Daily Market Update: August 28, 2023

August 28, 2023

BTC is currently trading around $26,100 and ETH around $1,650.  Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are CRV, FXS, and FIL.  The global crypto market cap is $1.09T, up 0.1% over the last day.  DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$38b and BTC dominance is around 49%.

Equities are higher while rates and crypto prices are little changed to start the week after Fed Chair Powell reiterated that the Fed is prepared to raise rates further if warranted at Jackson Hole on Friday.  Market participants will be watching several prominent macro releases this week including China PMIs, Euro area consumer prices, US PCE, and the US employment report.

In notable country/regulatory news, the US IRS proposed new tax rules that would require crypto businesses to interact with the IRS in a similar fashion as traditional brokers; a bankruptcy judged refused to determine whether Celsius’s native CEL token is a security, citing the ongoing Ripple lawsuit; The Hong Kong Monetary Authority stated that tokenization can improve bond market efficiency after a successful $100m tokenized green bond issuance earlier this year; South Korea announced that all crypto exchanges within its borders must hold at least $2.3m in bank reserves to increase investor protections; and, Roman Storm, the co-founder of sanctioned crypto mixer Tornado Cash, was released on bail after being charged with laundering $1b by the US DOJ.

Elsewhere, cloud storage provider Dropbox announced it will discontinue its unlimited storage policy due to abuse by some customers including crypto miners; LatAm crypto asset manager Hashdex filed for a US spot bitcoin ETF that proposes to acquire and dispose of bitcoin through the regulated CME market rather than utilizing a surveillance sharing agreement; Coinbase added Paypal’s PYUSD to its listing roadmap; Crypto sleuths have attributed a wallet with 118,300 BTC in it to Robinhood, though the company has not commented on the matter; Bitcoin mining revenue per TH/s neared a record low amidst a soaring network hashrate; Ethereum daily transaction fees hit an eight-month low; friend.tech revenue plummeted 90% as user activity on the dapp declined substantially; Shiba Inu developers reopened the bridge from Ethereum to its layer 2 network Shibarium; Donald Trump NFT prices spiked following the release of his mugshot; and, BitBoy Crypto removed host Ben Armstrong after significant infighting at the company.

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

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