Last Week In Bitcoin is a series discussing the events of the previous week that occurred in the Bitcoin industry, covering all the important news and analysis.
Summary of the Week
Last week El Salvador’s official bitcoin rollout began, then Ukraine decided to jump on the bitcoin bandwagon. This week, Laos joined the fray with plans to allow bitcoin mining and trading in the Asian nation, just months after China’s crackdown on crypto.
It would appear as if every week a new country is jumping on the bitcoin bandwagon, billionaires continue to blow the bitcoin bullhorn and the plebs like you and me keep stacking sats. Here’s this week in bitcoin:
Bullish News
The week started off on a good note as Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, announced their bitcoin-friendly drive continues as the country would exempt foreign investors from paying taxes on their bitcoin gains.
Not to let El Salvador take all the glory, MicroStrategy CEO and bitcoin messiah, Michael Saylor, announced on Monday that the firm had acquired an additional 5,050 BTC, bringing the company’s total holdings to 114,042 BTC bought at an average price of $27,713 per bitcoin.
Also on Monday, Professor Mthuli Ncube, the minister of finance in Zimbabwe, said that the country would explore bitcoin adoption in order to cut back on remittance costs and stabilize the country’s economy which has been gutted over the last two decades. Brevan Howard, a $11.4 billion hedge fund, became the latest financial institution to start a bitcoin division, signalling more bullishness from traditional finance.
On Tuesday, Nayib Bukele revealed that El Salvador’s Chivo bitcoin wallet saw 500,000 registrations in its first week, adding hundreds of thousands of new bitcoin users to the ecosystem. Besides the infrastructure installed across the country, El Salvador also installed 50 bitcoin ATMs in cities across the U.S. to make it easier for citizens to send money back to the country.
Oaktree Capital’s chairman and billionaire investor, Howard Marks, said that bitcoin has its advantages over gold, in stark contrast to his opinion on bitcoin in 2017. Marks appeared on the “We Study Billionaires” podcast, having a lot of good to say about bitcoin.
On Wednesday, news came to light that the $4.2 trillion investment firm, Fidelity, had a private meeting with the SEC in which it urged them to approve their planned bitcoin ETF. The company gave a presentation that demonstrated “increased investor appetite” for bitcoin, the existence of similar funds in other countries and the growth in bitcoin holders.
On Thursday, news broke that Laos would legalise bitcoin mining and trading. That’s right, another week, another country. Laos, which has a huge surplus of hydroelectricity, is the latest country to welcome bitcoin and legislators are currently working on regulations to allow bitcoin trading. A total of six companies have been authorized to mine and trade bitcoin in the country.
Also on Thursday, Revolut, the $33 billion UK-based financial services firm, announced that they would pay for office space for 300 staff members in Dallas, Texas using bitcoin. The office space is managed by WeWork and…
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