Crypto Recap: $BONK GOING BONKERS
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Summary
The crypto market cap went up 3.4% to $855b last week, despite Bitcoin recorded its first-ever four consecutive red quarterly returns. The crypto giant was stabilising at its 50dma ($16,789) ($BTC +1.8%) with altcoins broadly outperformed. The market focus recently shifted to the followings: Solana ecosystem recovering with Vitalik supports and $BONK speculations ($SOL +37.2%); Digital Currency Group liquidity concerns caused ETHE to trade at 60% discount; Huobi Exchange at potential risk as leaked news showed that the company forced to convert employees’ payrolls from fiat to USDT or USDC. On the traditional front, Chinese borders’ reopening let Hang Seng Index (HSI) continue its new-year rally. DXY index is very close to a death cross (when 50dma crossed below its 200dma), forewarning a slowdown of the strength of US dollars. Coinbase Shares (NQ: COIN) rallied 6% in 2023 as issues with New York state regulators finally settled. SR expects the crypto market will trade closely with the stock market this week unless any update from the above-mentioned events, volatility may arrive on Friday during the US Nonfarm Payrolls.
Top 100 in the last 7 days:
- Outperformers: BIT (+41.9%), LDO (+41.6%), SOL (+34.9%), ETC (+25.5%), NEAR (+17.6%), NEXO (+17.5%), APT (+17.0%), XEC (+17.0%)
- Underperformers: HT (-6.9%), HBAR (-5.6%), XDC (-4.5%), XRP (-3.0%)
Crypto Headlines
- $BONK goes bonkers
$BONK was issued by BonkDAO and 50% of the supply was airdropped to Solana NFT holders and ecosystem’s contributors. The rising popularity of $BONK, aka the Solana-based $DOGE, generated a lot of hype in the Solana ecosystem recently. The $BONK price sky-rocketed more than 4,500% (not typo) over the last seven days. Recent $BONK buyers were attracted by the high-yield rewards from $BONK pools on Solana-based defi protocols like ORCA.
- Apple Pay and Google Pay available on Binance
The leading crypto exchange added two payment methods for verified users to purchase cryptocurrencies more conveniently. Binance expects the new payment methods could increase the crypto adoption rate drastically since Apple Pay and Google Pay have 44m and 25m users worldwide.
- Grayscale ETH trust (ETHE) trading at 60% discount as DCG liquidity nerves continued
- Baidu metaverse-related project unveiling on 10 Jan
The Chinese tech giant planned to release its metaverse solution, “XiRang MetaStack” next week. The solution enables the creation of a comprehensive metaverse in only 40 days, which would have taken up nearly a year to complete otherwise.
On derivatives front, general crypto perpetual contracts’ funding rates (Chart 1) remained constructively positive, the average Bitcoin and Ethereum funding rates for the last seven days were +6.5% and +9.5% respectively. For the option market, bitcoin’s historical volatility (HV) keeps at very low level (16.9%). SR suggests that it might be a good timing to long option contracts when the HV is near historical low. Long straddle could be a considerable strategy ahead of China reopening and next FOMC meeting.
NFT News
December OpenSea NFT trading statistics resulted in $283m trading volume and 994k NFTs sold, which were expectedly 12% and 34% higher than November’s, signaling a stronger recovery phase in the risk asset class. In 2023, we see that most blue-chip NFTs trend higher and the growth of NFT market continues.
- ‘NFT Inspect’ shutting down
The NFT research website announced that they will be shutting down on 17 Jan amid the crypto winter.
- National digital asset marketplace in China
China launched its first-ever trading platform for digital assets, which was jointly created by the China Technology Exchange, the Cultural Relics Exchange, and the Copyright Service Centre. They aimed at building a metaverse industry with less speculating activities.
Defi Updates
In the DeFi space, total TVL increased slightly last week (+2.2%), $59.9b* worth of tokens currently being locked. Solana TVL rose 4.6% with the help of $BONK pool which provided high-yield farming activities in Solana ecosystem. Fantom TVL increased 6.4%, outperforming the market, as Fantom Foundation decided to buy back tokens of six projects on Fantom ecosystem on 29 Dec 2022 ($BOO, $GEIST, $BEETS, $EQUAL, $MMY and $BRUSH). The buyback action spurred the demand and lifted valuation of the entire ecosystem.
- $GMX whale wallet got hacked
The hacker has robbed 82,519 $GMX (~$3.4m worth) and sold for 2,627 $ETH. $GMX dropped 9% to $37 after the news and fully recovered when GMX team clarified that the hack did not relate to any security issue of the platform.
- CAKE released proof-of-reserves
The Defi service firm published their Merkle Tree-based proof of reserves which allows their users to verify both assets and liabilities on CAKE. Moreover, users are now enabled to see how yields are generated with real-time on-chain data about customer funds.
- SushiSwap new tokenomic proposal
Jared Grey, the CEO of SushiSwap, proposed a new mechanism for $SUSHI, which incorporates token-burning mechanism, liquidity lock feature, time-lock tiers, and emission-based rewards. He aimed at increasing $SUSHI liquidity and boosting decentralization of the platform.
Regulation Updates
- Indonesia set to create a national crypto exchange in 2023
Although the country opens gate for cryptocurrency, the national financial ministry stated that crypto assets should be regulated on an equal basis with other financial and investment instruments.
- SEC objects Binance.US’s $1b deal to acquire Voyager Digital
The filing asked for Binance.US ability to complete the deal and its nature of business operations following the deal
- Hong Kong crypto-trading firms lining up for virtual-asset trading licence
- Italy approves 26% crypto-gain tax for any capital gain over 2,000 euros from crypto-asset trading
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Author: Calvin Chu, Satori Research Team
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