Bitcoin has seemingly taken far less of gold’s market capitalization than previously claimed, according to new research conducted using the flagship cryptocurrency’s realized market capitalization.

The President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, has called for global regulation of bitcoin, saying the cryptocurrency has been used for money laundering activities and that loopholes needed to be closed.

Japan’s top securities watchdog, the Financial Services Agency (FSA) has reportedly said it does not consider XRP to be a security, arguing the token does not meet the definition of a security under Japanese law.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Bitcoin Has Only Taken 2% of Gold’s Market Cap, Research Suggests
• ECB President Christine Lagarde Calls for Global Bitcoin Regulations
• Japan’s Top Securities Watchdog Says XRP is Not a Security
• DOT, LRC, SUSHI Are Moving in the Crypto Market

Bitcoin Has Only Taken 2% of Gold’s Market Cap, Research Suggests

Bitcoin has seemingly taken far less of gold’s market capitalization than previously claimed, according to new research conducted using the flagship cryptocurrency’s realized market capitalization.

Ki Young Ju, CEO of on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant, countered the narrative that institutional investors were swapping their gold exposure for BTC. Using realized market capitalization, which calculates market capitalization based on the price at which each BTC last moved and excludes speculative movements, he found bitcoin has only eaten away 2% of gold’s market cap.

He wrote:

“People said $BTC took 7% of the Gold market cap. No, it's not. There are unclaimed, unreachable, and lost Bitcoins. Based on the realized cap, it's just 2%.” 

Ki Young Ju added that if bitcoin were to replace at least 10% of gold’s market capitalization, each BTC would be trading at $154,000.

ECB President Christine Lagarde Calls for Global Bitcoin Regulations

The President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, has called for global regulation of bitcoin, saying the cryptocurrency has been used for money laundering activities and that loopholes needed to be closed.

In an interview at the Reuters Next conference, Lagarde said:

“(Bitcoin) is a highly speculative asset, which has conducted some funny business and some interesting and totally reprehensible money laundering activity.” 

Lagarde did not provide any specific examples of money laundering cases, but said she understood there had been criminal investigations into illegal activity. The ECB President added there “has to be regulation… at a global level because if there is an escape that escape will be used.”

Japan’s Top Securities Watchdog Says XRP is Not a Security

Japan’s top securities watchdog, the Financial Services Agency (FSA) has reportedly said it does not consider XRP to be a security, arguing the token does not meet the definition of a security under Japanese law.

The FSA’s stance goes against that of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC, which recently sued Ripple Labs alleging that the firm and two of its executives “raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering.”

While the FSA’s opinion has no bearing on the SEC’s current litigation against Ripple, it highlights a lack of consensus on XRP. SBI, a strong supporter of XRP, has argued the token is a cryptoasset under Japanese law.

DOT, LRC, SUSHI Are Moving in the Crypto Market

Several tokens are leading the charge in the last 24-hour period. Some of these are well-known cryptocurrencies with rather liquid trading pairs, so we’ll be focusing on these over low-cap cryptos that may have higher percentage changes.

Polkadot (DOT) -  Polkadot enables cross-blockchain transfers of any type of data or asset, not just tokens. Connecting to Polkadot gives users the ability to interoperate with a wide variety of blockchains in the Polkadot network. DOT is up 21.42% in the last 24 hours.

Loopring (LRC) – Loopring’s LRC token moved up 22.62% in the last 24 hours. Loopring is a multilateral token exchange protocol for decentralized exchanges on the Ethereum blockchain. It is intended to serve as a common building block with open standards.

SushiSwap (SUSHI) - SushiSwap is designed to be an evolution of Uniswap with SUSHI tokenomics. SushiSwap protocol aligns incentives for network participants by introducing revenue-sharing & network effects to the popular AMM model. SUSHI is up 14.21% in the last 24 hours.

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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