Also this week, El Salvador is being urged to ditch BTC as legal tender. Will they listen?
Listen to the CoinMarketRecap podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts
CoinMarketRecap, hosted by Connor Sephton, aims to break down the week's crypto news in a fun and accessible way.
Research continually shows that consumers find cryptocurrencies difficult to understand — and we're determined to change that.
A Scary Week for Bitcoin Investors
Bitcoin was trading around $39,000 on Friday, Jan. 21 — but by Monday, it had tumbled to lows of $33,000. Wall Street has been hit hard too, with investors worried about geopolitical tensions in Ukraine… and the prospect of interest rate rises.
The S&P 500 has been on the brink of confirming its first correction since the stock market collapsed at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020 — and to make matters worse, there's a close correlation between BTC and this flagship index right now.
Although BTC did near $39,000 once again on Wednesday, prices fell as Jerome Powell confirmed that the central bank will likely start increasing interest rates from March.
To make matters worse, the International Monetary Fund has urged El Salvador to ditch Bitcoin as legal tender.
News Roundup: Diem Dead, Blocking NFTs, Grimacecoin
CoinMarketCap's Molly Jane Zuckerman also joins us to discuss the stories that caught her eye this week.
We begin with reports that, in a massive blow to Mark Zuckerberg, the Diem digital currency may be dead. According to Bloomberg, the Diem Association is weighing up whether to sell its assets, and move engineers to a new home. But was Facebook (now Meta) ever fit to run a digital currency in the first place?
Plus, there's a new browser plugin that allows Twitter users to automatically block profiles that have an NFT avatar. The extension's inventor argues that it's irritating to be around people who collect non-fungible tokens — and these assets have a huge impact on the environment. But why do people hate NFTs so much… and do they have a point?
We also discuss how a light-hearted conversation between Elon Musk and McDonald's resulted in a frenzy — with dozens of memecoins inspired by Grimace, one of the fast food chain's characters, launching this week. Is this just a bit of harmless fun… or is this dangerous for opportunistic investors?
