Weekly Update: 21st of August
What happened between the 14th and 21st of August?
- Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley unveil Bitcoin balances in their Q2 filings. Read more
- Apple is planning to release its NFC chip to developers, opening the doors to mobile payments with crypto. Read more
- Despite stagnant outflows from Grayscale's ETHE ETF, Ethereum struggles to gain ground. Read more
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley reveal Bitcoin holdings
Recent 13-F filings on the second quarter of 2024 show that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley acquired significant positions in the new Bitcoin ETFs. Together, this amounts to a sum of more than $600 million. Both banks indicated a spread across several ETFs, but the bulk ($426 million) ended up in BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust. To date, the banks did not provide additional insight as to whether this was an investment from the banks themselves or whether it was purchased on behalf of clients. Nonetheless, this shows that crypto is increasingly finding its way into traditional investment portfolios.
Apple paves the way to mobile crypto payments
On Aug. 14, Apple announced that it will be releasing its NFC chip and Secure Element (SE) to third-party developers. Whereas these tools were previously exclusive to Apple's own Wallet app and Apple Pay, this now enables other parties to start offering wireless payments via iPhone. This presents significant opportunities for the further adoption of crypto, if crypto wallets and other providers continue to develop on this. Jeremy Allaire, CEO of stablecoin publisher Circle, already hinted on this with a tweet “Tap to pay using USDC on iPhones incoming soon.”
Ethereum struggles to gain ground
After the introduction of Ethereum spot ETFs in late July, the blockchain network is still struggling to gain ground. Ethereum had been under investor scrutiny for some time after failing to perform well relative to Bitcoin. After the ETFs, this trend has continued. The Ethereum price has since fallen over 25 percent and transaction volume on the network has also taken a further dive. Compared to March, the number of transactions has decreased by 95 percent, making for historically low gas fees (transaction fees). Besides a generally quiet summer period, the drop is mainly due to transaction traffic around memecoins that has moved to other networks such as Solana in recent months. However, outflows from Grayscale's ETHE ETF do appear to be stagnating, which may offer room for a recovery.
In other digital assets news
- Bitcoin's Hashrate (total computing power) has steadily increased in recent months. This makes for a more secure network, but also results in declining profitability for Bitcoin miners.
- Blockchain network Tron is gaining popularity after introducing an easy-to-use platform to generate new tokens. In particular, the activity comes from the creation of (and speculation on) many new memecoins.
- One of Italy’s biggest banks, Banca Sella, started offering Bitcoin trading to a first select group of its clients.
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