GM, and welcome to another edition of CoinStats Scoop! 🥂 In this week’s newsletter, you'll find:
The market overview as BTC & ETH maintain stability while altcoins rally
Weekly updates on noteworthy news and developments
The core tokens, sectors, and trends to watch out for throughout August
Reads about the current state of the decentralized exchange (DEX) landscape
Tweets & Memes capturing last week’s crypto highlights
Weekly wrap-up: predictions & takeaways.
Market Overview
Another uneventful week unfolded for the crypto majors. BTC price hasn't changed from the previous week, maintaining its position just above the $29k mark, while ETH experienced a minor decline of 1.5%, remaining entrenched at its recent levels and concluding the week slightly below $1850.
The above two tweets highlight how insane the lack of movement in BTC (and ETH) has been! Bitcoin’s volatility levels and stagnant price action are either at or approaching historical all-time lows! Generally, volatility continues to decrease until it results in an incredibly volatile shift that catches everyone offside. Of course, we hope that this surge in volatility will result in upward price movement, but it remains crucial to be prepared for an alternative scenario. Speaking of volatility and upward price movement, while the majors have remained inert, altcoins have been far from idle, with some recent winners continuing to compound their gains. 💪
Rollbit (RLB, +44%) was once again one of the top-performing altcoins as the token moved from relative obscurity at the start of 2023 to a top 100 coin. RLB’s meteoric rise over the past ~6 months is conditioned by its enhanced liquidity as the token has transitioned from SOL to ETH. A surge in crypto Twitter partnerships through referral links, along with a good product market fit and the increased adoption of its crypto derivatives platform, enabling quick access to up to 1000x leverage, have also played a pivotal role.
BONE (+14%) and SHIB (10%) are the other notable tokens as the dog-themed memecoins have continued to outperform the broader market for the second straight week! Here are some other top-performing tokens:
OX +60%, FLEX +56%, KAS +36%, HNT +36%, ILV +14%, OP +10%, OKT +6%, FXS +5%, RBN +4%, BAND +4%, MAGIC +3%, INJ +2%
We’ll conclude with the words of everyone’s favorite internet cat, a sentiment that resonates deeply with us! While we don't necessarily feel “pre-rich,” as always, we can forget short-term price predictions to focus on crypto's mid to long-term trajectory, pointing to significantly higher prices than today. As always, play the long games and focus on the long-term trends. 🌞
News & Developments
Tether, the creator of crypto’s most popular stablecoin USDT, is now the world’s 11th largest holder of BTC worth around $1.6 billion; Tether's second quarter attestation report says they had a net profit of $850 million in Q2, with reserves exceeding $3.3 billion
HashKey Exchange became Hong Kong's first digital asset exchange to obtain a license for trading BTC and ETH to retail market participants
Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy company increased its Bitcoin position in July by adding 467 BTC worth $14.4 million to bring its total holdings to 152,800 BTC ($4.4 billion worth of BTC)
Coinbase launches its ETH L2 Base on August 9th
Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Animoca Brands partner for new Web3 video game
OSL, a Hong Kong-based digital asset platform, will offer retail trading of Ethereum and Bitcoin
Binance CEO CZ says the crypto exchange has surpassed 150 million users; Binance also obtains a license to operate as a virtual asset exchange in Dubai
Nomura Holdings, a Japan-based financial institution with $450 billion of assets under management, will offer trading and asset management services in Dubai
Following the spot Bitcoin ETF craze during June and July, a slew of United States financial institutions are now applying for Ethereum futures ETFs, among them Bitwise, Roundhill, VanEck, Proshares, Grayscale, Direxion, Kelly ETFs, Valkyrie Investments, and Volatility Shares.
August’s Preview
In the wake of another relatively slow week for the crypto majors (BTC, ETH, SOL, etc.), it’s worth examining some narratives and trends that might unfold across the crypto ecosystem in August. While the majors have decided to take the summer off, there’s been plenty of action across the altcoin landscape.
So, let's shift our attention to areas ripe for potential action, volatility, volume, and hopefully positive returns! We’ll turn to Stacy, a seasoned participant in crypto markets since 2016, to guide us through August's possible trends.
