Crypto Platform News - February 2022

We got game-changing news in February even though the price movements were quietly flatlined. Bitcoin started at 23141 and closed at 23395 in February. The market was trying to determine the direction based on the negative news from the US and the positive news from China. The market is divided between western bearishness and eastern bullishness.

China’s reopen to crypto

We got plenty of good news from China during February. Firstly, as China is leading the CBDC race, they moved one more step forward with the expansion of the real use of digital currency to 17 more provinces in the country. More than 300.000 merchants currently accept Digital Yuan according to reports. A very interesting point about the Digital Yuan is that it can be used without a network connection. The transaction can be completed with NFC by using some special hardware. China also launched a state-supported national blockchain research centre in the Beijing province.

Secondly, more important than China’s CBDC and scientific efforts, China injected more than half a billion dollars into the markets during the period between December and January. This money is considered big enough to partly compensate for the negative outlook of the Western Economies. China also took serious steps in cryptocurrency regulation and taxation besides monetary expansionary policies. Tron and Huobi Exchange founder Justin Sun shared a thread on Twitter about the current situation and interpreted it as a signal that shows the country's increasing embrace of cryptocurrencies.

Stablecoin Wars; Busd is losing ground in the US

There is an increasing reaction against Binance’s stablecoin BUSD in the US. Firstly, well-known crypto custody firm Paxos Trust announced that it will stop minting new BUSD tokens. Binance CEO CZ shared a thread on Twitter about BUSD news and made an explanation about the process. Binance’s CEO Changpeng Zhao stated that Binance will keep supporting BUSD stablecoin in the foreseeable future and comply with the regulations. Lastly, Coinbase stated that it will delist BUSD because of liquidity concerns. It is now expected that the BUSD will lose its market share against its rivals.

Vechain introduces a new official crypto wallet - WeWorld!

The crypto market is shifting from centralized to decentralized as it is naturally expected. Decentralized exchanges are gaining momentum and so do decentralized wallets. VeChain introduced its official crypto wallet WeWorld in February. The wallet name refers to a gateway to the world of the VeChain ecosystem. The wallet is currently launched as a web wallet and the desktop version is planned to be released in Q3 this year. The VeWorld is a fully decentralized self-custody wallet built on VeChainThor.

Shibarium and Shibaswap

As it is estimated that Layer-2 projects will be standing out in the next bull run, the Shiba community is expanding their ecosystem to Layer-2 and releasing a first-of-it-kind token-based layer-2 solution; Shibarium. Shibarium is a layer-2 blockchain network on top of the Ethereum network that uses Shib tokens. Shibarium will be like Optimism and Arbitrum and Shiba Inu will be its native token. Shiba community already has its DEX which is called Shibaswap. Dog-meme-inspired token communities are going into DEX and Layer-2 projects, I think it is an important sign of the hypes we will have in the next bull run.