Though it briefly popped above $50,000 on Sunday, the price of bitcoin retreated at the start of the week.
The largest cryptocurrency by market value is trading at around $47,358 as of Monday afternoon, according to Coin Metrics.
Other top cryptocurrencies are also down, including ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency. Ether is currently trading at around $3,813.
Along with price movement, here are five important things that happened in the cryptocurrency space this past week.
1. Crypto executives testified before Congress
On Wednesday, crypto industry executives testified before the House Financial Services Committee.
The hearing was called by committee leader Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., in an effort to understand crypto assets better and discuss potential regulation.
“Because of their nascent stage of development and unique underlying technology, digital assets trade in markets that are fundamentally different from traditional financial markets,” Alesia Haas, Coinbase chief financial officer, said in her testimony. “As a result, existing regulatory regimes often do not accommodate this new technology.”
The discussion was overall positive, rather than contentious, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin Circle chief executive officer Jeremy Allaire said after the hearing.
2. Kickstarter said it’s moving to the blockchain
Also on Wednesday, Kickstarter announced plans to create a decentralized version of its crowdfunding platform.
“We’re supporting the development of an open source protocol that will essentially create a decentralized version of Kickstarter’s core functionality,” the company wrote in a blog post. “This will live on a public blockchain, and be available for collaborators, independent contributors, and even Kickstarter competitors, from all over the world to build upon, connect to, or use.”
The new protocol does not yet have a name, but Kickstarter plans to move its site onto the protocol in 2022, Bloomberg reported.
