By Marcus Sotiriou, Analyst at the publicly listed digital asset broker GlobalBlock (TSXV:BLOK).

As Bitcoin remains above $20,000, 66% of Bitcoin supply has not moved in a year, which is the largest percentage of supply last active over 1 year ago. This shows that BTC holders remain convinced in Bitcoin’s longevity.

More institutions enter the DeFi space, as JP Morgan, DBS Bank, SBI, Standard Chartered Bank, HSBC, UOB Participate in Money Authority of Singapore (MAS) Digital Asset Pilots. MAS Is Sinapore’s central bank and has allowed the banks mentioned to execute their first lives trades on a public blockchain using DeFi, tokenised deposits, and verifiable credentials.

After JP Morgan had famously been opposed to DeFi, with the CEO calling crypto a “decentralised Ponzi scheme” just months ago, the banking giant has got involved in the DeFi sector, which is huge step forward for the industry.

JP Morgan used a version of Aave on Polygon blockchain to execute a trade of tokenized SGD for JPY with SBI Holdings LLC. The Polygon token (MATIC) is up over 20% today, increasing by over 50% in just the past few weeks.

In other news, Coinbase reported earnings yesterday that showed a loss of $545 million in the third quarter. This is 50% lower than its losses in the second quarter of this year, which was $1.1 billion, yet the loss is still concerning for investors.

Transaction revenue was down 44% from Q2, reaching $366 billion, stating that there is a shift in trading volume away from the U.S. where there is a lack of regulatory certainty. The U.K. has the potential to capitalise on this, with Rishi Sunak becoming the new U.K. prime minister.

Within the earnings report Coinbase stated, “as of the end of the quarter, roughly 25% of the 100 largest hedge funds in the world by reported assets under management have chosen to onboard with Coinbase.” This is a significant increase from last year where they claimed 10% of the largest hedge funds have onboarded with Coinbase, suggesting that hedge funds are preparing to invest in crypto when we finally do get a change in macroeconomic conditions.

By Marcus Sotiriou, Analyst at the publicly listed digital asset broker GlobalBlock (TSXV:BLOK). 

Bitcoin and crypto markets bounced back for a while on wednesday following the continuation of a relief rally in the S&P 500. As investors lose trust in exchanges and trading platforms which are not transparent, 137,000 Bitcoins have been removed from exchanges in the past 30 days.

Retail investors are accumulating at a rapid pace, as the Bitcoin supply held by on-chain entities between the size of 0.1-1 BTC is spiking.

Whilst the stability of the crypto ecosystem remains in question, JP Morgan continues to make moves toward integrating crypto products. JP Morgan has registered a JP Morgan Wallet with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to use in a wide range of financial services, including cryptocurrency transfers and crypto payment services.

The terms used to describe the services that are enabled with this registration are “electronic transfer of virtual currencies,” “financial exchange of virtual currencies,” and “cryptocurrency payment processing,” shown by the USPTO website.

JP Morgan described the wallet as:

“Real-time virtual sub-ledgers that help manage and scale any number of customer, supplier and vendor payments in an organized, easy-to-reconcile way.”

JP Morgan intends to “help simplify domestic and cross-border receivables and disbursements” with the implementation of this wallet, and also develop “sophisticated payments solutions like connected mobility solutions and blockchain platforms that can help you say more to the world.”

Furthermore, Singapore’s largest bank, DBS, completed an intraday repo trade on JP Morgan’s Onyx (JP Morgan’s own blockchain ecosystem). Usually, repo trades take two days to settle, however by using blockchain technology these transactions can settle in just a few hours.

This proves the potential for blockchain technology to disrupt the $4 trillion repo market and revolutionise the financial services industry.