Crypto Today: Crypto carnage gets off the ground

Here's what you need to know on Wednesday

Markets: 

• The BTC/USD pair is currently trading at $6,654 (-3.5% on a day-to-day basis). The coin resumed the decline after a short-lived consolidation period and hit $6,591 during early Asian hours.
• The ETH/USD pair is currently trading at $123.21 (-6% on a day-to-day basis). The Ethereum hit the lowest level since March 2019. The decline has started snowballing as the coin broke below the critical support level.
• XRP/USD is currently trading at $0.1840 (-7% on a day-to-day basis). The XRP settled above $0.1800, though the bearish pressure remains stable. The coin remains one the worst-performing altcoins out of top-20 on a day-to-day basis. 
• Among the 100 most important cryptocurrencies, the best of the day are Silverway (SLV) $0.5424 (+21%), Centrality (CENNZ) $0.1337 (+9%) and HedgeTrade (HEDG) $1.32 (+8.4%). The day's losers are Kyber Network (KNC) $0.2135 (-10%), DigixDAO (DGD) $16.3 (-9.6%), Synthetix Network Token (SNX) $1.25 (-9.4%).

Chart of the day:
XTZ/USD, 4-hour chart

• The author of the bestsellers, "The Black Swan" and "Fooled By Randomness," Nassim Taleb thinks that cryptocurrencies, and particularly Bitcoin, are a great thing because they cannot be controlled by the government. A 59-year-old Lebanese-American author believes that people in many countries have lost faith in their governments and will eventually seek a resort in Bitcoin. 
• The blockchain-platform TRON is about to launch beta-testing of its anonymous, secure transactions based on zero-knowledge technology zk-SNARK, which is also used in cryptocurrency Zcash.

Industry:

• Circle sold its Over-The-Counter (OTC) business to the San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Kraken. The company explained the sedition by the desire to focus on its stablecoin USD Coin (USDC). Notably, the announcement follows the massive lay-off in the company at the beginning of December. 
• One of the leading US corporation State Street has chosen cryptocurrency exchange Gemini as the custodian for its crypto pilot. As a part of the pilot, financial institutions will get access to the Gemini Custody service and receive the reports on their holdings via State Street. This partnership is considered an essential milestone for adopting digital assets as a mainstream asset class.
• Fidelity Digital Assets, the cryptocurrency arm of Fidelity Investments, has created a new UK-based subsidiary two provide cryptocurrency-related services to European customers. The company was incorporated on Monday, December 16. It will focus on institutional investors, including hedge funds and family offices.

Regulation:

• The European Central Bank (ECB) has used the distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform  Cpdra to create a proof of concept for a partially anonymous central bank digital currency (CBDC). The solution is said to merge the benefits of privacy with compliance. At this stage, privacy features are envisaged only for small transactions.
• Basel Committee has published a research paper on cryptocurrency regulation. The global banking regulator urged to pay more attention to the growing popularity of digital assets as it might pose various financial, legal  and economic risks. The committee believes governments and local regulators should proceed with care and apply conservative prudential treatment to the cryptocurrency industry.

Quote of the day: