​​🗓Weekly recap: markets drop amid the growing US inflation, Binance finds itself under the SEC guns, PayPal and Mastercard introduce new crypto features 🗓

Here is the compilation of the essential crypto events of the week.

🟥 Bitcoin crashed to $25,000

In the middle of last week, the BTC price began to decline after hitting a local maximum of $31,700. On June 12, Bitcoin was already worth $28k, and tonight the price of the first cryptocurrency fell to $25,000. According to CoinGecko, the weekly drop amounted to 15%. According to Coinglass, liquidations in the futures market exceeded $500 million. Altcoins followed bitcoin’s lead: all assets from the top 20 by the cap are in the red zone. Ethereum’s price sank to $1,330, while Dogecoin’s to $0.058.

📊LTC/USDT -12.3% in 24h

📊DOGEUSDT -10% in 24h

📊TRX/USDT -10% in 24h

The news of the growing US inflation rates is to blame. CNBC reports that America’s consumer price index rose from an expected 8.3% to 8.6%. It is essential to understand that this represents the highest inflation since 1981. Many analysts and experts predict a recession involving a production decline and an economic growth slowdown.

The collapse affected the entire global financial community. 

The American stock market also sank significantly: the Dow Jones fell by 2.73%, the S&P 500 lost 2.91%, and the Nasdaq decreased by 3.52%.

🟥SEC launched the BNB token investigation 

One of the UST and LUNA collapse consequences is increased attention from regulators to the digital asset industry. Binance, the largest exchange in the world Binance, and its BNB native cryptocurrency fell under the SEC gun. It started with a Reuters publication headlined “How crypto giant Binance became a hub for hackers, fraudsters and drug traffickers”. According to the data, the platform has become a channel for laundering $2.3 billion over the past five years. Of course, the exchange denied all allegations.

Bloomberg then reported that the US Securities Commission had launched its investigation into the BNB cryptocurrency. In its course, it will establish whether the BNB token could be considered security during its ICO period. However, the process can take months and would not necessarily reveal violations by Binance. Still, against negative news and a decline in the market, the BNB price sank by 20% in the last week.

🟩 New PayPal crypto features 

Payments giant PayPal has long understood the prospects of digital assets: last year, the company added buying, selling, and storing crypto features for US and UK residents. Recently, the company announced new opportunities for crypto. 

American clients will now be able to exchange assets with other participants and withdraw cryptocurrency to third-party wallets. Currently, the PayPal crypto service supports four assets: BTC, ETH, BCH, and LTC.

🟩Mastercard will allow buying NFT for fiat

Another payment service announced new crypto integrations: Mastercard holders will be able to buy non-fungible tokens for fiat funds on partner platforms, including Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox, Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway, and MoonPay. It means Mastercard owners won’t need to buy crypto with fiat first to use it for NFT purchases. The company’s survey among 35,000 customers in 40 countries showed that 45% of respondents already have experience with NFT or plan on buying such tokens in the future.  

🤔 How do you assess the current situation in the financial markets? Should we expect another global financial crisis in 2022?