Daily Market Update: May 2, 2023

May 2, 2023

BTC is currently trading around $28,000 and ETH around $1,850. Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are CRO, FXS, and CFX. The global crypto market cap is ~$1.21T, down ~1.5% over the last day. DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$48b and BTC dominance is around 48%.

Risk assets are down modestly as the Fed kicked off its two-day meeting, with an interest rate decision coming tomorrow afternoon. Crypto performance decoupled to the downside from equities yesterday, likely due to the upward move in rates that coincided J.P. Morgan’s acquisition of First Republic. Additionally, fiscal policy returned to the fore as Treasury Secretary Yellen notified Congress that the U.S. could default as soon as June 1st “if Congress does not raise or suspend the debt limit before that time.” Lower-than-expected tax receipts have expedited this timeline, and the path forward may be challenging with today’s split Congress. Biden set a May 9th meeting with senior Congressional leaders as the first step to work through the divide. See last week’s coverage for more detail.

Notable news includes: The 3AC founders and their new exchange OPNX were dinged by Dubai regulators for operating without the required licenses; the Nigerian SEC announced it would allow for the tokenization of equities, property, and debt; Bybit rolled out lending services for its users; EigenLayer announced its phase mainnet launch; Blur launched a collateralized NFT lending protocol dubbed Blend; Solana’s Phantom wallet added Ethereum and Polygon support; Curve’s crvUSD stablecoin was deployed on the Sepolia testnet ahead of its mainnet deployment; Axelar enabled Sommelier vaults to connect to Arbitrum;  Revolut began offering crypto investments in Brazil; and, Justin Sun reversed his $56m transfer to Binance after CZ warned him against farming SUI tokens on the platform.

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Authors:
Matt Kunke, Research Analyst | TwitterTelegramLinkedIn
Brian Rudick, Senior Strategist | TwitterTelegramLinkedIn

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