BTC is currently trading around $23,500 and ETH around $1,650. Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are IMX, LUNC, and OP. The global crypto market cap is ~$1.12T, down ~0.9% over the last day. DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$49b and BTC dominance is around 44%.
Risk assets are returning some of yesterday’s gains behind a few data points painting a mixed picture of the economic backdrop. Firstly, Apple, Google, and Amazon all missed earnings, pointing to weakening demand across their range of services, including tech hardware, e-commerce, ads, and cloud. Conversely, U.S. nonfarm payrolls genuinely shocked to the upside, with ~517k new jobs added versus the ~185k expected, painting an incredibly rosy picture of the labor market. Bond yields gapped higher as the tighter conditions will almost assuredly keep the Fed in a higher-for-longer paradigm. While Fed Fund futures were already anticipating a 25 bp hike in March, markets were pricing a ~17% chance of a Fed pause yesterday, but that probability fell virtually to zero following this morning’s release.
Notable news includes: Australia announced plans for a crypto framework in 2023; Coinbase rallied more than 20% after a federal judge dismissed a class-action lawsuit alleging it facilitated the sale of unregistered securities; Binance’s dispute with WazirX continues as the Indian exchange was told to withdraw any remaining assets from Binance wallets; Binance re-entered South Korea by acquiring a majority stake in GOPAX; Nomura’s Laser Digital is moving forward with plans to launch its trading platform in Q1; NFT lending volumes breached record highs in January; Marathon Digital sold bitcoin for the first time in two years to pay down debt and increase its cash position; TeraWulf restructured its debt; Core Scientific turned over ~27k mining rigs to NYDIG to extinguish ~$39m of debt; OpenSea unveiled a new suite of tools for creator NFT drops; and, CertiK noted that a lack of liquidity minimized the damages caused in the BonqDAO exploit, stating that the widely circulating headline of an $120m loss was vastly overstated and the real damage was closer to $1m.
Authors:
Matt Kunke, Junior Strategist | Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn
Brian Rudick, Senior Strategist | Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn
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