Happy Friday! Binance Bytes is an initiative by the Research team to provide a quick round-up of the week.
Highlights 🧵:
1/ The European Central Bank announced an interest rate cut for the first time since 2019, lowering the deposit rate from 4% to 3.75%. ECB President Christine Lagarde stated the rate cut is based on strong economic forecasts and that further cuts would depend on continued downward inflation trends. Despite the cut, the ECB projects slightly higher inflation for 2024 and 2025 compared to previous forecasts, averaging 2.5% and 2.2% respectively.
2/ Robinhood announced a strategic acquisition of the Bitstamp exchange in a US$200m deal, aiming to accelerate their global crypto expansion plans. Johann Kerbrat, General Manager of Robinhood Crypto, stated that “the acquisition of Bitstamp is a major step in growing our crypto business. Bitstamp’s highly trusted and long-standing global exchange has shown resilience through market cycles".
3/ Paxos International introduced a yield-bearing stablecoin called Lift Dollar (USDL), backed by U.S. dollar deposits, liquid U.S. government securities, and cash equivalent reserve assets. USDL is issued permissionlessly on Ethereum, with an approximate 5% yield accrued programmatically via daily rebasing. USDL will initially launch in Argentina and will not be accessible to residents in several jurisdictions, including the US, UK, EU, UAE (except ADGM), Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore.
Check out our latest publications from this week 🔎: Monthly Market Insights - June 2024