Social media behemoth Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) announced on Monday that users are now able to link their digital asset wallets to Facebook and begin sharing their non-fungible tokens (NFTs); this feature was previously only available on Instagram.

In a Monday announcement, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group (CME Group) stated that it had launched contracts for euro-denominated Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) futures sized at 5 BTC and 50 ETH per contract. The two contracts are listed on the CME and are cash-settled based on the CME CF Bitcoin-Euro Reference Rate and CME CF Ether-Euro Reference Rate, respectively.

JPMorgan’s Umar Farooq, who heads the digital assets unit at the firm, has suggested that most of the currently available digital assets are “junk” and that the real use case of crypto is yet to surface.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Meta Launches NFT Support for Facebook
• CME Group Launches Euro-Denominated Bitcoin & Ether Futures
• JP Morgan Head Suggests Real Crypto Use Case Yet To Surface

Meta Launches NFT Support for Facebook

Social media behemoth Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) announced on Monday that users are now able to link their digital asset wallets to Facebook and begin sharing their non-fungible tokens (NFTs); this feature was previously only available on Instagram.

To begin, Meta will support Ethereum-based NFTs, as well as those from Polygon ($MATIC) and Flow ($FLOW), the network which supports NBA Top Shot. Following the integration with Facebook, Flow saw its token rally by over 10%.

It remains to be seen how Meta will utilise this latest addition to its platform. However, the integration could help usher in a new host of users who want to explore the world of crypto collectables. We will also have to wait to see if Facebook imposes some strategy to monetise the system.

"As we continue rolling out digital collectibles on Facebook and Instagram, we’ve started giving people the ability to post digital collectibles that they own across both Facebook and Instagram. This will enable people to connect their digital wallets once to either app in order to share their digital collectibles across both," said Meta in an update to a May 10 blog post.

CME Group Launches Euro-Denominated Bitcoin & Ether Futures

In a Monday announcement, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group (CME Group) stated that it had launched contracts for euro-denominated Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) futures sized at 5 BTC and 50 ETH per contract. The two contracts are listed on the CME and are cash-settled based on the CME CF Bitcoin-Euro Reference Rate and CME CF Ether-Euro Reference Rate, respectively.

"Our new Bitcoin Euro and Ether Euro futures will provide institutional clients, both within and outside the U.S., with more precise and regulated tools to trade and hedge exposure to the two largest cryptocurrencies by market cap,” said CME Group global head of equity and FX products Tim McCourt.

The new contracts follow the launch of numerous others launched by CME Group, including a BTC futures contract in December 2017 and an ETH futures contract in February 2021. This year, the renowned trading venue expanded its offering to include micro BTC and ETH future products as more investors look to gain exposure to the digital asset ecosystem. 

The launch of euro-denominated BTC and ETH futures came as the euro remained at parity with the U.S. dollar — at the time of publication, 1 euro is worth roughly $1.

JP Morgan Head Suggests Real Crypto Use Case Yet To Surface

JPMorgan’s Umar Farooq, who heads the digital assets unit Onyx at the firm, has suggested that most of the currently available digital assets are “junk” and that the real use case of crypto is yet to surface.

Farooq voiced his opinion during a panel discussion at the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Green Shoots Seminar on Tuesday, during which he stated that regulation is yet to catch up to the innovative industry, something that is holding many traditional institutions back. 

During the seminar, he also voiced his opinion that the utlity surrounding the vast majority of digital assets is lacking: “Most of crypto is still junk actually, I mean with the exception of I would say, a few dozen tokens, everything else that has been mentioned is either noise or frankly, is just gonna go away.”

“So in my mind, the use cases haven’t arisen fully, and the regulation hasn’t caught up and I think that’s why you see the financial industry, in general, being a little bit slow in catching up,” added Farooq, who serves as CEO of JPMorgan’s blockchain unit Onyx Digital Assets (ODA).

Instead, Farooq suggested that investing in digital assets in their current form is primarily for speculative purposes: “You need all of those things to mature so that you can actually do things with them. Right now, we’re just not there yet, most of the money that’s being used in Web3 today, in the current infrastructure, is for speculative investment.”

JPMorgan has been adopting a more crypto-friendly narrative over the past few years as they look toward blockchain technology and how it can be used to improve the traditional finance ecosystem.

Chart of the Week: Funding Rates for BTC-USDT Perpetual on Binance & OKX

This week CryptoCompare’s enhanced derivatives data was used to look into the funding rate for the top BTC perpetual product on Binance and OKX to understand the current sentiment of the market.

Funding rates are an essential property of perpetual contracts (futures contracts that do not have a settlement date) in order to keep the price at or near the underlying market price. The price of regular futures will always converge with spot prices at the settlement date due to arbitrage; however, this is not possible without a settlement date. Instead, perpetual contracts use funding rates, which are periodic payments that traders who have long positions pay to short positions or vice versa.

A positive Funding rate means that the perpetual contract trades at a higher price than the market price, which indicates the increased appetite of long positions traders vs. short positions traders. To bring the contract price back to match the spot price, long traders have to pay to short positions traders, thereby bringing the futures price down. Similarly, negative Funding rates tend to indicate a bearish sentiment, thus making short traders pay funding to long position traders.

Looking into the funding rates in August, we found that the pressure put on long positions was more prevalent during the month, however, this sentiment started to change after the latest price drop that took place on the 19th of August.

 

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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