What the numbers say: Elon Musk-led electric vehicle (EV) giant Tesla has recently released its earnings call for Q1 of 2023, revealing that its Bitcoin (BTC) holdings remained the same as the previous quarter. The quarterly update pointed out that the company did not buy or sell any Bitcoin during the last three-month period. The valuation of the carmaker's Bitcoin holdings stayed flat at $184M, though the leading cryptocurrency saw a sharp price increase within Q1 since such gains cannot be recorded under the current accounting rules. Relevance: Tesla set off on its Bitcoin journey in February 2021 by purchasing $1.5B in Bitcoin as part of its new investment strategy, helping push the BTC price to nearly $70,000 within the same year. Two months after the investment, Musk said Tesla stopped accepting Bitcoin as payment due to its adverse environmental impacts amid the concerns around the use of fossil fuels for BTC mining and transactions. The EV giant also sold off 75%, or $936M, of its Bitcoin holdings in Q2 of 2022, mainly due to concerns about the company's cash flow and the uncertainty related to the crypto market. Brands that should care: Some other public companies with massive BTC reserves, including the business intelligence firm MicroStrategy and crypto mining company Marathon Digital, are still holding a significant amount of the total Bitcoin supply. Both companies saw a surge in their Bitcoin reserves last quarter, differently from Tesla. MicroStrategy increased its Bitcoin reserve to 140,000 in Q1, up from 132,500 BTC in Q4 last year. Similarly, Marathon Digital recorded a quarterly increase from 8,115 to 12,232 in its Bitcoin reserve.
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The lawmakers at the European Parliament (EP), the legislative body of the European Union (EU), have approved the first EU-wide crypto regulations, the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA), with a final vote after three years of development. The approval marked the first attempt of the European governments to regulate the crypto industry on such a scale. More: - The legislation will be formally approved by the EU's 27 member states by July.
- The regulations require crypto firms to register in one of the bloc's member states to continue offering their services within the EU.
- The European Banking Authority and the European Securities and Markets Authority will be responsible for ensuring that the crypto firms comply with the MiCA rules.
- The 400-page document also mandates stablecoin issuers to keep sufficient local reserves and be subject to trading limits on tokens whose value is not pegged to the euro.
- The bloc's Travel Rule forces crypto exchanges to provide information on senders and recipients for every transaction to European authorities, contradicting the industry's characteristics related to anonymity, and pay special attention to self-hosted wallets transferring over €1,000 ($1,097).
- The firms will have one to two years to comply with new rules, as the provisions related to stablecoins will come into effect as of July 2024, and other aspects regarding the crypto asset service providers as of January 2025.
- MiCA's scope does not involve crypto lending, staking, decentralized finance (DeFi), and NFTs, leading to calls from several lawmakers for a more comprehensive MiCA 2.
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Deribit, the largest crypto options exchange, has announced that it would launch a zero-fee spot exchange on April 24 to allow users to trade financial products immediately at the current market rate. The platform said it aims to attract more retail investors with the new move. More: - The new spot trading platform will initially offer only three pairs: BTC/USDC, ETH/USDC, and ETH/BTC.
- In the ongoing process, the exchange will list more coins.
- The zero-fee feature will stay on the platform for a short time.
- The platform entered the spot trading market, where Binance is the market leader, nearly a month after Binance ended its zero-fee campaign.
- The spot exchange will not be available for users in some restricted countries, including the U.S., the Virgin Islands, Canada, Japan, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.
- The firm also plans to receive a crypto license in Dubai and move its headquarters from Panama.
Zoom Out: - Deribit is currently the market leader in crypto options trading with over 90% share of open interest, which refers to the total number of contracts held by market participants at the end of the trading day.
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The National Bank of the Republic of Belarus, the European country's central bank, has prepared a pilot program for a potential central bank digital currency (CBDC), or a digital Belarusian ruble. The project aims to bring the country to the same level in the CBDC race as other nations preparing to introduce their own digital currencies. More: - The country will decide whether to issue a CBDC by the end of the year.
- In the meantime, the central bank will evaluate the feasibility and possibility of the digital ruble through discussions and consultations.
- If approved to continue, the project will pave the way for a pilot phase to test the CBDC with a small participant group containing banks and individuals.
- The central bank's chair, Pavel Kallaur, said it is working on a platform that would allow them to test the CBDC.
- Kallaur also stated that introducing a CBDC would require changes in civil law, banking and tax rules, and the national budget.
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Microsoft has integrated a one-click deployment feature into its Azure Marketplace to offer real-time blockchain data to developers in partnership with the decentralized data platform Space and Time. The feature allows developers to access, manage, and perform analytics on blockchain-native data. More: - Azure marketplace serves as an online store to provide applications, tools, and services to be used on Microsoft's cloud computing platform, Azure.
- Space and Time provides real-time data indexed from major blockchains by combining them with off-chain datasets from customers to create a hybrid database.
- The new one-click deployment feature also enables businesses to build applications on the blockchain without having to change their existing infrastructure.
Zoom Out: - The integration came nearly seven months after M12, Microsoft's venture capital (VC) arm, backed Space and Time by leading a $20M strategic funding round.
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Famous auction house Sotheby's has announced that it would auction off a new NFT collection dubbed Grails consisting of digital artworks owned by the bankrupt crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC). The auction will start with the sale of seven NFTs in May. More: - The pieces to be auctioned include Dmitri Cherniak's artwork, The Golden Goose, purchased by 3AC's co-founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies for $5.8M in August 2021.
- Art Blocks Fidenza #216 by generative artist Tyler Hobbs, Chromie Squiggle #1780 by Art Blocks founder Erick Calderon, CryptoPunk #6649, and Autoglyph #187 by Larva Labs are also among the artworks in the collection.
- Teneo, the company managing 3AC's liquidation, announced the sale of some of the hedge fund's NFTs earlier this year, excluding the pieces of the firm's Starry Night Capital NFT fund.
- Recent data showed that the NFTs still held by the bankrupt hedge fund are worth around $2.4M, while those transferred to Teneo are valued at $20.8M.
Zoom Out: - 3AC had to file for bankruptcy in July last year due to a prolonged crypto winter triggered by the multi-billion dollar Terra ecosystem's collapse in May.
- In April, co-founders Kyle Davis and Su Zhu launched a new Dubai-based crypto exchange dubbed OPNX in collaboration with the derivatives platform CoinFLEX's CEO, Mark Lamb.
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 |  | Doga is a tech and science editor who has been writing news for nearly 10 years. She worked for leading tech platforms and mainstrem media channels as an editor and presenter throughout his career. Then, she carried her know-how to more than one platform. She is a part-time cat lover and binge-watcher, and also fond of science, space, and emerging tech. She always has a story to tell. She is a bit addict to the laughter and -unfortunately- the '90s culture. |  | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 and 1972 Fords. | |
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