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Major cryptoassets such as bitcoin and ether began to recover some lost ground last week. Although still well below all-time highs, the cryptoassets appear to be moving into something of a recovery phase.

Bitcoin reached a high last week of just below $24,000 on the eToro platform, a level not seen since early June. BTC has traded back down however and is now around $21,600. Mining difficulty is much lower at the moment on the network, however, which is potentially an encouraging sign for additional participants such as smaller miners. 

Ether meanwhile is moving at its highest levels in a month, having touched over $1,600 on eToro on Friday. ETH is one to watch at the moment with possible secular rather than cyclical tailwinds on demand. All eyes in the crypto space are on The Merge, which moves closer by the day and could see the economics of the token change substantially. 
 

Barclays takes stake in crypto firm Copper

Major UK bank Barclays has snapped up a stake in Copper, worth around $2 billion. The crypto firm has links to former Chancellor Philip Hammond who is a senior adviser and investor in the business. 

Barclays is part of a group of investors involved in the latest funding round for the firm, which provides crypto custody, brokering, and settling services to institutional investors. The reported funding round is another boon for the sector when valuations are still struggling to gain momentum in the wider market. 

What we’re seeing here is that while the overall sentiment among investors remains cautious, major institutions such as Barclays are buying back into the space at healthy levels. This is positive for the long-term prospects of the crypto space and underlines a firm ongoing demand for its innovations.
 

Crypto to hit one billion users by 2030

A report from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) illustrates why the sector still has much-unfulfilled potential. In collaboration with Bitget and Foresight Ventures, it looks at where the cryptoasset sector is in terms of its innovation and potential. 

By way of comparison with the early days of the internet, it actually shows how crypto is not lagging behind the uptake curve at all - indeed, what is deemed Web 3.0 in the report is shown to be ahead of the internet as it was in the 1990s. What the report underlines is the difference in trend between market pricing and user uptake. 

While the dust is yet to really settle on the tough trading conditions of the past few months for crypto in investment terms, what’s becoming increasingly clear is that it bears many similarities with the Dotcom bubble of the early 2000s. 

The key trend in investment terms here saw the bad ideas rooted out, with names such as Google and Amazon left behind to become the giants of the internet of today. It is highly probable that those firms in the crypto space that continue to thrive despite market adversity will go on to become the winners of the future too.
 

Dubai Metaverse strategy provides a peek into the future of work

Dubai has launched a so-called metaverse strategy to harness the potential and be at the forefront of the development of the technology. The emirate says it plans to target some 40,000 virtual jobs in the next five years, an ambitious play to encourage talent to work from its hub.

The metaverse was a major growing trend to burst onto the crypto scene last year. Like NFTs and the crypto sector more widely, it has struggled in the past few months to gain traction. But initiatives such as the Dubai project show that a key underlying continuation of activity persists. 

Tokens such as MANA, RBLX, and SAND are at the forefront of crypto-led metaverse projects and the two innovations go hand in hand as such. It is certainly a space worth watching for key innovations, particularly with the presence of major state actors such as Dubai encouraging the market.

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