Coinbase is all over the news for a shocking loss on their quarterly earnings, Iran uses crypto for imports, inflation has reversed and SoFi launches a new fund. Never a dull moment in the crypto space.

Inflation Down to 8.5%TTM

Markets braced for negative news during August’s update for the CPI, without any ever coming. Inflation actually decreased from 9.1% in last months update to 8.5%. Inflation has played a major role in equity markets around the globe, and has especially played a part in the US economic situation. 

The US government has been raising interest rates aggressively ahead of this months CPI report, in an attempt to bring inflation down. The rise in inflation over the past year or so has been directly related to supply chain issues throughout the world and has affected millions. It seems as the world is moving further away from the pandemic era, the economy is getting back to normal slowly too. 

Iran Makes The First Import Using Crypto

The Iranian government made its first purchase of imported goods using cryptocurrency, they announced this week. Iran has had a complicated history with cryptocurrency, twice now declaring them illegal. Globally, this is a big deal because cryptocurrencies present a solution around government sanctions. The US has a growing concern that the digital asset class will be used to circumvent sanctions by Iran, North Korea, China, Russia and others. 

Coinbase Posts a Large Loss 

As bitcoin sinks to 41% dominance ahead of US CPI report, Coinbase posted over a billion dollar loss for the first quarter of 2022. This was big news for the cryptocurrency exchange, leading to unhappy and surprised shareholders. The loss should not be a major concern, with the entire market in the dump anyway. 

From an investor standpoint, Coinbases business did continue to grow, although institutional clients have begun to slow down. This should also have been expected, as funds and investors get more risk-averse during the economic downturn. Coinbase is the oldest and most popular US based exchange, but has growing competition with several other companies just waiting to steal marketshare. 

SoFi, New Thematic Web3 Fund

A Web3 based-fund tracking SoFi Solactive ARTIS Web3.0 Index. The fund holds forty different securities across four different themes blockchain, metaverse, big data and AI and NFTs & tokenization. SoFi believes these themes can provide explosive growth and exposure to its customer base, who is largely on the younger side. The fund believes it can identify companies “enabling a fundamental shift in the internet”.

The ticker for the SoFi Web3 fund is TWEB and trades on the NASDAQ.

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