What happened
The week was once again eventful in cryptocurrencies, but unlike last week it wasn't dominated by regulatory and political fights. A big announcement came from Coinbase (COIN 4.68%), which built its own Layer 2 blockchain on Ethereum. There's no token for the blockchain, but the company aims to add a billion users to crypto.
There were also some significant moves in smaller altcoins. According to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence, NEO (NEO -2.38%) is up 23% in the past week, Tezos (XTZ -0.49%) rose 8.7%, but Arweave (AR -1.60%) has fallen 21.6%. Unlike a lot of moves in crypto, these were very driven by fundamental changes for these blockchains.
So what
NEO's value jumped after Hong Kong announced plans to make buying, selling, and holding crypto legal. This has been seen as a potential inroad into China, where NEO has its roots. This is a speculative move for NEO and it's not clear that this cryptocurrency would gain adoption over another more established blockchain, but that's why the value is up big.
Tezos got a boost when Alphabet's Google announced it will become a validator on the Tezos network. This will allow developers to build on Google Cloud and brings Tezos in line with blockchains Ethereum and Solana, where Google Cloud is also a validator.
Arweave is dropping because competitor Filecoin announced an upgrade coming in March 2023 called the Filecoin Virtual Machine. This makes it easier to write smart contracts and improves usability for the data-storing blockchain. Some of Arweave's drop is also due to the fact that last week the token's value jumped. Arweave is flat since Feb. 13, so the market is just returning to levels we saw a little over a week ago.
Now what
The biggest news for crypto may come from Hong Kong, where potentially millions of wealthy people could start using crypto later this year. It's not clear if that will be bullish for the industry, but opening new markets is always good for the industry.
Big tech is also getting deeper into the crypto industry. Google's news is incremental but shows that even given regulatory uncertainty the major cloud providers are very interested in crypto.
While the news was mixed in crypto this week, the industry continues to take steady steps forward. There's still not clarity about the regulatory situation in the U.S., but Hong Kong opening up and the U.K. announcing regulation plans earlier this month are a good sign for the long-term health of the industry.
Volatility will continue to be the norm, especially for altcoins, but I put this week's moves in a positive bucket from an investment perspective.
Now, if Hong Kong's acceptance of crypto is a sign of what's to come in China, that would be incredibly bullish for valuations.
