Crypto Trends Weekly March 12 – 18

Breaking crypto news from the last week (Mar. 12 – 18, 2022):

Mar. 12: Fir Tree Capital Management, a $4 billion New York-based hedge fund, is shorting Tether as the largest stablecoin in crypto faces down scrutiny from regulators and fears over ties to the Chinese debt market.

Mar. 13: Art Dubai, held on March 11-13, was the most extensive fair yet, bringing together over 100 galleries from 44 nations, including more than 30 first-time participants. The fair’s 15th edition included the Art Dubai Digital pavilion with several NFT projects and digital presentations.

Mar. 14: Gauntlet, a DeFi financial-risk modeling platform for crypto lending, raised a new round of funding that pushed its valuation to $1 billion. The company plans to use the capital injection to scale the platform to operate on multiple networks and expand into new areas such as gaming.

Mar. 15: Popular crypto exchanges FTX and Binance have received new licenses to operate in Dubai and Bahrain. Crypto giants are setting up the stage for a major push in the Middle East.

Mar. 16: Ex-Meta employees have secured a $200 million funding round from crypto VC giants to develop their own version of the notorious crypto project Diem.

Mark Zuckerberg revealed plans to integrate NFTs into the Instagram platform, but it’s still unclear what this will look like. The news continues Meta’s narrative that it is moving closer to its proposed ‘metaverse’ goal.

Mar. 18: An advisory group of the Arab Monetary Fund has listed RippleNet as a direct alternative to SWIFT in its guide for Arab central banks.