The global regulatory landscape for digital assets remains a topic of intense discussion as governments and international organizations weigh the risks and benefits of this new asset class.

Recently, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, after co-chairing the G-20 meeting with Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, suggested that banning cryptocurrencies could be an option if “they start posing greater risks to financial stability.” According to Georgieva, state-backed stablecoins have “reliability” and “reasonably good space for the economy,” while non-backed crypto assets are “speculative, high-risk investments and not money.”

Meanwhile, in the United States, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen emphasized the importance of establishing a solid regulatory framework for digital assets but did not suggest any outright bans.

In India, controversy surrounds the decision to apply 30% tax rules on crypto last February, resulting in $3.85 billion in trading volume shifting from local to international crypto exchanges. Furthermore, SEC chair Gensler triggered a backlash from the crypto community by stating in a recent interview that every cryptocurrency except Bitcoin is a security,

In contrast to the U.S. and India, Europe might become a more welcoming jurisdiction for crypto companies, with officials pitching the region as a favorable place for crypto businesses to set up shop.

With regards to price movements and market data, Glassnode data indicates that whale numbers are at their lowest in three years, with only 1,663 unique entities controlling 1,000 BTC or more. This suggests that the biggest Bitcoin investors have yet to decide to return to the market.

However, whalemap data shows that the remaining active whales appear to be accumulating BTC more than they did when it was around $30,000. Hodlers’ net position change reached a new four-month high this weekend, indicating the rate at which accumulation was occurring.

Furthermore, as buyers add BTC, sellers have been selling at a loss, indicating a potential bottom for both BTC and ETH as per the crypto analytics tool Santiment.

Bitcoin (BTC) closed the week above \(23,500, with hopes of a rally to \)25,000 given the positive fundamentals above. The coin is currently trading at \(23,400, with a 0.6% daily increase. Nevertheless, the bullish sentiment didn’t seem to be reflected in [Bitcoin investment products](https://blog.coinshares.com/volume-120-digital-asset-fund-flows-weekly-report-825b6c7077fe) as they saw \)10 million pouring into short-bitcoin funds during the week ended Feb. 24, while long-bitcoin funds recorded a $12 million outflow.

In terms of DeFi, liquid staking has overtaken lending and borrowing to become the biggest sector by TVL, with Lido being a prominent project. The team had to activate the staking rate limit after reaching over 150,000 ETH staked in just one day.

Ethereum (ETH) has been trading sideways after closing the week at $1,638, posting a modest 2.2% gain over the past 24 hours. ETH, along with Lido stETH (STETH), turned out to be the best performers among the top 20 cryptos today, while others were slightly in the red or marking tiny gains.

Top altcoin gainers and losers

Gainers:

Stacks STX (+26.34%)

NEO NEO (+5.50%)

Synthetix SNX (+4.84%)

Losers:

WEMIX WEMIX (-5.12%)

Hedera Hashgraph HBAR (-3.99%)

Quant QNT (-3.45%)

NFT Market Map

Top collections saw a more modest gain in trading volume growth compared to those which were out of the top 5. Bored Ape Yacht Club (-59.11%) and MutantApeYachtClub (-23.22%) even went South while others were seeing an increase in daily volume.

MG Land (+29.59%), though not extremely hyped on social media, entered the top 3 collections by trading volume today shortly after it closed the first 5,000 LAND mint.

Otherdeed (+72.62%) traders have been active on Blur over the past few days, including Machi Big Brother who reportedly made the largest NFT dump so far to take advantage of the airdrop.