EDNY and SEC investigate DCG, Blackrock adds Bitcoin, Shibarium takes major stride,

Polygon has scored two major partners after Mastercard chose its blockchain for its music artist accelerator program and Samsung sought it to deliver the highest quality photos and videos in Web3.
Despite BTC price stagnating, its influence in the financial district is greater than ever, more recently being added by the American investment firm, BlackRock, to its $15 trillion Global Allocation Fund.

Although crypto investors have taken a cautious approach to investment, development around the ecosystem has continued to increase. In this edition of our “weekly brief”, we take a look at key events that could influence market prices in the short or long term.

Blackrock adds Bitcoin to their $15TR Global Allocation Fund

Bitcoin recorded a major win after Blackrock announced that it will be adding the world’s largest cryptocurrency to its $15 trillion Global Allocation Fund. In the coming weeks and months, we could see billions of dollars flow into Bitcoin as institutional investors take interest in the crypto market. As noted by one analyst, BlackRock can scoop up all BTC on exchanges with just 0.32 percent of the assets it has under management.

After a decade of existence, Bitcoin has proven itself to be a great hedge against inflation and has further shown that it’s here to stay. After betting against it and rightfully losing, institutional investors are slowly adopting and investing in Bitcoin.

Blackrock which has trillions under management also has a partnership with Coinbase that allows its clients to invest in cryptocurrencies directly.

EDNY and SEC investigate DCG and Genesis

Although Bitcoin continues to cement its place in the financial district, some companies involved with digital assets have damaged the entire market’s reputation. It began with the FTX crash but has spilled into other companies and projects including Digital Currency Group (DCG) and its subsidiaries like Genesis and Grayscale. Earlier this week, reports emerged that the Eastern District of New York attorney office and the US SEC are investigating DCG and Genesis over its inter-company loans and money transfers.

Regulators have expressed concerns about the internal financial transactions of the Barry Silbert-owned crypto firm. One of these was declared by Silbert back in November 2021, when the CEO told investors that DCG received around $575M in loans from Genesis Global Capital due later this year.

Prior to the investigation, there was widespread concern that the firm could declare bankruptcy and trigger a major dump in the market.

Ethereum developers push forward with the Shanghai upgrade to enable withdrawals of staked Ether

After a successful Merge upgrade in 2021, Ethereum developers are taking a focus on the Shanghai upgrade. Significantly, this will enable withdrawals of staked Ether. Although this could trigger volatility around the second largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum developers voted to move forward with this move in the first virtual meeting of the new year. Developers further discussed EVM 2.0 during the call, voting to remove it from the Shanghai upgrade.

As of the press, there’s over $20 billion staked on the Ethereum network. Since shifting from PoW to PoS, this amount has helped secure the network and has been inaccessible to investors.

Massive withdrawals of the staked amount could trigger panic and affect ETH prices. However, analysts remain long-term bullish on the altcoin.

Polygon partners with Samsung and Mastercard

Polygon has started the year right where it left the last, taking a focus on development. Its reward this week has come in the form of being chosen by a financial giant and tech giant. Polygon confirmed via a Twitter announcement that Savage App and Samsung will leverage Polygon to bring the best quality photos and videos to Web3 users. The Savage Smart TV app enables easy IRL display connectivity and uploads of top-quality media from any marketplace (up to 8K).

Mastercard on the other hand plans to build its new Web3 program designed to help underground artists on Polygon. The new innovative program dubbed the Mastercard Artist Accelerator will use Web3 and blockchain to help artists with brand building.

These developments will help accelerate Polygon adoption and increase MATIC utility. In the long term, this will boost the native token’s price to new highs.

Shiba Inu: Shibarium is on the way and will solve scaling problems in trillion-$-market

The Shiba Inu community is very excited about the imminent Shibarium update and the development team is working tirelessly to deliver the same. Shibarium is set to be the layer-2 solution in the Shiba Inu ecosystem. One of its key features that will help in scalability is allowing for off-chain transactions which can be completed on-chain in batches. Earlier this week, developers shared an update on what will be the Shibarium primary utility token.

In the announcement, the team further revealed that each Shibarium transaction would burn SHIB.

Shibarium Update 🧵

While on our last post we wanted to remind everyone that BONE 🍖 serves as the required gas token for operability within Shibarium, we also would now like to formally announce that each #Shibarium transaction will burn 🔥 SHIB.

1/2 🧵 pic.twitter.com/zQRoOuL9oW

— Shibarium Network (@ShibariumNet) January 7, 2023

The successful launch of Shibarium is set to boost Shiba Inu’s reputation among developers. Shibarium will play a crucial role in the development of decentralized applications (DApps) on the Shiba Inu platform. In the long term, this will boost SHIB and BONE in utility and price movement.

CNF weekly Briefing: EDNY and SEC investigate DCG, Blackrock adds Bitcoin, Shibarium takes major stride, Ethereum developers push forward with Shanghai upgrade, Polygon partners Samsung and Mastercard