GB Market Commentary 29/04/2022
by Marcus Sotiriou
US GDP contracted by 1.4% in Q1 2022 as recession fears heighten. This is bullish for risk assets like Bitcoin and equities in my opinion, as the Federal Reserve may become less hawkish to avoid a recession.
Bitcoin has made significant strides towards mainstream adoption as Goldman Sachs has offered its first Bitcoin backed loan. Over the past few weeks, it has been clear that Wall Street are adopting crypto further as Cowen, an American investment bank, launched a digital assets unit and BlackRock took part in the $400 million funding round for stablecoin issuer Circle. Furthermore, private equity giant Apollo Global Management had hired former JPMorgan (JPM) executive Christine Moy to serve as its first head of digital assets strategy.
In addition, Goldman Sachs said on Wednesday it is examining non-fungible tokens (NFT), and the tokenization of real assets. Their head of digital assets Mathew McDermott said, "We are actually exploring NFTs in the context of financial instruments, and actually there the power is actually quite powerful. So we work on a number of things.”
The U.K. are clamping down on crypto-related crime as many crypto firms who need regulatory expertise are poaching U.K. cybercrime cops. This includes offers of double or triple pay as they are not short of cash. Therefore, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, who are the representative body for all U.K. forces, are losing staff at 3 to 4 times the rate of the rest of policing. This shows how the crypto industry is eating the world as every industry is being disrupted in some capacity.