In this week’s episode of Market Talks, Cointelegraph welcomes Brent Xu, founder and CEO of Umee – a decentralized finance hub built on the Cosmos SDK that offers tools for macro-level loan and lending applications. Prior to founding Umee, Xu led strategy at Tendermint while setting the strategic roadmap and partnerships for the Cosmos Ecosystem.
We start with the main topic for today: Bitcoin (BTC) touched $29,000, a new high for 2023, despite the recent violation of United States regulations on crypto companies and uncertainty. This could also suggest that the crypto market seems unconcerned about the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s lawsuit against Binance and its CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao. Even the Crypto Fear & Greed Index – which aims to quantify the current “emotions and sentiments” towards Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies – has steadily increased over the last month despite the wobbles in the global banking sector. What does all this mean for the crypto space, though? Should investors not worry about regulations?
This week Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Pakistan, Russia, India and Brazil decided to settle trade in their own currencies instead of the United States dollar. Why did they decide to do this, and will it have a significant impact on the US and the dollar? Will there be consequences for the crypto space, if any?
We asked Xu what his vision is for how DeFi protocols and crypto exchanges are going to build their own banking services in the future. Centralized crypto exchanges are under various pressures from regulators at the moment, but we still see Fidelity Investments expanding its offering, and Nasdaq is close to launching a crypto custody platform. We also got Xu’s thoughts on Fidelity Investment’s recent expansion.
There is a lot going on at the moment in terms of regulation in the crypto space, mostly to the detriment of the crypto sector. We asked Xu what his long-term vision is for the future of the regulated crypto space in the United States.
The United States Federal Reserve appears to be in an endless war against inflation. There seems to be no end to the rise in interest rates. Is the Fed losing the war? At what point will we see a pause in interest rate hikes, and how realistic is the Fed to achieve its goals for this year?
We cover all of this and more, so check it out until the end. Market Talk airs every Thursday at 12:00 PM ET (17:00 UTC). Every week, it features interviews with some of the most influential and inspiring people from the crypto and blockchain industry. So, head over to the Cointelegraph Markets & Research YouTube page and hit the Like and Subscribe button for all the videos and future updates.