Daily Market Update: Feb 21, 2023

February 21, 2023

BTC is currently trading around $24,500 and ETH around $1,650. Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are WEMIX, AGIX, and 1INCH. The global crypto market cap is ~$1.16T, down ~1.2% over the last day. DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$50b and BTC dominance is around 44%.

There are few hiding spots in the market this morning as equities, bonds, and crypto all trend lower. The U.S. 10Y yield reached its highest level of the year, rising to ~3.95% as U.S. PMIs came in hotter than expected. Earnings of prominent retailers pointed to an inflation-driven consumer slowdown as Walmart’s CFO noted that consumers are scrapping discretionary purchases due to elevated grocery prices. Home Depot’s weak guidance also blamed a challenging consumer backdrop. Minutes from the latest FOMC meeting on Wednesday and U.S. Core PCE data on Friday are two of this week’s more prominent releases.

Notable news includes: former FTX executive Nishad Singh will reportedly join Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang by pleading guilty to fraud charges in a plea deal with prosecutors; Custodia Bank filed an amended complaint against the Federal Reserve that claimed the denial of its application was unlawful; the San Francisco Fed issued a job posting seeking talent for CBDC system development; FTX Japan may reportedly resume withdrawals as early as February; sources claimed Jump was the unidentified “U.S. trading firm” that the SEC accused of helping support the TerraUSD stablecoin during its depeg, but notably no complaints of wrongdoing were made by the SEC; Helium announced its transition to Solana would begin on March 27th; Huobi’s token rallied nearly ~25% as the exchange announced it would operate in Hong Kong; Alchemy Pay’s token rallied nearly 70% after integrating with Google Pay; Shiba Inu’s L2 network Shibarium is expected to launch in beta next week; Aave and MakerDAO began distancing themselves from Paxos; BitFuFu started a marketplace for crypto mining rig discount coupons; OpenSea pivoted its policy on NFT royalty enforcement as it transitioned to a royalty-optional model due to heightened competition from competing marketplaces like Blur; Blur’s NFT trading volume breached $500m in the past week, surpassing OpenSea’s volume by more than 4x; Moonbirds cancelled its PROOF of Conference event due to low interest; the world’s largest energy company Saudi Aramco signed an agreement with droppGroup to explore building web3 technologies; crypto hedge fund Galois Capital closed its doors due to being critically impacted by its exposure to FTX; CoinShares annual revenue fell ~97%, noting it had 26m GBP of exposure to FTX; Yield Guild Games announced plans to raise a $75m web3 gaming fund; and, a fake Ethereum Denver website was linked to a notorious phishing wallet.

Authors:
Matt Kunke, Junior Strategist | TwitterTelegramLinkedIn
Brian Rudick, Senior Strategist | TwitterTelegramLinkedIn

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