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| By Beth Canova |
Well, you can't say crypto is boring.
You know by now that the third — that's right, third— black swan event of the year shook the crypto markets this week, sending the broad market into a volatility vortex.
Alex Benfield covered the situation well in Wednesday's Weiss Crypto Daily. And there have been two main updates since ...
The first is that Binance has officially backed out of the deal and will not be buying FTX. The second is that FTX has officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, as announced by CEO Sam Bankman-Fried on his Twitter account this morning.
You can read the full thread here.
We'll be keeping a close eye on how the markets digest this latest shake-up.
But in the meantime, I want to draw your attention to three headlines that were overshadowed by the Binance/FTX drama — all of which bode well for mainstream adoption.
1. JPMorgan Chase (JPM) takes inaugural dip into decentralized finance.
JPMorgan completed its first DeFi transaction on Polygon (MATIC, Tech/Adoption Grade "B+"), a Layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum's (ETH, Tech/Adoption Grade "B+") blockchain.
This was done as part of Project Guardian, an initiative of the Monetary Authority of Singapore that focuses on use cases for asset tokenization and DeFi.
Ty Lobban, head of Blockchain Launch & Onyx Digital Assets — JPMorgan's business unit that leverages cutting-edge technologies like blockchain to develop innovative products, platforms and marketplaces — posted a Twitter thread with all the details:
You can read the full thread here.
2. Fidelity Crypto will start offering commission-free trading for Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Fidelity is expanding retail access to crypto by offering commission-free trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum via its new platform, Fidelity Crypto. The platform only allows the trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum for now, but it could expand brokerage services to other digit assets in the future.
In lieu of a commission, Fidelity will add a 1% spread on all crypto trades.
Previously, Fidelity's crypto offerings have been limited for retail investors, as the focus had been on institutions and big-foot investors. But the brokerage firm has said this shift is due to the fact that "a meaningful portion of Fidelity customers are already interested in and own crypto," according to Cointelegraph.
Fidelity Crypto will also offer a growing library of on-demand education and market insights to help investors understand crypto. The service hasn't gone live yet, but Fidelity is allowing people to sign up for early access.
This is a solid step forward in mainstream adoption.
3. Goldman Sachs gets deep into digital asset evaluation.
The Goldman Sachs Group (GS) revealed a new crypto data service created with the help of MSCI (MSCI) and crypto data company Coin Metrics that classifies and evaluates hundreds of digital assets for institutional investors.
It's called datonomy. It'll allow users to see performance, research and analyses for different sectors in crypto. However, it'll only be available to institutional investors.
According to Coin Metrics CEO Tim Rice, "This is the next phase of getting the underpinnings of the industry lined up so that everybody can embrace it and we can figure out what the next directional move in the market is."
All three headlines reinforce our long-term outlook: Crypto is here to stay.
Institutions are aware of this … and are taking significant steps to be on the right side of this monetary revolution.
So, stay safe and avoid unnecessary risk in the volatile short term. You'll want to be ready to jump back in when it's over to catch the long-term opportunities in this space.
Best,
Beth
