GM and welcome to another CoinStats Scoop! 💫 Here’s an overview of this week’s newsletter:
The usual broad market update with insights to outperforming tokens & thing to watch
Reading, thinking through, & internalizing the long term view for crypto
Analyzing SOL and its growing ecosystem despite FTX’s collapse
Updating you on the impactful news and developments of the week
Wrapping things up with takeaways of the week & what to watch moving forward
Market Overview
As you can see, it was a mixed week for crypto asset prices as the total market capped inched higher while BTC (-2%) and ETH (-6.5%) erased early week gains to close the week in the red.
Speaking of those early week gains, they are perfectly visualized within our exceptional app below where you can see the highs and unfortunate lows this week.
BTC’s price action this week amazingly inside our unparalleled CoinStats app!
BTC, and the broad market at large, topped late Tuesday this week as asset markets across the world rallied in reaction to the latest U.S. inflation numbers before retracing their gains as a result of language from the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Crypto tokens across the board were headed for impressive gains this week before the Chair of the Federal Reserve of the U.S. delivered remarks on current rate hikes and the state of the economy that sent prices off a cliff Wednesday afternoon. Following that, there were heavy long liquidations Friday evening that sent most of crypto assets lower.
Once again, it’s important to remember that the “selloff” this week is a result of macroeconomic factors that are long-term irrelevant to crypto markets. If anything, the fact that crypto markets headed lower as a result of a singular man’s words reinforces the need for permissionless, uncensorable, global money! 🤯
As we mentioned numerous times previously, crypto’s impact and different verticals touched are growing so large that despite the down week for the majors of BTC & ETH there were green tokens to be found! 🤑 TON (+50%) lead the way this week as excitement continues to grow around the Telegram developed token and network! Outside of that, XMON, an NFT liquidity protocol, gained a strong 20% which was followed closely in weekly returns by MAGIC (+18%), BONE (+18%), and the DeFi protocol Ribbon Finance (+4.5%).
News & Developments
Below are some of the most impactful announcements over the past week as adoption never stops! Numerous announcements, rising interest, and product development continue from some of the world’s biggest companies that plants the seeds for the next bull run and wider crypto adoption.
PayPal, global payments giant, partners with MetaMask to offer users the ability to easily onboard ETH into their crypto wallets
Despite recent market conditions, Hong Kong launches its first crypto exchange traded funds (ETFs) that invest in BTC & ETH
Amber Group, Singapore based crypto lending & trading firm, raises $300M as it recovers from recent losses and steadies operations
One of the U.S. biggest ETF providers, WisdomTree, launches 9 new blockchain enabled funds ahead of its planned digital wallet release in early 2023
Magic Eden, SOL-based NFT marketplace, announces reward program for users that provides discounts & NFT rewards based on user activity
Aztec Network, ETH-based zero-knowledge privacy & scaling solution protocol, raises $100M to double team members and build its encryption solutions
Former U.S. President Donald Trump sells out 45k NFTs upon their launch
Magic Eden adds support for MATIC NFT trading and minting
SBF has been arrested & will be extradited to the United Stats this week
Coinbase unveils an “asset recovery tool” that will allow users to withdraw almost 4k previously trapped ERC-20 tokens
Solana’s Path to Recovery
As most everyone is aware, Solana (SOL) has endured a brutal selloff since FTX’s collapse. Many throughout the industry have associated FTX and the SOL ecosystem as one in the same, but it’s important to not that FTX does not equal Solana and there are still numerous teams building throughout the SOL ecosystem.
Instead of us walking through all of the current SOL ecosystem, Kel of Messari was kind enough to provide us with a thorough overview of the entire Solana ecosysten. Below, we’ll highlight the important SOL ecosystem updates and ongoing developments, but, as Kel says before his data-driven analysis, “if you rely on FUD or pure hopium, this thread probably isn’t for you.”
