Digital assets rallied after last week’s rout, as news of a US-Iran peace deal restored market confidence somewhat. Several major institutional names across asset management and banking deepened their involvement in the space, tokenisation demand continued to grow, international regulatory efforts advanced and the football World Cup shed further light on the nascent field of blockchain-based prediction markets.

Digital assets fell to yearly lows in the wake of continued conflict, cascading liquidations, and increased investor caution following last week’s sells by top Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy.

Digital assets suffered a major pullback this week, as traders reacted negatively to the escalation of the US-Iran war.

Digital assets weathered geopolitical volatility and uncertainty to end the week virtually unchanged. Whilst Bitcoin and Ether ETFs logged poor performance as traders hedged their bets, altcoin products saw an influx despite challenging market conditions as bids rotated rather than disappeared. The wider stablecoin complex saw a great deal of activity, including developments across multiple currencies, Nasdaq gained approval for Bitcoin index options as NYSE’s parent company partnered with crypto exchange OKX for perpetual oil futures, Japan, Korea, and the US all witnessed regulatory progress, and much more.

Digital assets pulled back after several weeks of consistent growth, fuelled by continued US-Iran uncertainty and higher-than-expected inflation figures. Nevertheless, adoption and development continued rolling out globally, from US megabanks like JP Morgan, to Japanese financial giants including SBI, Nomura, and Mizuho, to leading Korean TradFi firms, and widespread tokenisation efforts within Saudi Arabia. In the realms of regulation, the CLARITY market structure bill cleared a key hurdle; bringing it one step closer to potentially changing the landscape for digital assets globally.

Digital assets returned another week of positive performances, featuring activity from several major names within both DeFi and TradFi. BlackRock and Morgan Stanley extended their digital asset exposure and offerings, stablecoins continued to attract attention and growth, and the venture capital sphere saw significant increases in investment, with a singule new fund from a16z eclipsing all the new capital raised by VCs in Q4.