Is it all doom and gloom for crypto? We’ll field that one – no, it isn’t. Let’s look at some positive happenings, including a gathering of 44 Bitcoin-focused countries in El Salvador today.

It’s well established this is a tricky old year for investment navigation. And as long as the UST/LUNA fiasco and the rate-hiking US Federal Reserve continue to occupy centre stage, it might be too much to expect another crypto bull run to kick off any time soon.

That being said, whether or not the market tanks further in the short-to-midterm, there are still plenty of points of interest arising daily to keep the longer-horizon faith. Here are just a few…

 

El Salvador hosts 44 Bitcoin-curious countries

El Salvador’s BTC dip-buying “moonboi” president Nayib Bukele has announced that 32 central banks and 12 financial authorities are meeting in the Central American country to discuss Bitcoin.

The presidential powwow, according to Bukele, is being set up to “discuss financial inclusion, digital economy, banking the unbanked” and El Salvador’s Bitcoin rollout and how it is benefitting the country.

 

In further tweets, Bukele announced the participants, which largely comprise other Central American and South American nations, as well as plenty from the African continent and some from the Middle East.

These include central banking/financial authority representatives from:

Paraguay, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Angola, Ghana, Namibia, Uganda, Republic of Guinea, Madagascar, Haiti, Burundi, Pakistan, Jordan and more.

 

Goldman Sachs and Barclays join $70 million UK crypto foray

Bear market right now? Yeah, guess so, but big institutional players are still clearly excited about crypto’s future.

Take US banking giant Goldman Sachs and the UK’s Barclays, for instance. Both have now joined a US$70 million Series A funding round for the crypto trading platform Elwood Technologies – founded by British billionaire hedge fund manager Alan Howard.

Also joining the fun was crypto-friendly German bank Commerzbank (which recently applied for a crypto custody licence), crypto investment manager Galaxy Digital and Dawn Capital, as reported by the Financial Times.

The fundraising round reportedly valued the company at about US$500 million.

Oh, and while we’re focusing on the UK for a sec, the British Treasury Department has just reaffirmed today that it’s committed to regulating stablecoins in the wake of the UST and LUNA collapse.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as the UK’s government recently swung towards a more accommodating and positive stance on the crypto industry as a whole. With that in mind, perhaps regulations going forward can be expected to be innovation friendly.

“This will create the conditions for issuers and service providers to operate and grow in the UK, whilst ensuring financial stability and high regulatory standards,” said an HM Treasury spokesperson.

 

Major crypto ETFs popping up here… and there

Fresh on the heels of three major Bitcoin/crypto-focused exchange-traded funds launching down under, the crypto investment giant Grayscale has announced it’s launching a new one of its own based in Europe.

According to a Cointelegraph report, Grayscale’s “Future of Finance” investment fund is being listed on the London Stock Exchange, Borsa Italiana, and the Deutsche Börse’s electronic trading platform Xetra, as well as being “passported” for sale across Europe.

The “GFOF UCITS ET”, in partnership with Bloomberg, tracks the performance of the Bloomberg Grayscale Future of Finance Index. And that’s something Bloomberg and Grayscale jointly introduced in January, aiming to track the digital economy, with a big focus on Web3/crypto.

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