Below, we’ll highlight the main takeaways along with sectors, trends, and tokens to be on the lookout for!
The core areas of focus will be newly launched L2s, including Linea, Mantle (BIT), and Coinbase’s L2 Base, along with Account Abstraction & GambleFi
Liquidity within the crypto ecosystem is expanding to new L2s as Base (+7000%), Mantle (BIT, +125%), and Linea (+15%) have enjoyed the largest recent TVL growth
Bridging and exploring these developing L2 protocols could potentially provide immense returns as the ecosystems are nascent, but be always careful when exploring new chains and ecosystems 🔐
Account Abstraction (AA) “is a significant advancement in improving the user experience (UX) of DeFi products as it enables the separation of a blockchain’s underlying technology from its user interface”
GambleFi — “Gambling and degening are often intertwined, but an incredibly compelling narrative emerges when revenue-sharing is introduced (as seen in Telegram bots)
“On-chain casinos and gambling platforms have the potential to generate immense yields; even if only 50% of these yields are distributed to token holders, the revenue sharing potential becomes significant”
Notable GambleFi protocols include RLB (a Web3 casino), WINR (an autonomous liquidity and incentive infrastructure built for games of chance), and COCO (a single and multiplayer game platform).
Read of the Week
“How DEXs Are Demonstrating Their Resilience” — Jack Gorman
This week's read remains on the topic of altcoins, on-chain trading, and Telegram bots. The stagnant price action of the crypto majors this summer, combined with enhanced user interface tooling, has pushed more market participants to on-chain trading. Helping us examine the on-chain and decentralized exchange (DEX) trading ecosystem is Jack Gorman, the lead data scientist at the crypto venture capital firm Variant.
As Gorman says, his post will “take a look at the continuous growth of spot DEX usage and use onchain data to examine the driving factors behind their staying power and growing importance.”
“Amid the meltdowns and tumult of the ongoing bear market, decentralized exchanges have thrived. DEXs have continued to operate as designed — and have even managed to capitalize on the prevailing volatility. DEXs continue to do exactly what they were programmed to do: provide permissionless trading. Fueled by new token launches, liquid staking tokens, and memecoins, active users and the number of swaps have grown month over month. As more users become comfortable with DEXs, this upward trend will likely continue.”
Here are his post's key takeaways:
DEX usage has continuously and steadily grown
DEXs perform best when there’s overall stress in the markets, as evidenced by their highest volume registered during the collapse of centralized entities
From December 2022 to June 2023, active users and the number of swaps have grown by an average of 11.7% and 7%
The ratio of DEX to centralized spot volume reached a new all-time high of 22% in May as market participants flow to decentralized alternatives
According to CoinGecko, Uniswap has almost 20 times more tokens listed than Coinbase and 3.4 times more than Binance — DEXs control the long-tail asset market
Year to date, Uniswap (UNI) has accounted for 56% of total DEX volume across all chains vs. the 12% of its closest competitor, Curve (CRV)
Over the past year, 19% of Ethereum’s gas usage was due to Uniswap alone
Despite the recent market turmoil, DEXs have functioned seamlessly and made a case for the efficacy of decentralized finance 💪
Tweets & Memes
Patrick provides a great video overview of finding and analyzing useful crypto metrics
The Solana DeFi protocol's TVL continues to shoot upward as the ecosystem recovers!
S4mmy explores why Coinbase’s L2 Base could soon explode 🚀
Wrapping Up
With the tweet highlighting Coinbase’s upcoming L2 Base launch's massive potential, we’ll conclude this week’s CoinStats Scoop. 💫
As usual, we provided the regular market update, including this week's top-performing tokens along with Bitcoin's and Ethereum’s continued choppy range, detailed some potential trends, sectors, and tokens to watch throughout August, highlighted the strong metrics of DEXs and users moving on-chain, and covered the weekly news and developments. 💪
CoinStats will continue to guide you through the world of crypto and DeFi. We'll see you next week for another edition of CoinStats Scoop! 😎