GM, and welcome to another edition of CoinStats Scoop! 🥂 In this week’s newsletter, you'll find:
The usual market overview, including coverage of the largest liquidations since the recent bankruptcy of FTX
Weekly updates on noteworthy news and developments
Highlights of Coinbase’s L2 and how Friend Tech dominates the mindshare of crypto
Reads about crypto's cyclical nature and our advantageous position, set to reap substantial benefits in the near future
Tweets & Memes capturing last week’s crypto highlights
Weekly wrap-up: predictions & takeaways.
Market Overview
This week, the market experienced a substantial surge in volatility. In a sudden turn of events late Thursday afternoon, the cryptocurrency market witnessed a large flash crash in the span of ~20 minutes, resulting in a 10% decline in BTC's value and an 8% retreat in ETH's price.
Despite the quick selloff, the total crypto market cap remains comfortably above the key threshold of $1 trillion! While the exact reason for the selloff remains unclear, a combination of events seems to have played a role. The bankruptcy protection filing by China’s Evergrande Group and the Wall Street Journal's report about Elon Musk’s SpaceX devaluing its Bitcoin holdings by $373 million while also selling an unspecified amount have both contributed to the prevailing uncertainty. The cascading sequence of liquidations that unfolded in ~20 minutes resulted in over $800 million of long liquidations, the largest since the day of the FTX crash. 🤯
Despite the downward price actions, BTC and ETH have maintained significant gains since the start of 2023, continuing to hold the critical thresholds of $25,000 and $1,600! While an ideal scenario would be one of unceasing upward momentum, it's crucial to acknowledge that it's unrealistic. Although prices didn't go up, the groundwork for a brighter future remains underway, and as we progress through 2023 and into 2024, we’ll eventually reap the rewards.
Additionally, some of the world’s largest companies across various sectors, including Mastercard, Zynga, and PayPal, continue to adopt crypto and develop their crypto strategies. 🤓
Lastly, amidst the recent unfavorable regulatory environment in the United States, we received great news this week. The SEC is set to greenlight Ethereum futures ETFs, which would be a big win for the crypto industry. Plus, Coinbase garnered approval from the CFTC to launch its crypto futures product. While this week's charts may not reflect it, the ongoing improvements to the overall crypto ecosystem continue to make headway. 🤑
News & Developments
Zynga, one of the world’s largest game developer companies, reveals the details and announces its first Ethereum NFT game, Sugartown
Crypto hardware wallet company Ledger adds PayPal as an on-ramp, enabling users to use their PayPal accounts for purchases of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies
BitGo, one of crypto’s longest-standing and most popular custody solution companies raises $100 million, boosting the company's valuation to $1.75 billion
Coinbase, the most popular U.S. crypto exchange and publicly listed company, announces its official launch in Canada; Coinbase will also bring federally regulated crypto futures trading to eligible United States customers
Mastercard, one of the world’s largest payment processing companies, partners with key crypto industry companies, including Ripple, Consensys, and Fireblocks, to explore blockchain innovation and create a CBDC innovation group
Binance officially launches its new Layer 2 opBNB on the mainnet for all users
Kraken Ventures, the investment arm of popular crypto exchange Kraken, seeks $100 million for its second crypto investment fund
Helium (HNT), a decentralized infrastructure network that migrated its token and protocol to Solana, launches its Helium Mobile $5 Unlimited phone plan
ZetaChain, a new Layer 1 blockchain focused on interoperability, raises $27 million to continue building ahead of its eventual launch
Friend.Tech Summer
As we’re sure everyone has heard by now, Friend Tech continues to take over the mindshare of crypto! Friend.Tech is a new social network protocol enabling users to tokenize themselves and trade ‘shares’ of their online persona. Owning a share enables you to access that user’s ‘room’ and privately chat with them. As of (last) Sunday afternoon, the total trading volume on the platform exceeded 6,000 ETH.
As icebergy highlights below, the number of Friend.Tech daily transactions surpassed 1 million on Sunday! 🤯
Achieving one million daily transactions is an exceptional feat for a crypto application that is only two weeks old! Plus, people from various sectors of traditional businesses and industries embrace crypto via Friend.Tech, with the platform's viral traction fueling this rapid adoption.
Coinbase’s newly launched Ethereum Layer 2 is also reaping substantial benefits as Friend.Tech is built on top of it. This surge has propelled Base to overtake the once-dominant players and previous leaders in the Layer 2 arena, namely Optimism (OP) and Arbitrum (ARB), in daily transactions. The platform’s seamless onboarding process helps avoid the complexities of conventional on-chain crypto transactions and allows the pro gaming, OnlyFans, NBA players, and more to sign up and explore crypto’s hottest new application quickly!
While crypto is still in its nascent stage, and some minor corrections are inevitable, the future of Friend.tech and crypto adoption remains incredibly bright. 🌞
Read of the Week
Once again, our read comes from an incredibly informative Twitter thread. This time, the thread's author is Kevin Kelly, co-founder of one of the most respected, active, and influential crypto venture capital firms Delphi Digital. Kevin shares his timely thoughts on market cycles and crypto's great position set to reap substantial benefits over the next 12-18 months! 🌞
“Evidence is piling up that we’re in the early stages of a new cycle. This isn’t just another bear market rally, in my opinion”
“Using BTC as a benchmark, a typical cycle looks like this: BTC hits new ATH, suffers ~80% drawdown, bottoms 1y later, takes ~2 years to recover to previous high, price rallies for another year before reaching new ATH”
“Active addresses, total transaction volumes, total fees — they all peaked alongside the tops in the ISM too. As the business cycle shows signs of recovery, so too do network activity levels”
“Higher rates, ‘sticky’ inflation, and recession worries have all contributed to a general apathy toward risk assets this year, but markets are forward-looking, and heading into the year, equities were already pricing in a significant slowdown”
“Crypto markets are (for now) tied to bigger macro cycles (like cyclical changes in the business cycle as we noted), and the cherry on top of all this is one that’s close to the heart of the crypto faithful”
“The Bitcoin Halving is expected to occur in April 2024. If BTC follows its usual cycle playbook, that implies a new all-time high by Q4 of 2024”
“Maybe I’m wrong, or maybe I’ve just been drowning myself in too many Bloomberg screens for too many hours, but the more I stare, the more the dots appear to be lining up. This is why I believe the market will directionally follow a similar path as prior cycles”
“Crypto markets have battled a lot of ‘heavyweight narratives’ over the last 18 months, but if we look beyond the short-term trade, the outlook for the next 12-18 months is significantly brighter from where I’m sitting.”
Tweets & Memes
It’s wild to see a former United States President potentially having an ETH address 🤯
For anyone who wants to explore on-chain trading, this thread is for you!
Aylo provides extensive details on the great opportunities of another airdrop you could get!
BTC and ETH are down, but the vision of the future and the next bull has never been more clear 💪
Wrapping Up
With the tweet highlighting the immense potential ahead in the coming months and years, we’ll conclude this week’s CoinStats Scoop. 💫
As usual, we provided the regular market update with this week's volatility, highlighted Coinbase’s L2 launch and the success of Friend Tech, read about crypto market cycles and the bullish outlook for the months/years ahead, 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! 😎