Good morning Here’s what happens:
Prices: Bitcoin continues to show upside as issuers work to resubmit their Bitcoin ETF applications.
Insights: Is Japan moving towards the future of cryptocurrencies? Or are you stuck a few years in the past?
SEC says ETF filings aren’t good enough, but Bitcoin hasn’t given up hope
As North America celebrates a long weekend, markets are calm but both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) are providing price stability.
Last week had a rough ending for cryptocurrencies as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said current bitcoin ETF filings were “insufficient” and caused prices to fall. Some of the issuers have reapplied and named Coinbase as their market surveillance partner.
BitBull Capital CEO Joe DiPasquale envisions Bitcoin potentially testing a support zone between $27,000 and $29,000, and he says such a price move is likely to lead to stronger declines for altcoins.
“Last week we highlighted that if Bitcoin stays above $30,000, it would be positive for the market. This week we’ve seen some of that sentiment shift toward altcoins as ETH showed signs of wanting to test $2,000 and other altcoins also rallied,” he told CoinDesk in a note. “Market participants will do well to remain cautious on continued bullish momentum.”
Despite starting the week with a bank holiday, there will be some key economic events this week, with the June FOMC minutes to be released on Wednesday – which will provide more insight into the Fed’s next moves on interest rates – JOLT’s job listings on Thursday and new unemployment figures on Friday.
No doubt traders will weigh all of this with the news of the SEC’s next moves regarding Bitcoin ETFs.
Is Japan in the Crypto Future? Or a few years ago?
Explore the Japanese internet for a while and you’ll find that it looks a little dated.
You can do a lot more things online in Japan than in the West, but there are a few notable exceptions, and overall the country’s Web2 space looks a decade out of date. Think about what the web looked like when the iPhone 4 came out.
“The government really felt that we missed Web2 completely… Now they see Web3 as something that Japan could possibly embrace and bring forth the new generation of Japanese tech companies and tech visionaries in this space,” said Akio Tanaka, one of the founding partners by IVC, which recently hosted its IVS Crypto and Web Conference in Kyoto.
“There are no Web2 giants from Japan,” he continued.
But what does the celebration of Web3 look like in Japan?
Much like the peak of the western bull market.
NFTs and GameFi are big, and oddly enough, so is the enterprise blockchain. Some of the largest Japanese companies are announcing they have a Web3 strategy and there is a lot of money being spent, but these strategies are still unclear (think “carbon credit trading” or “health records”) and are in the Development.
Tanaka emphasizes that everything will be different in Japan.
Japanese GameFi developers, for example, want to “serve gamers, not crypto speculators,” he said.
“They probably won’t try to take the same speculative actions that you might have seen outside of Japan because they realize that doing so can actually backfire and negatively impact their core game fans,” he continued.
Sega is aware of this because when it was first mentioned it entered the NFT space. The company faced strong backlash from fans and changed its stance. It explained that if its entry into Web3 “was perceived as simply making money, it would make the decision not to continue.”
Ditto for Square Enix. While the exchange welcomed their decision to accept NFTs starting with characters from Final Fantasy 7 – which is considered the best iteration of the long-running franchise – fans hated the idea.
It’s hard to imagine that once you peel the layers off, this acceptance of Web 3 could be any more conservative than the bulls claim.
Despite all the discussions about GameFi and NFTs at the show, Japan’s most famous IP is staying away from it, apart from Square’s experiment. Nintendo wanted to hire an NFT and Metaverse expert in March, but nothing materialized (Tanaka says if Nintendo does anything, it would be the last to do it).
Even the Japanese Prime Minister’s speech opening the conference didn’t mention Web3 by name, only general platitudes about the importance of startups for economic growth and his government’s plans to make Japan a friendly market for these startups.
But there is something, even if it’s not what the evangelists say.
As the interview with Tanaka wound down, the next group, a corporate delegation from Sega, arrived early.
Sega, an investor in IVC, was in the news recently, dismissing rumors that the company was planning an acquisition. An IVC spokesman declined to comment on what the meeting was about, but it likely was about cryptocurrencies.
Wealth management giant Fidelity has resubmitted the paperwork for its Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust, a spot Bitcoin ETF. Hashnote CEO Leo Mizuhara shared his analysis of the crypto markets. 507 Capital Managing Partner Thomas Braziel commented on recent developments surrounding FTX’s bankruptcy. And Boyd Cohen, CEO of Iomob, discussed the methodology behind CoinDesk’s Crypto Hubs list for 2023.
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