto regulations in the second half of this year.
• Binance has faced regulatory issues in Canada, according to Canadian authorities tax a fine of US$4.4 million in exchange for violating the country’s anti-money laundering provisions.
• Regulatory problems in Nigeria also made headlines this week. The company’s CEO, Richard Teng, accused the Nigerian government to demand bribes to resolve the issue surrounding the arrest of two of its officials. However, the government denied these claims.

Ripple and Kraken

• The U.S. House Committee on Financial Services revealed on May 10 that will consider voting on the enactment of the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21), which aims to clarify the digital asset industry.
• On May 8, the U.S. SEC filed its final response to Ripple in the remedies phase of the SEC v. Ripple, which has been going on for three years. The agency argued against several of Ripple’s claims, claiming that the $1.95 billion fine for the company’s securities law violations is fair.
• Kraken, another crypto-focused company in a legal battle with the SEC, has filed release the regulator’s action, citing incorrect terms and lack of evidence that it processed services related to investment contracts or unregistered securities.

NFT market records fall

• The non-fungible token (NFT) market made headlines this week due to a mix of favorable and unfavorable trends. For one, reports confirmed that the Magic Eden marketplace overtook Blur for the first time to lead NFT trading volume in April with a volume of $468 million.
• The Broadest NFT Market mountain range a drop in volume last week, with cumulative weekly volume falling 11.16% to $144.3 million. Bitcoin-based NFTs accounted for $49 million of that volume, contributing 34% of the total value.
• The proliferation of crypto-focused hacks also impacted the NFT scene this week, with one NFT trader losing $145,000 worth of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs for a May 8 phishing attack.

Grayscale touts ETF revival

• Reports this week confirmed that the crypto ETF spot market has witnessed a resurgence in inflows as all spot Bitcoin ETF products in the United States mountain range positive net inflows for the first time on May 3. However, ETF analysts doubt this trend will continue in subsequent days.
• Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) Leveraged this revival of investor interest in recording its first net inflow, totaling US$63 million on May 3. Furthermore, on May 6th, the GBTC product saw another net inflowmarking his second consecutive day of consistent innings.
• CoinShares reported This week, the outflows from crypto investment products witnessed in the previous week could be much higher than the actual value, which amounted to $251 million. According to the data, inflows from Hong Kong-based spot ETFs totaling $307 million helped smooth out global outflows from crypto products.
• Interestingly, in a classic case of institutional adoption, data from the US SEC website confirmed that major American banking giant Wells Fargo has invested in ETF products from Grayscale and ProShares.

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