Dispatch #85: Central African Republic Adopts Bitcoin

Apr 29, 2022 4 min read

Dispatch

In this patch of your weekly Dispatch:

Another country gives in to Bitcoin
Fidelity brings BTC to your 401(k)
NEXO on Binance

The Big Idea

The Second Domino Has Fallen

It’s one of those weeks when you know a story is gonna make it as the Big Idea the moment the news drops. When El Salvador shocked the world by announcing a plan to make Bitcoin legal tender, it seemed to Bitcoiners that a key wall in global Bitcoin adoption had been breached: the nation-state. The only question was: who would be next?

There were many early contenders. In the days following the announcement, numerous politicians – especially in Latin America – added laser eyes to their social media profiles. Yet for nearly a year no country has followed suit, despite a huge amount of regulator engagement across the globe.

That changed this week when the Central African Republic passed and then signed into law a bill both for regulating cryptocurrencies as well as making bitcoin legal tender alongside the CFA franc.

This is the part that has many interested. Central African Republic (CAR) is part of a monetary association that is still dominated by the former colonial power of France. Bitcoin seems, in this case, to be a challenge to that monetary order.

CAR is one of the poorest nations in the world. Electricity, to say nothing of internet access, is limited in the country. There is still much we don’t know about how their politicians are thinking about Bitcoin. But the fact that they’re thinking about it at all shows how far the space has come.

The Latest In…

NEXO on Binance

The NEXO Token is now available on Binance. 🔥

Being listed on Binance opens a whole new market share for our native token. We welcome all Binance users to our community, where they can find tremendous utility for the NEXO Token, including earn rates of up to 12%, lower borrowing rates, and free crypto withdrawals, among other perks.

The Latest In…

Regulation

Although the Central African Republic may have stolen the show, it was an extremely busy week for crypto regulation all over the globe:

Panama advanced comprehensive crypto legislation designed to attract business.
Brazil proposed new crypto legislation that would create a new regulatory body.
In the US, the CFTC has set a hearing date for a roundtable discussion of an FTX derivatives proposal.
Fort Worth has become the first US city to mine Bitcoin.
The New York State Assembly has passed a 2-year moratorium on new Bitcoin mining that uses fossil fuels.

The Latest In…

Institutions

Maybe the biggest non-regulatory news of the week is that Fidelity announced that retirement savers will be allowed to add Bitcoin to their 401(k) accounts. Keep in mind that this is the United States' largest retirement plan provider. Savers would be able to allocate as much as 20% of their overall accounts to BTC (although individual employers could lower that threshold). While initially this is Bitcoin only, Fidelity says they expect other digital assets to be available in the future. This is a major mainstreaming moment and comes a few months after Fidelity Digital Assets teamed up with us to onboard institutional clients into the space through new and existing products.

The Latest In…

Elon

The next phase in our saga has come to pass! Elon’s offer to take Twitter private has been accepted. American progressives are nervous. American conservatives are rejoicing. Bitcoiners and the crypto community are enjoying the memes. In all seriousness, what most of the crypto community is watching for is to see how Elon follows through on his promise to open up Twitter’s algorithms, as well as to understand more what he means when he says he wants to authenticate all humans. Is the Web 2 platform becoming home to some of the (potentially) biggest experiments in Web3 thinking? Get yer popcorn.

The Week’s Most Interesting Data Story

Whale Holdings Reach Highest Point Since September

On-chain analysts often keep an eye on whale holdings as something of a crystal ball. As you can see, they’ve been ahead of most of the major movements over the past couple of years. They bought up into the beginning of the bull run but started taking profits and selling in early 2021 – exactly as the rest of the market was catching up. They decided that we had gone down too much over the summer and started buying into the fall rally. Well, for the last month whales have been in full accumulation mode. Does this mean that they believe the price has fallen too far? Hard to say, but the accumulation trend is pretty clear.