BTC is currently trading around $29,300 and ETH around $1,850. Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are CHT, BCH, and CFX. The global crypto market cap is ~$1.19T, up ~7.0% over the last day. DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$43b and BTC dominance is around 51%.
Equity markets are down for the third consecutive session, and interest rates are increasing, most notably in the UK following a worse-than-expected inflation print. Tensions between the US and China have risen, negatively impacting sentiment as President Biden referred to Xi Jinping as a dictator. Crypto markets have notably diverged to the upside and are sharply higher, with bitcoin leading the charge. The most evident catalyst is renewed optimism for the prospects of a spot Bitcoin ETF approval, as WisdomTree and Invesco filed yesterday in the aftermath of BlackRock’s filing the week prior. Optimistic sentiment can also be seen via GBTC’s discount to NAV which has narrowed by ~10% since BlackRock’s filing. Importantly, GBTC’s discount would converge toward zero should a path to ETF approval come to fruition due to the ETFs ability to redeem at NAV, so the narrowing discount can be seen as the market pricing in an increased chance of approval over the last few days.
Notable news includes: Kava jumped ~5% as Tether revealed it would issue USDT on Kava; Polygon proposed upgrading its PoS side chain with zero-knowledge proof technology to transition the sidechain into a zkEVM validium (i.e., a rollup except data availability/sequencing is offchain secured by the PoS validator set); Gemini announced an expansion into the APAC region headlined by a new Singapore-based hub; Alex Obadia – the co-founder of Flashbots – departed the MEV research firm as he warned of serious challenges ahead in his farewell letter; Core Scientific filed its chapter 11 bankruptcy plans; Bitcoin miner Iris Energy soared ~20% after unveiling major hashrate expansion plans; the Reserve stablecoin protocol invested $20m in Convex, Curve, and StakeDAO tokens to increase its voting power in the governance systems of these apps; Fortnite unveiled a collaboration with Nike’s .Swoosh web3 platform; the BAYC creators revealed their HV-MTL Forge mech game with access limited to HV-MTL Robot NFT holders which were claimed by previous Sewer Pass holders; and, the Atomic Wallet hacker used THORChain to conceal $35m of stolen funds.
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Authors:
Matt Kunke, Research Analyst | Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn
Brian Rudick, Senior Strategist | Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn
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