The price of bitcoin trended into decline last week, losing around 5% week-on-week as investors continue to wait and see on macroeconomic developments. The cryptoasset market hasn’t reacted markedly to the debt ceiling success in the US, suggesting investors are more focused elsewhere.

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Bitcoin (BITCOMP) began the week around $28,000 on eToro but declined across the week to now trade around $26,500. Ether (ETH-X) similarly saw declines, falling from around $1,900 to trade around $1,850 - a lesser decline of around 2.6%. 

Despite the final success of the debt ceiling deal, markets remain quiescent this morning. The removal of doubt over the debt ceiling in the US should provide underlying support for the market but this is unlikely to play out in the very short term. 

Asia overtakes US for bitcoin trading flows

The dominance of US bitcoin buying and selling has evaporated over the past year according to data from Glassnode. US entities holding bitcoin have fallen 11% while Asia has seen a 10% uplift.

Glassnode also notes a shift in stablecoin activity in the US with sizable outflows from fiat-backed tokens. The data underpins a major trend of the 2020-21 bull run as driven by US investors in crypto and bitcoin more specifically. 

But what is clear now is the reverse is true, after a period of market volatility and uncertainty surrounding the legal standing of many projects in the country. Outflows are not unexpected when a lack of direction from legislators is present, sending capital flows to other more clearly-established regions for the crypto market

GTA 6 could have NFTs

Rumors have reared again that the next edition of the massive GTA gaming franchise could have NFT technology built into the game. 

It's easy to dismiss gaming as a niche pursuit but the smash-hit GTA 5 made Rockstar some $7.7 billion in earnings since its launch in 2013. It makes sense for the firm to look at new ways to earn and reward its gamers with the new edition to the series.

But as of yet discussion of potential NFTs within the next instalment are just rumors. That being said there are plenty of lucrative gaming areas where NFTs are not rumor, such as the just announced Electronic Arts (EA) and Nike (NKE) tie up which will see Nike NFTs on the EA platform - the dominant sports gaming developer. 

Bitcoin developers consider killing memecoins

The Bitcoin blockchain has been stirred in recent months by the advent of memecoins such as PEPE minted on its network. The token has soared in value as speculators pile in, but this has provoked a significant reaction from the bitcoin community. 

The minting of these tokens on the bitcoin network has slowed transaction times and sent fees soaring. Now developers are in tense discussions over whether or not to kill the functionality completely in order to protect the network. 
Per reports in Bloomberg developers could potentially make such transactions illegal on the chain, which would kill their value at a stroke. The market for PEPE has responded very poorly to this news, with the token price falling substantially.

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