Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s remarks on BTC during Monday’s Bank for International Settlements’ Innovation Summit garnered attention for his comparison of the asset to gold. However, Powell has previously made similar remarks, signaling that the Chairman’s views on BTC remain unaltered despite the asset’s growth. 

THETA's move into the Top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap makes it the 5th network with smart contract capabilities in that group. This coincides with elevated recent Google search volume for the term “smart contract.”

With the firm agreeing to pay a penalty of USD 6.5 million and not admitting fault, this is one of several instances regulators have shown they’re willing to forgive behavior reflective of the gray regulatory history of crypto in certain situations, for certain firms.

On Monday, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) DeFi venue PancakeSwap had its site “compromised by a third party” asking users to enter crypto wallet private keys while over the weekend hackers stole digital art from NFT marketplace Nifty Gateway. The episode highlights the novel security challenges faced by new crypto applications. 

USDt transfers on ETH have historically been a major contributor to ETH capacity challenges. This shift coincides with comments from Vitalik Buterin, which suggest technical solutions to address scaling issues are imminent.

Binance allegedly allowed U.S. residents to trade derivatives that violate local rules, Bloomberg reports. This is confirmation that crypto, particularly unlicensed foreign derivative venues, remain in the focus of U.S. regulators.

Recent increased interest in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has come to a head with the sale of digital artist Beeple’s “Everydays” piece for USD 69 million. Though NFTs have recently seen breakout levels of attention, this type of digital asset has been present in the crypto space for years.

When Ripple revealed the SEC was charging the firm for selling XRP as an unregistered security in December, the asset’s market cap dropped from USD 26 billion to a low of 8 billion. Since, however, XRP’s capitalization has recovered to a current USD 21 billion.

PayPal announced that it’s acquiring Tel Aviv-based crypto custody startup Curv in order to “accelerate and expand its initiatives to support cryptocurrencies and digital assets.” The acquisition reflects the challenges non-crypto firms face in participating in the space without the support of crypto-native firms.

The proposal alters the way transaction fees are paid on the network and is likely to insert further uncertainty into ETH’s technical roadmap at a moment when competing smart contract networks are achieving record valuations.