The biggest news from last week is Coinbase scheduled its first-ever investor day on August 14, amid rumors the crypto exchange giant is exploring a public stock listing. Reuters reported on Thursday that Coinbase is seeking legal counsel to advise with filing a public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in anticipation of a public debut via direct listing, instead of an initial public offering. An investor day often precedes a direct listing, as the firm will invite investors to the event and discuss company and historical financial results. The San Francisco-based firm was last valued at $8 billion in a 2018 funding round and has over 35 million users. If Coinbase does file a listing application and the SEC approves it, the firm would be the first major U.S. crypto company to go public in a historic first.
Here is the rest of the week in review:
Tata Consultancy Services, a subsidiary of India's industrial conglomerate Tata Group, on Wednesday launched a product for banks and financial institutions to offer crypto trading services to customers. Tata's Quartz Smart Solution can support multiple cryptocurrencies including some stablecoins. The solution also offers an over-the-counter option and can alert banks and other parties to potential criminal activity. Vivekanand Ramgopal, Tata Consultancy's Quartz chief, said that cryptocurrencies are rapidly becoming a viable investment vehicle and the new product lets banks quickly capitalize on the new trend. After a recent wave of regulatory crackdowns from the Indian government on the crypto space, the launch of Tata's Quartz could be a strong sign that future regulation is likely to be not punitive but instead supportive.
Bitcoin Gold's (BTG) developer team revealed on Friday evening that it thwarted a 51% attack it had known was arriving for over a week. Previously, the Bitcoin Gold team informed exchanges and mining pools of the attack on July 2 and posted a notice to the community on July 10 warning it was time for "everyone else to upgrade their nodes." On July 2 developers distributed an update that included a checkpoint at block 640,650. The coin's developer team then revealed the attempted network takeover to the public after the unknown attacker, who had been mining blocks since July 1, released 1,300 blocks on Friday. Developer CryptoDJ noted in the announcement: "The majority of honest pool hash power continues to mine on the honest chain." According to the coin's website, only 108 Bitcoin Gold nodes currently exist in the world.
Crypto prices rose to $272 billion this week. For the majors, all coins were in the green, as Cardano (ADA), Bitcoin SV (BSV), and Binance Coin (BNB) made outsized gains, while Tether (USDT) and Bitcoin (BTC) posted the smallest gains. In the top 100, the biggest losers were Compound (COMP), down 14%, Celsius (CEL), down 5%, and Verge (XVG), down 4%. The biggest gainers were Elrond (ERD), up a whopping 94%, Ampleforth (AMPL), up 92%, and Aave (LEND), up 64%. Next week traders will see if crypto can continue climbing up.
The author owns a small amount of BTC.
