Crypto Market Highlights
Nike acquires NFT sneakers and collectibles studio RTFKT
German banking group Sparkasse confirms rumors–wants to launch a crypto wallet
Polygon to launch fee-burning mechanism similar to Ethereum's
Twitch co-founder Justin Kan to launch a gaming Solana-based NFT marketplace
Floki Inu forms strategic partnership with Dutch pro soccer club FC Twente
Public insurance firm Lemonade confirms they hold Bitcoin on balance sheet
Solana Ventures announces new $150 million fund for blockchain gaming
NYDIG raises $1B to expand institutional Bitcoin services
DOGE developer mints first-ever NFT on the Dogecoin blockchain
US Senators ask Treasury to put out guidance for crypto brokers by year's end
Kraken exchange plans to introduce an NFT trading marketplace
Nexo partners with Three Arrows Capital on NFT Lending Desk
Russia to decide between blanket crypto ban and legalizing exchanges in 2022
VanEck ETN adds Polygon and Avalanche to its crypto investment offerings
Yearn Finance launches YFI buyback program to distribute earnings to token holders
Bitwise launches the world’s first NFT Index
Shopify is launching its beta version of an NFT marketplace
ConsenSys partners with Mastercard to launch Rollups For EVM Blockchains
Justin Sun resigns as CEO of TRON, Says Tron Foundation to Dissolve in 2022
*The crypto events from the past week, as well as many more were detected by Crowdsense hours or days before reaching the market…
Market Overview
It has been a not so stellar week for the crypto market. As of this writing, the total crypto market cap has fallen to $2.13T according to CoinMarketCap. This time last week, it was sitting at $2.22T, meaning over $90B of value has been lost over the past seven days. The major memecoins were not able to claw their way back into the top ten despite whale-buying and Dogecoin having a mid-week Elon Musk-induced surge. The main event this week was the US Federal Reserve’s FOMC meeting where Chairman Powell announced that the Fed would double its pace of bond purchase tapering to $30B per month. Once the tapering is finished around mid-March, three interest rate hikes in 2022 are on the table. Following the Fed meeting, markets strangely rallied despite the fact that an increase in tapering equates to a decrease in money printing. Sentiment remains dispirited as the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, as of this post, is sitting at 23 (out of 100) indicating extreme fear. Possible reasons include general cautiousness about the future of the global economy due to rising inflation and the view that the crypto market would not perform well in a risk-off environment.
The Heavy Weights
Bitcoin (BTC) is down 3.5% on the week as of this writing, trading at $46,445. It briefly surpassed $50K on Monday before giving the area to the bears. Later in the week it fell to a low of $45,672 before recovering and attempting to break the $49.5K resistance level which it failed to do multiple times. However, the retail investor is taking advantage of the sub-$50K pullback as the changes in balances for wallets holding 1 Bitcoin or less recently reached their highest level since March 2020. Going into the weekend, the $46K level is key to watch. If it doesn’t hold, a slide to $40K could be in the cards.
Ethereum (ETH) has performed slightly worse than BTC this week, down 4.6% as of this writing, trading at $3,825. It started off the week poorly, closing below $4K on Monday. The downtrend appears to be in control with critical support existing around the $3,700 area. If this level is taken out, a fall to $3K cannot be discounted. Despite the lackluster price performance, the on-chain fundamentals appear sound as over 7% of ETH’s supply is now locked in the ETH 2.0 Beacon Chain staking contract. Interestingly, the terms of unlocking this staked ETH are yet to be decided.
Dogecoin (DOGE) had a lively week, up 0.5% over the past seven days, trading at $0.168 as of this writing. On Tuesday, the original memecoin surged nearly 30% after Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla would accept DOGE for merchandise to “see how it goes.” The pump was short lived though as about half the gains were gone just hours later. In other potentially significant news, a DOGE developer minted the first-ever NFT on the Dogecoin blockchain this week. The transaction ended up costing only 0.1 DOGE ($0.0018) - much cheaper than NFT mining costs on Ethereum.
High Flyers
Avalanche (AVAX) had a rewarding week, gaining 29% to trade at $110 as of this writing. The cause of the rally was the launch of stablecoin USDC on the network, bringing additional high quality liquidity to the layer one blockchain.
Yearn.finance (YFI) was another winner, rising 37% on the week to trade at $28,277 as of this writing. The major surge upwards for the DeFi yield aggregator was a result of a newly announced YFI buyback program to distribute earnings to token holders. Treating your community well certainly has its benefits.
The Fallen
BitTorrent (BTT) did not perform so well this week, losing 21% to trade at $0.002574 as of this writing. It seems traders have been rotating out of BTT following its Mainnet launch and Redenomination Plan on December 12.
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