Crypto Trends Weekly – Dec. 3–9

Breaking crypto news from the last week (Dec. 3–9, 2022):

Dec. 4: USDC stablecoin issuer Circle and publicly traded special purpose acquisition company Concord Acquisition Corp (SPAC) mutually ended their proposed business combination after the deal “timed out.” The mutual termination comes after over a year and a half of deliberating around the terms of Circle’s potential multibillion-dollar listing.

Dec. 5: Coca-Cola has teamed up with Crypto.com to release a collection of 2022 FIFA World Cup NFTs based on heatmaps of the games played. The move is the latest corporate play to try to capitalize on crypto fever amid the World Cup in Qatar.

Dec. 6: Investment bank Goldman Sachs plans to spend “tens of millions of dollars” to buy or invest in crypto firms whose valuations declined after the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, Reuters reported. “We do see some really interesting opportunities, priced much more sensibly,” said the bank’s digital asset head Mathew McDermott.

Warner Music Group, the major record label, announced a multi-year partnership with the Ethereum sidechain network and the Web3 music startup. Artists signed to Warner Music Group labels will be able to release music NFTs through the upcoming Polygon-based marketplace LGND Music.

Dec. 7: Institutional investors continue to show interest in the crypto sector, even despite the negative effects caused by the FTX debacle, data from the crypto exchange Bitstamp shows, with institutional registrations increasing by 57% in November. Other traditional finance capital allocators also seem to view the situation as an opportunity to enter.

Dec. 8: Cross-chain bridge Nomad plans to relaunch and partially reimburse those that lost funds in its $190 million hack in August. Meantime, the developer team has asked users to go through KYC verification to let bridge back their assets.

Dec. 9: Shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), the world’s largest Bitcoin fund, reached a record-high discount rate of above 47% relative to the price of Bitcoin (BTC). Bearish sentiment surrounding the trust deepened over fears that crypto trading firm Genesis Global Trading, with the same owner, could file for bankruptcy.