Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong warned that the U.S. risks falling behind other countries both technologically and politically, and he didn’t say that without any clues.

Institutions are hesitant to fully embrace the crypto market due to a lack of regulatory clarity, according to Consensys chief crypto economics officer Lex Sokolin. The SEC adds to the uncertainty, as they lead the charge in regulating the industry with tighter enforcement actions.

Recently, South Dakota is said to attempt to exclude Bitcoin from being considered “money” in their laws, therefore undermining Bitcoin adoption in the US. According to Dennis Porter, CEO of Satoshi Act Fund, the bill states that no medium of exchange can be considered “money” unless it was “approved or adopted by the government” before it existed as a medium of exchange.

While the U.S. is struggling to find its way for crypto regulation, Japan has been opening up to stablecoins as three major banks there will issue stablecoins on an Ethereum-compatible blockchain created by Tokyo-based G.U. Technologies.

Japanese cryptocurrency exchanges are currently prohibited from listing stablecoins issued by foreign entities, such as Tether (USDT). However, reports suggest that this ban will be lifted in 2023 for stablecoins that comply with certain regulatory standards.

In June, new regulations will also allow Japanese exchanges to apply for a special license to trade stablecoins. As privately developed stablecoins are expected to make their way to Japan, the Bank of Japan is concentrating on developing its central bank digital currency, with a digital yen pilot program scheduled for April.

In Australia, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has invited companies to explore 14 use cases for the Australian stablecoin initiative “eAUD”, including Canvas Digital, a layer-2 network built on top of Ethereum that uses zero-knowledge rollups to facilitate transactions. StarkWare co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson believes that this move could prove that new digital currencies are not just empty hype and could become part of people’s daily lives.

Despite regulatory pressure and macroeconomic gloom, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Fidelity researcher Jack Neureuter noted that the percentage of BTC that have not moved in the past year has reached an all-time high of over 67%, and accumulation addresses have also hit a new record of 800,000.

With these fundamentals, as well as more bullish catalysts from on-chain metrics mentioned in his thread, investors could look forward to a recovery to reach a new ATH in price based on historical trends.

However, there are still signs of short-term weakness in the market, as Bitcoin (BTC) has failed to reclaim \(25,000 and has experienced recent consolidation. BTC recovered some of its losses and gained modest traction around the \)23,500 level.

This came after the coin tumbled to under \(23,400 from over \)23,700 earlier today. The coin is now changing hands at a 1.54% discount while Silvergate bank came with bad news about its state. The Silvergate news raises concerns among the crypto community about potential wider-market contagion risks.

Ethereum (ETH) has suffered less with only a 0.72% drop in price since an audited version of the Ethereum Foundation’s ERC-4337 account abstraction standard has gone live on the Ethereum mainnet, which could boost user adoption by simplifying the wallet setup process. CryptoQuant also predicted low selling pressure for ETH even after the Shanghai upgrade, with 60% of the staked ETH supply (about 10.3 million ETH) currently at a loss.

Xmon (XMON) went viral over social media today after tanking by more than 90%, from \(24,400 to \)2,300, within minutes following the end of SudoSwap’s lockdrop.

Top altcoin gainers and losers

Gainers:

Terra Classic LUNC (+2.57%)

Lido stETH STETH (+2.27%)

Bitcoin SV BSV (+1.67%)

Losers:

Immutable X IMX (-9.13%)

SingularityNET AGIX (-8.86%)

Klaytn KLAY (-8.81%)

NFT Market Map

MegaPunksPOP (+339.45%) is a newcomer to the NFT leaderboard today as the floor price soared by 400% within 48 hours after mint.

Azuki (+179.04%) came back to the top after a long time while Azuki #1582 was sold for 200 ETH on X2Y2.

Yuga Labs family collections, including Bored Ape Yacht Club (+3.08%), MutantApeYachtClub (-15.01%), Otherdeed (-43.13%), and SewerPass (-27.88%) were still in the top 10 despite underperforming the others.