CoinSpotMarket Update
Bitcoin Holds Above Key Level & Ripple Partners With Mastercard
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Closing the week at around $163,000 ($105,000 USD), Bitcoin managed to stay above its 50-week moving average (SMA) for another week. The yellow line on the chart below represents this long-term trend level, which traders often view as a key indicator of underlying market strength.
This weekly close suggests that Bitcoin’s broader uptrend remains intact despite recent volatility. Holding above the 50-week SMA generally indicates that long-term buyers continue to support price dips, helping to maintain sentiment.
If Bitcoin continues to respect this trend line, which it has done since March 2023, it could act as a springboard for renewed momentum heading into year-end.
Bitcoin holding above the 50 SMA throughout this bull market (Source: TradingView)
Announced at Ripple’s Swell conference last week, Ripple is teaming up with Mastercard to test settling credit card transactions using the XRP Ledger. The pilot program examines whether a stablecoin can facilitate faster and more cost-effective fund transfers across existing card rails, while maintaining compliance standards for banks and card issuers.
The initiative focuses on back-end settlement, not consumer spending behaviour. In practical terms, the aim is to shorten the time between a card swipe and final clearing between the issuer and the merchant’s bank. If the pilot performs well, it could provide a template for other programmes that want blockchain speed without changing the customer’s checkout experience.
Ripple says its stablecoin, Ripple USD (RLUSD), is fully backed by cash and cash equivalents, and now exceeds $1.5B ($1.0B USD) in circulation. Success would mark one of the first examples of a regulated U.S. bank settling fiat card payments over a public blockchain using a regulated stablecoin.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued guidance stating that staking rewards generated within exchange-traded funds (ETFs) will not be considered a taxable event for the funds.
This means that if an ETF holds a cryptocurrency, such as Ethereum (ETH) or Solana (SOL), and stakes it to earn rewards, the ETF itself will not have to pay taxes on those rewards as they are generated. Instead, the tax obligation is deferred until the underlying cryptocurrencies are sold.
This new guidance represents a significant breakthrough for asset managers seeking to launch ETFs for ETH and SOL, in particular. Previously, the lack of clarity around staking was a significant obstacle, as the potential tax burden on staking rewards could have made such products unviable.
By treating staking rewards as the creation of property rather than income, U.S. tax authorities have paved the way for issuers like BlackRock and Fidelity to potentially include staking as a feature in their future spot Ethereum ETFs.
Comments by U.S. Treasurer Scott Bessent (Source: X)
While we are on ETFs, last week, Bitwise launched its spot Solana ETF (BSOL), which opened to strong demand. On its first day, it recorded $86M AUD in trading volume, the highest for any ETF launched this year. The strong start shows growing interest from traditional investors seeking regulated SOL exposure with staking options.
Momentum has remained firm. In its first week, BSOL attracted more than $300M ($200M USD), even as other crypto ETFs saw outflows.
The ETF provides simple, brokerage-account access to Solana, along with onchain staking rewards managed by the issuer. If inflows persist, observers will watch whether sustained allocations help stabilise price and whether yield features remain competitive as conditions change.
Uniswap, the largest decentralised exchange (DEX), has put forward a crucial vote about protocol upgrades and how fees are managed. An ongoing topic of discussion has been the "fee switch," a proposal to share a portion of the trading fees generated by the protocol with UNI token holders.
Currently, all fees are allocated to users who provide liquidity. However, activating the switch would create a direct revenue stream for those who own and stake UNI, a move that has been long-awaited by many in the community.
After many previous attempts and debates, Uniswap's founder, Hayden Adams, submitted a new comprehensive proposal to finally activate the fee switch. The plan is not only to implement protocol fees but also to utilise that revenue to buy back and ‘burn’ (i.e. permanently destroy) UNI tokens, which would reduce the total supply and potentially increase the value of the remaining tokens.
Explaining the purpose of the proposal, Adams said it “establishes a long-term model for how the Uniswap ecosystem would operate, where protocol usage drives UNI burn and Uniswap Labs focuses on protocol development and growth.”
UNI’s price spiked immediately after the governance proposal’s submission (Source: TradingView)
