Date: 06/21/2021
“When the equity tide pulls back someday, we expect bitcoin and gold to be the primary beneficiaries.” — Mike McGlone, commodity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence
Weekly News Report:
1. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) on Monday told the country’s major financial institutions to stop facilitating virtual-currency transactions, increasing the negative sentiment in crypto markets. Banks must not provide products or services such as trading, clearing and settlement for crypto transactions, the PBOC said in a statement.
2. The Agriculture Bank of China (AgBank) — the world’s third-largest bank by assets — is set to implement Beijing’s firm anti-cryptocurrency measures and rigorously vet its clients to ensure they are not engaged in any form of illegal activities involving crypto transacting, trading or mining.
3. A Chinese logistics firm is airlifting 3 metric tons of bitcoin mining machines to Maryland as the Chinese government cracks down on the industry. This weight of mining machines “would be about 200 units of S19. 3,000 kg sounds huge but compared to the number of miners that get shipped regularly it’s just a small batch.
4. Being China’s largest hydro-based crypto mining hub, Sichuan becomes the latest Chinese province to order bitcoin miners shutdown.
5. Chinese Commercial Bank Enables Digital Yuan-Cash Conversion at ATMs, becoming the first bank in China to launch a feature converting cash to the digital yuan.
6. Paraguay will legislate cryptocurrency in July — crypto as a legal tender. It has confirmed that it would launch an enormous project featuring Bitcoin and PayPal, and it would use hydroelectric power through Bitcoin.
7. Canada’s Hive Blockchain Technologies approved for Nasdaq listing. The Canadian miner with a focus on green energy should be available to trade in the coming weeks.
8. The Bank of Israel has already carried out a pilot test on a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Deputy Governor Andrew Abir noted he is not particularly optimistic about an Israeli CBDC actually being launched, however.
9. The French central bank has extended its testing of the use of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) for the wholesale market and has also completed a central bank digital currency pilot for securities transactions in collaboration with Swiss crypto bank SEBA. Nathalie Aufauvre, general director of financial stability and operations at Banque de France, said that the latest CBDC test demonstrated the possibilities for conventional finance systems and distributed systems to interact.
10. Spain’s BBVA said on June 18 that it was launching a bitcoin trading service for private banking clients in Switzerland interested in digital asset investment. The bank said the new business, launching on June 21, would include bitcoin trading and custody services. BBVA said it was limiting this new cryptocurrency service to Switzerland because the country has clear regulation and widespread adoption of digital assets.
11. Henry Fernandez, CEO of MSCI, an issuer of global equity indices, stated that MSCI is considering launching cryptocurrency asset indices, which will be a further step towards major companies accepting digital currencies and related transactions.
12. MicroStrategy now owns over 100,000 bitcoins worth more than $3 billion after the latest purchase and the average purchase price of its 105,085 bitcoin trove is $26,080 apiece.
13. Crypto ATM firm Coin Cloud is preparing to install machines into 29 H-E-B locations in the Houston area. Texas crypto users will soon be able to buy and sell tokens at the major supermarket chains.
