Today in crypto, crypto investors have started to lose their speculative appetite amid rising scams and geopolitical uncertainties. Australia’s ruling government has promised action on crypto debanking as it announced a new crypto framework regulating exchanges. Meanwhile, Canary Capital is seeking regulatory approval to list an exchange-traded fund backed by Pudgy Penguins’ governance token.
Bitcoin speculative appetite declines as investors seek safety
Speculative appetite is vanishing from the crypto markets, as investors are looking for safer digital asset investments following the recent wave of memecoin scams and macroeconomic uncertainty.
Bitcoin’s hot supply metric, which measures the Bitcoin (BTC) aged one week or less, is down over 50%, from 5.9% at the end of November to just 2.3% on March 20, Glassnode data shows.
Bitcoin hot supply metric. Source: Glassnode
The metric’s decline signals an investor shift to safer investment positioning amid the recent market volatility, according to Ryan Lee, chief analyst at Bitget Research.
Australia outlines crypto regulation plan, promises action on debanking
Australia’s government, under its ruling center-left Labor Party, has proposed a new crypto framework regulating exchanges under existing financial services laws and has promised to tackle debanking.
It comes ahead of a federal election slated to be held on or before May 17, which current polling shows is shaping up to a dead heat between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor and the opposing Coalition led by Peter Dutton.
Source: Kate Cooper
The Treasury Department said in a March 21 statement that crypto exchanges, custody services and some brokerage firms that trade or store crypto will come under the new laws.
The regime imposes similar compliance requirements as other financial services in the country, such as following rules safeguarding customer assets, obtaining an Australian Financial Services Licence and meeting minimum capital requirements.
Albanese’s government intends to release a draft of the legislation for public consultation. However, a change of government could be on the horizon with a looming federal election, a date for which is yet to be called.
Canary files for PENGU ETF
Asset manager Canary Capital has filed to list an exchange-traded fund (ETF) holding Pengu (PENGU), the governance token of the Pudgy Penguins non-fungible token (NFT) project, US regulatory filings show.
The ETF is the latest in a slew of filings for new US investment products tied to spot cryptocurrencies, including altcoins and memecoins.
According to the filing, the ETF is intended to hold spot PENGU as well as various Pudgy Penguins NFTs. It would be the first US ETF to hold NFTs if approved.
Additionally, “[t]he Trust will also hold other digital assets, such as SOL and ETH, that are necessary or incidental to the purchase, sale and transfer of the Trust’s PENGU and Pudgy Penguins NFTs,” the filing said.
Launched in December, PUDGY has a roughly $438 million market capitalization as of March 20, according to CoinGecko.
Pudgy Penguins is among the most popular NFT brands. Source: Cointelegraph
Coinbase becomes Ethereum’s largest node operator with 11% stake
Crypto exchange Coinbase is the largest node operator on the Ethereum network, controlling 11.42% of the total staked Ether, according to the company’s latest performance report.
Coinbase said it had 3.84 million Ether (ETH), worth about $6.8 billion, staked to its validators. The exchange said that, as of March 3, it has 11.42% of the total staked ETH.
Source: Anthony Sassano
Coinbase also shared that it exceeded its target for validator uptime, which indicates the percentage of time when validators are operational.
