Crypto Market Highlights
Bank of Russia to allow crypto investment via foreign firms - TASS Report
Deutsche Telekom’s T-Systems MMS taps Polkadot, buys DOT tokens
Instagram considering NFT integration as mass adoption heightens
Switzerland's SEBA Bank wants to use Aave's institutional DeFi platform
Crypto exchange Kraken acquires non-custodial staking platform Staked
NBA superstar Kevin Durant signs brand ambassador deal with Coinbase
China's state-run Xinhua News Agency to mint NFTs despite crypto ban
DEX protocol Uniswap goes live on Ethereum-scaling platform Polygon
Pro-crypto US Senator Cynthia Lummis to introduce an “expansive crypto bill” in 2022
Global search interest for 'NFT' surpasses 'crypto' and ‘bitcoin’ for the first time ever
Web browser Opera to integrate with Polygon, opening dApp ecosystem to 80M users
Binance introduces BNB Auto-Burn protocol to replace quarterly burn protocol
SEC rejects Valkyrie and Kryptoin’s spot-Bitcoin ETF applications
Financial messaging giant SWIFT to explore tokenized asset market in 2022
Dogecoin developers publish DOGE Roadmap for first time in project's history
*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
The crypto market has put in a strong showing this holiday week with some even calling the recent surge a “Santa Claus rally." As of this writing, the total crypto market cap stands at $2.39T whereas this time last week it was sitting at $2.18T – an increase of over $200B in market value. Coinciding with the solid performance is an improvement in sentiment as seen by the Crypto Fear & Greed Index. The sentiment measuring index has increased to its current reading of 41 (out of 100), still signifying fear, however, much less fearful than last week’s reading of 23, signifying extreme fear. Bitcoin has been leading the market recovery, especially after breaking above $50K with the other market leaders coming from the Metaverse, GameFi, and DeFi spaces.
The Heavy Weights
Bitcoin (BTC) has gained nearly 9% on the week as of this writing, trading at $51,110. It started its march higher on Tuesday, likely due to Asian buyers accumulating again after a long period of net selling. Then BTC finally broke above $50K on Thursday and even rallied as high as $51.5K today before pulling back.
There are multiple reasons for the gains such as the Bitcoin hash rate nearing a record 200EH/s as well as the illiquid BTC supply continuing to hit multi-year highs. According to Glassnode, 100K BTC is turning illiquid each month, with the current illiquid coins making up 76% of the circulating supply. The illiquid supply percentage has been strongly correlated with the price over the past year. Furthermore, according to CryptoQuant, miners’ inventory balance is sitting at a six month high with no indication that they will become net sellers at current prices.
Ethereum (ETH) has gained for the week as well, but only 4.6% as of this post, with the smart contract leader currently trading at $4,083. Staying above the crucial $4K level will be key, however, Whale Alerts recently noted that over $150M worth of ETH tokens have been moved to exchanges over the past few days, usually a sign of intentions to sell.
Terra (LUNA) continues to be red-hot as it hit a new all-time high today of $101.20. LUNA has already surged 43.5% over the past seven days, trading at $96.12 as of this writing. The amazing price action is likely related to the growing popularity of Terra’s decentralized stablecoin UST. As readers are probably aware, to mint one UST, one LUNA token needs to be burned, hence the higher demand for UST directly translates to a decreasing supply of LUNA, generating a higher LUNA price in the process. Moreover, Terra just became the second largest DeFi network with $20B in TVL, overtaking Binance Smart Chain. LUNA likely also benefited from today’s Binance listing of UST.
High Flyers
Near Protocol (NEAR) has treated its holders very nicely this week, delivering them a weekly gain of 80% as of this writing, with the NEAR token trading at $15.59. The PoS network whose goal is to make Dapps similarly usable to those on today’s web benefited from the recently announced partnership with Endless, a live collaboration music creation platform. Together, they will build a “next generation digital collectible marketplace for music created in its ecosystem.” NEAR also got a boost from the news that Terra will be integrating its UST stablecoin on the NEAR and Aurora ecosystems. Integrating your blockchain with a major stablecoin never hurts.
Aave (AAVE) had a stellar performance this week as well, rallying 62% to trade at $274.05 as of this writing. The DeFi leader was helped by the news that Switzerland's SEBA Bank wants to use Aave's institutional DeFi platform. If one bank wants access to Aave’s products, others probably do too.
Polygon (MATIC) continued its bullish trend this week, gaining 20.9% as of this writing to trade at $2.54. The layer 2 leader likely climbed higher due to the enthusiasm surrounding DEX leader Uniswap going live on the Polygon’s network. MATIC even hit a new all-time high this week of $2.79, but pulled back after the fact. Going into the weekend, closing above the key $2.70 level would be a big win.
The Fallen
Visor.Finance (VISR) is not ending the year on a high note. It’s down over 95% on the week, trading at $0.02176 as of this writing. The fall was a result of – hacking, of course. Over $8M was drained from VISR’s staking contract. Visor Finance now plans to issue a new token under a new ticker and use it to reimburse VISR holders in a 1:1 ratio. VISR tokens bought post-hack will not be included in the plan.
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