Market Overview
GM and welcome to this week's CoinStats Scoop! 💫 Unfortunately, prices are sliding again this week as a result of those pesky macroeconomic factors we’ve referenced before. This week, we’ll look into those factors, highlight the never-ending news and developments that'll fuel the next cycle, look at NFTs and the market cap of asset tokenization, discuss some well-performing tokens, and look at some peculiar crypto data! The mood is always optimistic here at CoinStats because positive crypto developments never stop. 🤯
Once again, macro concerns were front and center this week: The Federal Reserve Bank of the US raised core interest rates by another 0.75% at their FOMC meeting on Wednesday. That may sound like abhorrent economic jargon to crypto natives, but unfortunately, for the time being, knowing it is necessary.
As we’ve written in previous issues of CoinStats Scoop, macro correlations remain at all-time highs and impact crypto markets. That being said, crypto selloffs are not standalone events. While central banks across the globe fight inflation, risk assets in every sector of every global economy continue to trend downward. Maybe that’s not the news you wanted to hear, but it’s important to realize that crypto continues to build, and that we should be focusing on its long-term impact over the next 5-20 years! 🤯 So, while crypto may be down again this week, it is because all markets are correcting themselves.
If anything, as you’ll see in the News & Developments, crypto once again pushed forward with more protocol upgrades, capital deployed to space, and institutions continuing their adoption through partnerships and NFT and token adoption. As always, there were pockets of positive gains, such as CHZ (+13.5%), XRP (+30%), ALGO (+24%), COMP (+13%), RBN (+15%), and INJ (+8%). If you need further evidence of crypto’s growth and reach, let the above tokens show that even in a week where virtually all assets declined in price, crypto still had sectors of green. 🎉
News & Developments
Below are some of the most impactful announcements over the week that indicate crypto’s rising demand across a broad swath of institutions, protocols, corporations, and legacy companies. Announcements, interest, and product developments continue, planting seeds for the next bull run and wider crypto adoption.
Nasdaq, global equities market operator, to launch crypto services after regulatory approval
Popular crypto exchange FTX is in talks to raise up to $1B at a valuation of $32B
DTCP, a European venture firm, raises $300M for its third venture fund and plans to deploy capital and resources to the crypto ecosystem
Spice VC set to close on $250M of funding for its second crypto fund
Japanese investment banking giant Nomura launches a crypto venture capital unit
The PGA Tour is set to launch a golf-focused digital collectible (NFTs) platform next year
Maple Finance (MPL) launches $300M lending pool for BTC miner financing
Helium (HNT) partners with T-Mobile for 5G coverage ahead of its Helium Mobile launch
OpenSea launches support for L2 scaling ecosystem Arbitrum while also rolling out rarity features natively inside OpenSea
Hong Kong VC firm, founded by real estate billionaire, C Ventures raising $200M for new crypto fund
African crypto exchange Yellow Card Financial raises $40M to expand operations
Sardine, a real-time crypto fraud prevention company, raises $51.5M series B
AC Milan, Italian soccer club, is launching a new NFT collection in partnership with Solana-based esports franchise MonkeyLeague
Addressable Market of NFTs
While this newsletter has primarily focused on fungible tokens and their corresponding ecosystems, we’re also very excited for NFTs to continually expand their impact as the crypto ecosystem pushes forward. Tokens obviously came first, and as a result, have drastically larger market caps, fast-expanding communities, and consistent updates, but we also expect NFTs to play a bigger and bigger role moving forward.
Apparently, we’re not alone in this. According to The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), “tokenization of illiquid assets [is] estimated to be a $16 trillion dollar business opportunity by 2030.” The “tokenization of illiquid assets” part of the tweet could be just three letters, NFT. Now $16 trillion is an extremely big number and several orders of magnitude greater than the current market cap, but their report makes a convincing argument. Furthermore, the six key advantages of asset tokenization that BCG highlights are as follows:
(1) improves affordability, (2) provides borderless accessibility, (3) unlocks liquidity and enhances flexibility, (4) provides immutable transparency, (5) increases transaction efficiency, (6) and provides better price discovery
While time will certainly tell if the projected $16 trillion dollar impact is realistic, what’s clear is that NFTs, and more broadly asset tokenization, are still in their infancy. NFTs and fungible tokens alike are just beginning to display their powers and CoinStats will be around to address, inform, and service every user, as the crypto pie continues to grow! 🤑
Read of the Week
“Crypto in 2022 - Web3 in Data”
Dune Analytics is consistently one of the best data sources across the entire crypto ecosystem, and last week they hosted “DuneCon 2022” in Berlin, Germany. An important slideshow presentation by Tomasz Tunguz given during the event is now available. The above picture, along with the core takeaways below, showcases insightful data that provides insights into specific protocols, users, and the crypto ecosystem at large.
Unique decentralized exchange buyers (DEX) increases 5.5% per quarter; Uniswap (UNI) is the dominant DEX at 66% marketshare, while Curve (CRV) is at 12%
40% of unique NFT buyers use Solana (SOL) while the average SOL NFT is about 10% the price of Ethereum NFTs
L2s, such as Optimism (OP) and Arbitrum, represent 30-40% of ETH transaction volume while L2 transactions cost roughly 2% of mainnet ETH transactions
Developers deploying smart contracts to ETH has remained consistent at around 300k contracts per month
Within different crypto sectors such as NFT marketplaces, yield aggregators, DEXs, and DeFi protocols, correlations to protocol revenue are increasing as users prioritize fundamentals
The data provided in the report is vast, but the standout indicator remains the picture above. There are only 2.5 million daily active users across blockchains, with almost 1 million of those residing on Binance Smart Chain alone. Crypto downturns can be quick and brutal, but drawdowns in asset classes that will be as impactful as crypto are easier to stomach. A total of roughly 1.5 million daily active users outside of BSC strengthen the case for crypto conviction as the total addressable market is orders of magnitude greater than the picture above. So build conviction, realize how early it still is, and hodl assets that you believe will change the world. 🔒
Tweets & Memes
The price may be down, but the fundamentals have drastically improved!
Sometimes a simple rebrand can open the eyes and minds of people
Good thoughts from Spartan Labs on $SWEAT and move-to-earn mechanisms
Wrapping Up
Another week, another CoinStats Scoop! 🍨 While some enthusiasm for crypto has died down due to asset prices, here at CoinStats we’ve never been more excited for its potential. Macro correlations and economic factors may be dragging down all asset prices, but the fundamentals are consistently improving. Rest assured that ETH’s fundamental improvements as a result of the Merge will take hold in due time. This week, we also addressed the massive addressable market of NFTs and asset tokenization. 🐼
“Crypto in 2022 — Web3 in Data” also showed us that we’re not only wishing that we were early, but that the total number of daily active users across all chains remains 2.5 million! We continue to have a bright future ahead, and focusing on the mid to long-term vision is invaluable. CoinStats will continue to guide and serve your every need as we support each other along this journey! 🥳
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