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The market traded broadly lower, with Bitcoin testing $11,000 level to the downside, while Ethereum continued to underperform and traded lower by almost 10% as market participants were seen booking profits heading into the final few days of the month. On that note, even with the MVIS large and small cap indices down 4.5% and 5.6% respectively, the aforementioned indices are still up 16% and 11%. Year-to-date (YTD), small caps have outperformed large cap peers, up 72% vs up 65%. However, the show was stolen by the mid-cap assets, with the YTD return of 92%. Elsewhere, equity markets continued to edge higher ahead of the eagerly awaited Fed Chairman Jerome Powell speech this Thursday during a virtual version of the Fed’s annual Jackson Hole, Wyoming, conference. The Chairman of the Fed is expected to outline what could be the central bank’s most active efforts ever to spur inflation back to a healthy level, with CNBC writing citing analysts that it is likely that the phase such as “average inflation” targeting may be used. Said otherwise, the Fed will allow inflation to run higher than normal for a period of time. The reason why the conference matters for crypto markets is the likely impact it will have on the widely followed Bitcoin vs gold correlation metric. The market may be finishing off the month broadly lower but it doesn’t mean that the ongoing trend of institutionalization needs to stop and on that note, it was reported that Quorum, the enterprise blockchain platform developed by mega-bank JPMorgan Chase, is being acquired by ConsenSys, the Brooklyn, NY-based Ethereum venture studio. Additionally, JPMorgan has made an undisclosed strategic investment in ConsenSys, the companies said in a statement. Neither ConsenSys nor JPMorgan would confirm the size of the investment made by the bank. In other news, CoinDesk noted that the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), a UK regulator, is seeking to oblige more firms, including some working with cryptocurrency, to report how they manage the risks of financial crime. The FCA said under the expanded scope of its financial crime reporting obligation it would require crypto exchanges and wallet providers to provide detailed information annually on systems and controls put in place to tackle crimes such as money laundering. Aside from crypto firms, the extended measure would include entities such as all companies regulated by the Financial Services and Markets Authority, payment providers, electric money institutions and multilateral and organized trading facilities. Elsewhere, blockchain application platform Qtum will soon undergo a hard fork enabling network participants to stake and earn rewards from tokens held in offline wallets. The fork, due at block 680,000, which is expected Aug. 28, will enable offline wallet address owners to delegate their blockchain-based holdings – technically termed unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) – to an online node operating Qtum's proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus. Beijing-based decentralized finance (DeFi) aggregator Bella Protocol announced Tuesday it has raised $4 million in a funding round led by Arrington XRP Capital. According to CoinDesk, investors in Bella’s funding round also include Alphabit, Consensus Labs, Force Partners and CGS Dubai, among others. Finally, Decrypt writes that Bitcoin miners in China's Inner Mongolia will no longer be provided subsidized electricity to run their operations, according to Chinese news outlet Weixin. Northern China’s naturally cool climate, access to a cheap, able workforce, and government policies like subsidized electricity have historically supported the growth of mining businesses in the region. Bigwigs like AntPool, which make hundreds of millions in revenue each year, are situated in the region and are part of a mining cohort that contributes to China’s massive 60% share of Bitcoin’s total hash rate. But that might be about to change.
