Crypto Trends Weekly – Sept. 10 – 16

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

Sept. 10: Blockchain.com, a London-based crypto exchange, has been granted provisional regulatory approval by the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) in Dubai. After granted provisions, institutional and retail clients can use the crypto platform in the UAE.

MicroStrategy, a software development firm that has become a corporate Bitcoin vault, plans to sell up to $500 million of stock to fund more purchases of BTC. The deal is a sign firm’s exec Michael Saylor isn’t abandoning his bold plan to turn his software developer into a Bitcoin proxy.

Sept. 12: Crypto exchange Huobi Global said it will delist seven privacy tokens in the coming week, citing broader regulatory scrutiny of such tokens. The company claimed it is complying with regulations in different countries and regions. Privacy tokens lost 0.42% in 24 hours following the news.

Sept. 13: Investment management giant State Street says institutional clients are not deterred from investing in crypto assets despite price declines. “There is a belief that the asset class is here to stay,” the firm’s executive noted. State Street had expanded its crypto service earlier, citing soaring demand from traditional funds.

Sept. 14: Bitcoin and Ether fell below recent support levels in the past 24 hours – BTC fell about 9%, while ETH dropped 6% – which caused over $250 million in liquidations. The crypto market drop followed the decline in US stocks after higher-than-expected inflation readings for August.

Sept. 15: The massive upgrade of the Ethereum network known as the Merge has finally happened, moving the digital core of the second-largest cryptocurrency to a more energy-efficient proof-of-stake protocol after years of development. The historic move casts aside the miners who had previously driven the blockchain, with promises of higher scalability and massive environmental benefits.

Sept. 16: OpenSea, the world’s biggest NFT marketplace, has officially announced OpenRarity, a new NFT rarity protocol for the NFT community, elaborated together with Web3 analytics experts Icy.tools, Curio Tools, and PROOF, to provide a new standard of NFT ranking methods. OpenRarity will be launched next week.