In this week’s episode of Market Talks, Cointelegraph welcomes Brent Xu, founder and CEO of Umee — a decentralized finance hub built on the Cosmos SDK that offers tools for macro-level borrowing and lending applications. Before founding Umee, Xu led strategy at Tendermint while setting the strategic roadmap and partnerships for the Cosmos Ecosystem.

We start things off with our main topic for today: Bitcoin (BTC) touched $29,000, a new high for 2023, despite recent United States regulatory crackdowns on crypto firms and related uncertainty. This could also suggest the crypto market does not seem too bothered about the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s lawsuit against Binance and its CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao. Even the Crypto Fear & Greed Index — which aims to numerically present the current “emotions and sentiments” toward Bitcoin and other large cryptocurrencies — has been steadily increasing over the last month despite wobbles in the global banking sector. What does all this really mean for the crypto space, though? Should investors not be so worried about regulations?

This week Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Pakistan, Russia, India and Brazil decided to settle trade in their own currencies rather than the United States dollar. Why have they decided to do this, and will it have a significant impact on the U.S. and the dollar? Will there be any ramifications for the crypto space, if any?

We ask Xu what his vision is for how DeFi protocols and crypto exchanges intend to build out their own banking services in the future. Centralized crypto exchanges are under all sorts of pressure from regulators at the moment, yet we still see Fidelity Investments expanding its offerings, and Nasdaq is getting close to launching its crypto custody platform. We also get Xu’s thoughts on Fidelity Investment’s recent expansion.

There is a lot going on at the moment as far as regulations in the crypto space are concerned, mostly cracking down on the crypto sector. We ask Xu what his long-term vision is for the future of the regulated crypto space in the United States.

The United States Federal Reserve seems to be in an unending fight against inflation. The interest rate hikes don’t seem to have an end in sight either. Is the Fed losing its fight? At what point will we see a pause in interest rate hikes, and how realistic is it for the Fed to achieve its objectives for this year?

We cover all this and more, so make sure to stay tuned until the end. Market Talks airs every Thursday at 12:00 pm ET (5:00 pm UTC). Each week, it features interviews with some of the most influential and inspiring people from the crypto and blockchain industry. So, head on over to Cointelegraph Markets & Research’s YouTube page and smash those Like and Subscribe buttons for all our future videos and updates.