Bitcoin starts the week in the red thanks to stock market woes and a potential tightening of regulatory oversight.

Cryptocurrency update

China and regulation fears rock Bitcoin

As Bitcoin becomes ever more prevalent, the influence of non-crypto markets on futures contracts is becoming larger.

As of Monday 20^th September, Bitcoin had dropped roughly 5% on the day, thanks to a fall in S&P 500 futures triggered by the China Evergrande Group situation.

Property giant Evergrande fell 10% in Hong Kong during Asian trading this morning, causing globe-spanning stock market ripples. As the S&P 500 fell 1%, Germany’s Dax had also fallen 2%.

The fallout from this is investors looking to mitigate risks across their portfolios. As cryptocurrencies exhibit high volatility, Bitcoin and other tokens may be on the chopping block.

Anticipation of an October or November stimulus taper from this week’s Fed meetings has also strengthened the greenback, making the BTC/USD pairing a little weaker, hence the price drop.

Additionally, further scrutiny is being paid to stablecoins. Stablecoins are crypto tokens backed by the USD. The most prominent of these is Tether. This is meant to cut out much of the volatility we see in the most popular coins, but regulators aren’t so sure.

There are rumblings that further regulation is going to hit stablecoins, which promises big changes for the crypto market as a whole. Some observers believe they may be a threat to the US’ entire crypto situation. A formal review into stablecoins by the Financial Stability Oversight Council could be on the way.

The total market capitalization of all stablecoins has reached $115 billion, growing over ten times over the past 12 months.

Essentially, it will be a rocky week for cryptocurrencies. Right now, all of the major tokens are in the red.

AMC to accept crypto payments

Every so often, you get an overlap of two great internet sensations. Now, the worlds of crypto and memestocks are colliding as AMC Entertainment Holdings announces its plans to accept Bitcoin and crypto tokens as payment.

AMC is the meme stock de jour; one of the stocks exceptionally popular with a new breed of traders. The likes of GameStop have already seen their prices somewhat artificially pumped by a younger generation of traders and investors in an attempt to rattle the old guard.

We know cryptocurrencies are also a favourite of new, younger investors. It seems only right that these two paths should cross.

AMC CEO Adam Aron has been fairly clever here. By aligning AMC with the crypto market, he’s continuing to appeal to the types of investors and traders already interested in the meme stock.

Additionally, the crypto sector may help create further revenue streams for the cinema chain. One idea that Aron allegedly loves is tapping into the non-fungible tokens (NFT) sector. This burgeoning digital asset market has picked up steam massively across 2021, and AMC’s entry point could be to offer its own NFTs in the form of commemorative movie tickets users can buy and keep.

It’s a shrewd move from AMC no doubt – but is banking on NFTs help alleviate the company’s potential future woes around declining cinema attendance?

Litecoin activity outstrips Dogecoin and Bitcoin Cash

Move over Doge: crypto users have a new best friend.

According to Litecoin Foundation Director Jay Milla, the number of active addresses on the Litecoin network has overtaken the number using Dogecoin and Bitcoin Cash.

The growth of wallet activity has overtaken many other large-cap tokens, as Milla recently tweeted:

Let's clear this up now: Litecoin activity has been on a the rise for well over a year! Our goal is adoption and the metrics are clear.. Charting $LTC active addresses shows who's who. #Chikundinner #Litecoin #LitecoinFAM #Evidence pic.twitter.com/LHcqHg9Vem

— Jay Milla (@MillaLiraj) September 18, 2021

At 450,000, active Litecoin addresses is over double that of Cardano’s 214,000. Bitcoin Cash’s network user numbers clock in at 101,000. Surprisingly, Dogecoin’s only totals 60,890.

Active addresses are used to monitor and rate on-chain network activity across the crypto market. Analysts use it to sport patterns across the wider sector. It is not necessarily an indicator of the number of traders or investors buying a particular cryptocurrency.

Litecoin recently took a hit thanks to some fake news. It was reported that Walmart had agreed to partner with Litecoin to accept the token as payment. This is false. No such partnership exists.

According to Litecoin, the confusion was caused by an employee tweeting the partnership announcement without authorisation. Walmart has subsequently confirmed it has not partnered with the Litecoin foundation.