BTC is currently trading around $19,200 and ETH around $1,650. Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are LUNC, HNT, and BCH. The global crypto market cap is $1.02T, up 3.9% over the last day. DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$75b and BTC dominance is around 39%.
Equity markets are generally down small, while interest rates are slightly higher after the ECB hiked its benchmark deposit rate by 75 bps this morning. The hike followed a 50 bp increase in July and largely matched expectations, and the ECB indicated more hikes are to come as it attempts to tamp down inflation. Shortly after the ECB, Fed Chair Powell spoke at the Cato Institute, with his comments largely mirroring his hawkish stance from Jackson Hole. Markets are now pricing in an 84% chance of a 75 bp Fed hike at its September 21st meeting, per the CME.
In regulatory news: Federal Reserve Vice Chair Brainard called for clear, crypto-specific regulation and pushed for stablecoin legislation during a speech; the anticipated US stablecoin bill is reportedly seeing delays amidst negotiations between lawmakers; Taiwan approved 24 crypto platforms for AML compliance, including crypto exchange Woo Network; South Korean financial regulators revealed plans to publish guidelines for security tokens late this year; The Korea Institute of Finance argued that crypto could pose a major threat to financial stability; Israel’s Capital Markets, Insurance, and Savings Authority granted its first permanent license to private company Hybrid Bridge Holdings to engage in crypto activities; Vermont regulators claimed that embattled centralized lender Celsius artificially inflated the price of its CEL token, and would have been insolvent since 2019 without doing so.
Elsewhere: Mt. Gox reportedly lacks the infrastructure to distribute payments to customers impacted by the hack and has not collected payment addresses, indicating that contrary to some rumors, disbursements are not imminent; defunct crypto brokerage Voyager Digital will auction its remaining assets on September 13; Binance’s layer one BNB Chain announced zkBNB, a zero-knowledge proof-based scaling technology; Binance started dropping soulbound tokens to users who have passed KYC; Binance US announced that it will introduce ETH staking with a 6% yield and minimum stake of 0.001 ETH; asset management firm ETC Group revealed plans for a proof-of-work Ethereum ETP to be listed on Deutsche Borse’s Xetra; SEC filings reveal more information about Brevan Howard’s crypto hedge fund; crypto friendly, Switzerland-based SEBA Bank launched institutional staking; bitcoin financial services firm Swan Bitcoin created a new platform for financial advisors to allow clients to purchase bitcoin; retail trading platform Bitpanda revealed plans to add commodities to its offering; crypto miner Bitdeer delayed its $4b SPAC deal until December; bitcoin miner Cleanspark purchased 10,000 new rigs for a significant discount; music giant Sony filed a trademark application for NFT-authenticated music; video game retailer GameStop partnered with crypto exchange FTX US for marketing collaborations; layer one blockchain Algorand announced a new upgrade that will boost transaction speed and cross-chain communication security via state proofs; Sui blockchain creator Mysten Labs closed a $300m funding round; activity on layer two scaling solution Arbitrum has quadrupled after its recent Nitro upgrade; Aave Companies, the development lab behind crypto lending protocol Aave, is seeking to use DAO funds to pay for crypto developers; and, New Free DAO’s NFD token crashed by 99% after the protocol suffered a series of flash loan attacks.
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