The market was thrown into turmoil earlier this week following geo-political tensions in the middle-east, U.S. Recession fears and tightening of monetary policy from the Bank of Japan as they raised interest rates by 25 basis points last week. Stocks and cryptocurrencies suffered the most with Bitcoin going as low as $49k, however they quickly recovered with many traders taking advantage of the dip. The Bank of Japan now says they will not hike rates further if markets are unstable.

Institutional investors have been in “bitcoin buy mode” since Wednesday with Bitcoin ETFs seeing significant inflows, almost completely reversing the 300m in outflows the previous two days. Ethereum ETF flow has been a mixed bag, seemingly having the reverse situation with inflows dominating the start of the week and outflows taking over from Wednesday.

Ripple, the company that launched the XRP token in 2012 has finally settled with the SEC and been ordered to pay $125m in penalties. The judge reaffirmed her stance that Ripple’s programmatic sales of XRP to retail customers through exchanges did not breach federal securities laws. On Wednesday, Judge Torres also prohibited Ripple from committing future violations of federal securities laws. Although she did not rule that Ripple had violated any laws following the SEC's lawsuit, she cautioned that the company might be in violation in the future in relation to its "on demand liquidity" offerings. The SEC had been seeking fines up to $2 billion dollars according to its chief legal, Stuart Aldertoy.

The Fear and Greed index recovered from Extreme Fear yesterday and is now showing a Neutral stance so it’s hard to tell where we go from here. Tensions in the middle-east and U.S Recession fears still loom so investors are likely trying to figure out how to position themselves accordingly and prepare for any outcome.

Whilst we can’t tell you what the markets are going to do next, we can tell you that Metal Pay is expanding to new territories and we are happy to announce we are now available in New Zealand! So please say a huge Kia ora to your Kiwi friends and invite them to download Metal Pay from the iOS App store or the Google Play Store and enjoy the lowest fees when buying crypto with debit or credit cards!