Jump’s Firedancer validator will add client diversity & the potential for scaling to 600k TPS (transactions per second) for the Solana blockchain
Decentralization — SOL currently has validators distributed across 35+ geographic locations tapping into greater than 135+ data centers
Strong developer tooling & resources including Coral, Helius, GenesysGo, & Clockwork
SOL’s App layer — “DeFi TVL is down bad, but new, innovative designs are still being built…TIPIN (token incentivized physical networks) is a promising new sector…NFTs resilient…and gaming is a sleeping giant that may awaken at any time”
DEXs (decentralized exchanges) — rebuilding that include OpenBook & EllipsisLabs
Derivatives (financial contracts whose value is dependent on an underlying asset; extremely popular amongst crypto twitter participants) — Mango Markets, Cypher Protocol, Zeta Markets, Friktion Labs, & Drift Protocol
TIPIN (token incentivized physical networks) — Helium, Pollen Mobile, Hivemapper, Teleportxyz
NFTs — “the NFT community doesn’t care about macro, SBF, or whatever else is going on outside their world” — daily sales volume (in SOL) approached an all time high in mid-November despite the FTX chaos
Gaming — fruits of previous hard labor are coming soon from teams building for years that include: Aurory, play_evio, Star Atlas, No Way Back, & BR1INFINITE
As Kel concludes, “the ecosystem is not without promise. New apps may re-catalyze usage. Potential new champions can surpase SBF in terms of positive contributions to the network. Technical upgrades actively in development will likely continue to mitigate network issues and upgrade network performance”
SOL undoubtedly has a long way to go to reestablish its footing as one of the top blockchains, but ongoing developments across gaming, DEXs, NFTs, DeFi, TIPIN, and SOL’s app layer paint a bright future ahead! 💪
Read of the Week
“The Long View: Web3 and User Ownership” — Jesse Walden & Li Jin
Variant was founded in 2020 with the belief that, “crypto would be the foundation of a user-owned web, where products and services would turn their users into owners.” With that as our core focus, Variant reminds us that FTX and other recent “failures” were the result of traditional financial institution failings and fraud while highlighting the importance of crypto and why we need to move to web3 and DeFi in particular. 😤
“Overly negative media coverage overshadows crypto’s potential as a tool for world-positive impact and demonstrates that outside sentiment is often out of touch with actual progress and fundamentals in web3…open, automated code is an unlock for a new way of building internet platforms that are credibly neutral and, critically, owned by users…it’s clearer than ever the user ownership (through tokens) is a powerful new tool.”
As Variant outlines, the long term view of crypto is paramount as they provide some insight for both builders and users. For users, the lesson that resurfaces consistently is the adage “invest in what you know” while the takeaway for builders revolves around what tokens enable as they should, “spark greater first-principles design around tokens as products, with a focus on ownership experience” 🤑
Variant, one of the most respected funds in the crypto space, concludes their thoughts focusing on what crypto tokens can enable by saying, “tokens can be designed to unlock new product experiences for end users where that product solves a key problem for the end user.”
CoinStats agrees whole heartedly with variant in not only the future of tokens, but with the future of impact of crypto at large! 😤 Per usual, we’ll be here providing weekly updates on the entire ecosystem as we slowly, continuously march towards global adoption. Anything throughout the crypto space that you could possibly miss will always be in your weekly CoinStats Scoop and we look forward to seeing you in the coming months/years ahead! 😎
Tweets & Memes
Despite the recent Binance FUD, BNB continues to have the most active users
As we mentioned above, the fundamental improvements of SOL continue!
A great holiday security to-do list for every reader & market participant!
Now is the time to double down on the fundamentals of crypto and never look back!
Wrapping Up
Alright, with that reminder of the digital asset space’s bright future we’ll conclude this week’s edition of the CoinStats Scoop! 🍦
This week, we covered the market’s reaction to macroeconomic factors out of its control, highlighted Solana’s bright future through its ongoing protocol & application developments, read about the importance & significance of having the long term crypto view, & covered the usual news & developments of the week! 💪
As usual, 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! 😎