This Week in Coins: Twitter Speculation Sends Dogecoin Higher, Bitcoin and Ethereum See Green

If last week was one mixed bag flatness for the largest coins, this week they gave the first real signs of gains after the disaster of FTX’s spiral into bankruptcy.

Bitcoin (BTC) gained 2.7% over the past seven days and is currently trading at around $17,000. Its closest rival Ethereum (ETH) grew by 6.7% and is trading at $1,285 at the time of writing, according to data from CoinGecko.

Both leading cryptocurrencies appear to have begun a modest recovery, after starting the week down as news of civil unrest in China rattled risk assets such as tech stocks and crypto. Protesters demonstrated against the country’s ongoing draconian COVID measures, prompting fears that the world’s second-largest economy could be disrupted.

The market also fell on Monday on the news that crypto lender BlockFi was petition for bankruptcy. BlockFi is the latest in a long line of crypto companies that have been hit by contagion following the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX.

Risk assets recovered on Wednesday when central bank chief Jerome Powell said in a speech that December would bring smaller interest rate increases. This signals the end of a cycle of hikes—three so far this year, each of 75 basis points – those were the steepest since 1994.

Although the leading currencies were almost all up, the gains were mostly small. However, several names enjoyed turbocharged rallies, including Chainlink (LINK) – up 11% to $7.59, Uniswap (UNI) up 12% to $6.12, and Polygon (MATIC) up 8.4% to $0.922278.

Dogecoin (DOGE) had a staggering 21.5% rally and is trading at almost 10 cents at the time of writing.

DOGE’s week-long rally was spurred on by a chirping from Twitter’s new CEO, Elon Musk, which includes slides from a recent Twitter company keynote he gave. One slide mentions “payments” but does not elaborate. However, it was enough to send the Doge army into speculation that their favorite coin could be the official digital currency of Twitter; after all, it’s Musk’s favorite too.

Legislators and regulators are heard on FTX

Lawmakers around the world continue to diligently monitor and debate the space, especially in the wake of the year’s two biggest disasters: Terra and FTX. On Monday, Brazil’s Congress took a step further than most and adopted a bill legally approve crypto for payments for goods and services in crypto.

The bill, which still needs presidential approval, includes crypto and air travel rewards in the definition of “payment agreements” overseen by the country’s central bank.

The next day, the European Central Bank published a damning paper claiming that Bitcoin’s prolonged price stabilization of around $20k before FTX’s collapse may have been “an artificially induced last gasp lead the way to irrelevance.”

IN blog postsThe ECB’s market infrastructure and payments director Ulrich Bindseil and adviser Jürgen Schaff also argue that “Bitcoin’s conceptual design and technological shortcomings make it questionable as a means of payment.”

Bitcoin-friendly U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) — who co-sponsors a bipartisan House bill called Act on responsible financial innovation is calling on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to be the industry’s chief regulator — said Monday in a pre-recorded address to the Financial Times’ Crypto and Digital Asset Summit that FTX’s collapse highlights the need for Congress to “learn more” about crypto. .

Lummis, known as the “Bitcoin Senator” for her cryptocurrency advocacy on Capitol Hill, touted her bill as a “framework” for understanding how the FTX disaster could have been prevented.

She also noted that FTX was “heavily involved” in drafting the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act (DCCPA), which is supported by Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark. )—a bill that she says “needs to be rewritten in a way that is more efficient and neutral in terms of business models, but very, very focused on consumer protection.”