Kalam Crypto 42: BoE pivots, UAE Metaverse Assembly, SWIFT Chainlink Partnership

This week, the UAE Ministry of Economy announced the launch of its headquarters in the metaverse, Bank of England becomes the first central bank to pivot away from quantitative tightening and extension of CoinMENA’s bitcoin giveaway.

04 Oct, 2022

CoinMENA Team

Author

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” Henry David Thoreau

Ahlan wa sahlan, and welcome to the 42nd edition of CoinMENA's weekly newsletter, Kalam Crypto. Every week we bring you the latest news and developments from the exciting world of cryptocurrencies. This week, the UAE Ministry of Economy announced the launch of its headquarters in the metaverse, Bank of England becomes the first central bank to pivot away from quantitative tightening and extension of CoinMENA’s bitcoin giveaway. All that and more, so let's dive into this week's letter, and talk crypto: Prefer to listen to Kalam Crypto instead? Check out our podcast:

Lightning Round ⚡️

Here’s a quick rundown of the week’s headlines:

Bitcoinizing the dollar: Lightning Labs released the initial Taro protocol. The code will allow users to mint, send, and receive stablecoins across the Bitcoin lightning network.

SWIFT - Chainlink partnership: In response to “undeniable” institutional investor interest, SWIFT announced a partnership with Chainlink on a cross-chain interoperability protocol (CCIP). The partnership is expected to help bridge the gap between traditional finance and digital assets for institutional investors.

Circle announces strategic partnerships: To create a more seamless experience and onboard more merchants to the next generation of payments, the USDC issuer acquired payments company Elements. Last week, Circle also announced a partnership with Robinhood, which includes USDC integration.

Blackrock launches crypto ETF in Europe: The largest asset manager in the world continues to make inroads in the world of crypto. iShares Blockchain Technology UCITS ETF consists of 35 blockchain companies, including miners and exchanges.

Solana goes down, again: If it seems like you’ve read this headline before, it's because you have. Solana was down for 7 hours this weekend, the latest in a series of outages experienced by the network this year.

Global News 🌍

Bank of England becomes the first Central Bank to pivot: To combat 40-year high inflation rates, Central Banks are raising interest rates and deploying Quantitative Tightening (QT) measures. As a result, global markets are experiencing their worst year to date since the 2008 Great Financial Crises. The question on everyone’s mind is, how long will central banks continue QT efforts? For the United Kingdom (UK), the Bank of England (BoE) was forced to reverse course after only 9 months of QT. The BoE announced plans to buy back 65 billion pounds of government bonds and, in the process, averted a potentially catastrophic collapse of nearly 90% of UK pension funds. Due to the unprecedented amounts of fiscal stimuli during Covid-19, Central Bankers are caught between a rock and a hard place. Increase interest rates (QT), and risk causing a recession, or go back to Quantitative Easing (QE) and risk higher inflation rates.

Local News 📍

UAE Ministry of Economy announces Metaverse Headquarters: During the inaugural Metaverse Assembly event held in the Dubai Future Foundation last week, the UAE’s Minister of Economy, H.E. Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri, announced that the UAE Ministry of Economy will open its third office in the Metaverse. The office will be an “immersive experience for governments, global corporations, and the public to connect and collaborate. It will also be equipped with advanced technology for the Ministry to sign bilateral agreements with other nations in the metaverse, bolstering the UAE’s ability to become a global hub for next-generation technologies.”

Blog of the week 📝

Institutional Custody Solutions: A Game Changer for Institutional Investors: In her latest blog, our Co-Founder and Managing Director, Dina Sam’an, writes about the importance of custody solutions for institutional investors.

CoinMENA News 🗞

BTC Giveaway EXTENDED: 1 bitcoin for 200 users! Simply trade for $10 or more before October 10, 2022, 11 PM Bahrain / KSA time, and be in the running to win a piece of bitcoin from us, a gift that gets only more valuable with time.

Tweet of the week 🐥