Everything at a glance: The most important crypto news of the week
Tesla invests in Bitcoin, Christine Lagarde repeatedly criticises and North Korea steals BTC – an exciting crypto week comes to an end.
Tesla gets into Bitcoin and creates bull crypto market
Elon Musk has been flirting with Bitcoin for some time. After the Tesla boss recently added a Bitcoin symbol to his Twitter status, the rumours thickened. Then, on Monday 8 February, it emerged from a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that the company had acquired Bitcoin for 1.5 billion US dollars.
This immediately caused the price to soar – one all-time high followed the next. Within 24 hours, the largest cryptocurrency rose by Immediate Bitcoin around 9,000 US dollars to the preliminary all-time high of 48,025 US dollars and thus recorded a daily increase of 21 percent. The countdown seemed to have been set for a march through to the within reach mark of 50,000 US dollars. Last week, the price reached a fresh all-time high of 48,687 US dollars, and since then it has been hovering between 44,000 and 48,000 US dollars.
2 trillion US dollars: BNY Mellon gets into crypto
BNY Mellon is America’s oldest bank and manages around two trillion US dollars. As Forbes reported this week, the investment giant plans to offer and store Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for its customers this year. In doing so, BNY Mellon is the first national custodian bank to decide to introduce cryptocurrency custody accounts for its clients.
BNY’s top manager Michael Demissie described Bitcoin and other digital assets as an emerging asset class. The reason for the move on the part of BNY Mellon is, among other things, the progress made with regard to the regulation of cryptocurrencies, he said.
North Korea steals Bitcoin to fund nuclear programme
It has long been suspected that North Korea is financing its nuclear programme through hacking attacks. A UN report now wants to provide evidence of this. According to a press release from the United Nations, the trail of the theft of assets worth 281 million dollars from a cryptocurrency exchange last September leads there. It is a currency heist that is one of the largest reported to date. Analysts concluded that the Seychelles-based crypto exchange KuCoin suffered by far the greatest damage.
Apparently, the hackers tried to channel the stolen money through decentralised exchanges by creating individual currency exchanges. With centrally managed trading platforms, it would have been quickly noticed that the money was stolen.
Rumours have been circulating for some time that North Korea is hiring hackers to steal Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies from exchanges to help fund dictator Kim Jong-un’s nuclear programme.
Christine Lagarde repeatedly critical of crypto reserves
The current surge of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is putting the monetary guardians in a tight spot. They see their influence waning at the same rate as the confidence of institutional and private investors in the crypto sector is rising. Now, European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde has taken part in a conference call hosted by business magazine The Economist and outlined her position on the issue. She said on Wednesday, according to media reports, that she does not consider Bitcoin a real currency, adding that central banks will not hold it as a reserve currency any time soon.
