Kalam Crypto #28: Crypto Winter, VARA License, and more

Ahlan wa sahlan and welcome to Crypto winter. If this is your first time here, welcome! Not an ideal place to be, but not the end of crypto as some mainstream media outlets would have you believe.

20 Jun, 2022

CoinMENA Team

Author

“If your long term Bitcoin investment thesis changes because of the price, you never understood Bitcoin” - Will Clemente

Ahlan wa sahlan and welcome to Crypto winter. If this is your first time here, welcome! Not an ideal place to be, but not the end of crypto as some mainstream media outlets would have you believe. Thankfully, crypto winter comes about once every 4 years only. In crypto’s first cycle in 2011 the price of bitcoin dropped over 90%, in 2015 and 2019, dropped over 80%, and here we are now down 70% from all-time highs.

In winters the tourists will leave, but the settlers will stay. They will stay because they have studied the long-term value proposition of technologies like bitcoin. They would know that crypto is still very early in the adoption cycle, (Less than 4% of the world owns crypto, and less than 1% of the world owns bitcoin). Settlers are also aware that institutions like TESLA, BLOCK, KPMG, Microstrategy, and many others have bitcoin on their balance sheets. They are also aware that VC firms continue to pour billions into the crypto ecosystem. A16Z alone just announced a $4.5 billion crypto fund, the largest ever. The ones who weather their first winter will reap the fruits of their conviction when the cycle turns. And it will turn.

The world is going through an economic recession right now and all asset prices are down. Our co-founders wrote a detailed letter about this. We could be in for a long winter. Dress warm, do your homework and stick with Kalam Crypto for your weekly dose of what’s really being built and developed in the world of crypto. Market prices will bounce back eventually, and when they do, you will earn your crypto stripes, and in the next bull cycle, people will say you were lucky because you invested in crypto early.

Prefer to listen to Kalam Crypto instead? Check out our podcast:

Global News 🌍

Fed’s interest rate hike: The Federal Reserve announced a 75 basis point (bp) interest rate increase on Wednesday, marking the largest rate hike since 1994. The plan came into effect in an effort to cool down the rising inflation rates, which hit a 40-year high of 8.6% compared to the same period last year. The interest rate hike is the primary driving factor behind the drop in prices across all asset classes.
This week saw a series of cryptocurrency crashes and liquidations: The USDD de-pegged from the US dollar at the start of the week by around 0.3 cents. Celsius is feeling the heat after pausing withdrawals, swaps, and transfers between accounts on its platform on Sunday due to "extreme market conditions" and a need to "stabilize liquidity," leaving its users with no access to their funds on the platform. Additionally, Three Arrows (3AC), a crypto hedge fund that managed billions of dollars of user funds, is facing liquidation and now may not possess enough capital to pay out investors. Feels appropriate to remind our users of a saying we have in crypto: not your keys, not your coins.
Circle set to launch Euro-backed stablecoin: Circle announced on Thursday that it is launching a new Euro-backed stablecoin called Euro Coin, EUROC, which will mimic its USDC. Euro Coin will be backed 100% by euro-dominated reserves held in Silvergate Bank, regulated in North America, so it is redeemable 1:1 for euros. The new token will be launching on June 30th, on the Ethereum blockchain as an ERC-20 standard token, with additional blockchains to be added later this year.

CoinMENA News 🗞

CoinMENA receives provisional license from Dubai’s VARA: We’re pleased to announce that CoinMENA has obtained a provisional license from Dubai’s VARA, making it the third license we would obtain after securing two digital assets licenses in just over a year since our launch. We look forward to working with VARA’s progressive regulatory framework and continuing to offer more products and services to our users in the region.

Bitcoin Series: We are presenting Bitcoin Series on our Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube, where we will be sharing historical trends and perspectives on the current market downturn through visuals to help keep you calm during market volatility, and will also be posting our informative video series about Bitcoin and how it works.

Trade and Win: We are bringing two new giveaways this week, Trade ETH, Win ETH, and Trade XRP, Win XRP! 5 lucky winners will win the equivalent of their ETH trade volume on CoinMENA, and another 5 winners will win the equivalent of their XRP trade volume! All you have to do is head over to CoinMENA and trade ETH or XRP for 50 USD or more for a chance double up your trades! Hurry, the offers are valid only until Thursday, 30th June 2022, 11 PM Bahrain/KSA time. The maximum caps for the giveaways are 1 ETH and 500 USD of XRP, respectively.

Tweet of the week 🐥

Quiz Corner ✅

Last week’s question: On average, how many new bitcoins should be created each day with the current block reward?

Answer: 900

This week’s question: Which is the third largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization?