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Crypto Market Cap Overview
| 2023/08/07 | 2023/08/14 | ||
| Market Overview | Weekly numbers ($M-USD) | Weekly numbers ($M-USD) | WoW %
weekly change |
| S&P | 4,478.03 | 4,464.05 | -0.31% |
| Nasdaq | 13,909.24 | 13,644.85 | -1.90% |
| US 10-year Treasury Rate | 4.05% | 4.16% | 0.11% |
| Crypto Marketcap | $1,204,653 | $1,219,022 | 1.19% |
| BTC dominant | 50.26% | 50.42% | 0.16% |
| ETH dominant | 19.56% | 19.59% | 0.03% |
| Percentage of Staked ETH | 21.14% | 21.38% | 0.24% |
| Lido Dominance in all ETH Staking | 31.73% | 31.77% | 0.04% |
| Lido Dominance in ETH LSD Staking | 86.39% | 86.60% | 0.21% |
| stablecoins | $125,726 | $125,321 | -0.32% |
| Defi | $47,968 | $48,419 | 0.94% |
| Defi: Eth ratio | 21.80% | 21.80% | 0.00% |
| TVL | $40,733 | $41,927 | 2.93% |
| nft | $5,756 | $5,711 | -0.78% |
Bitcoin: “Classic weekend chop” expected
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed a flat Bitcoin trading environment as the weekend began.
After displaying only muted reactions to the week’s United States macroeconomic data prints, BTC/USD held firm near $29,500 — a key battleground between bulls and bears.
“Expecting just another classic weekend chop around the CME close price,” popular trader Daan Crypto Trades wrote in part of his latest analysis, referencing the closing price of CME Bitcoin futures markets at $29,465.
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Comma3 Opinion
Since the beginning of this year, the U.S. government has been intensifying its regulation of cryptocurrency, leading to significant actions taken by major U.S. cryptocurrency exchanges and large-scale cryptocurrency asset management service providers in the latter half of the year. In mid-July, Coinbase launched its own decentralized mainchain called ‘Base’, which attracted a TVL (Total Value Locked) of $120 million within just 20 days. The locked ETH reached 100,000, ranking it fifth among all Ethereum locked assets. This growth rate is the fastest in history. Currently, it is catching up with the development of long-established Layer 2 chains like OP and Arbitrum. However, Base’s mainchain does not issue tokens, which sets it apart from traditional Layer 2 solutions. Nevertheless, it boasts four advantages:
- No concerns about token utility or distribution issues.
- Focus on technical and financial ecosystem development.
- No worries about U.S. government regulations.
- Clear differentiation from other L2 solutions.
For investors interested in getting involved with Base, there’s also a speculative opportunity. Its developer, Coinbase, is publicly listed on the stock market under the ticker COIN. The stock has historically experienced significant volatility. In July, COIN rose by 120%, while the ARB token only increased by 18%.
Within 14 days, Base generated approximately $1.8 million in revenue. Given that the chain is still in its early stages of development, this revenue could potentially remain at a high level. As a point of comparison, the early August revenues for other Layer 2 solutions were: OP: $342,000, and Arbitrum: $341,000.
The number of daily active addresses continues to grow, surpassing Optimism and Avalanche, and is now approaching Arbitrum. The market’s enthusiasm has not waned. The emergence of new blockchains has brought forth numerous opportunities, especially with the involvement of industry giant Coinbase.
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Fundraising Events by Sectors
Infrastructure
Tampa Bay Inno – St. Pete investor Gary Cardone leads $12M capital raise for blockchain startup
St. Petersburg fintech investor Gary Cardone is leading a $12 million funding round for New York-based blockchain accounting startup Node40 through his fund, Card1Ventures.
Cardone is upsizing his commitment to Node40, which he backed with a $4 million investment in April after regulators recently provided “tremendous clarity” on a path forward for digital assets.
Web3 ad firm HypeLab raises $4 million in round led by Shima Capital and Makers Fund
HypeLab, a web3 advertising startup that uses on-chain data to personalize and serve ads, raised seed capital of $4 million in a funding round led by VC firms Shima Capital and Makers Fund.
Founded in part by former Google product manager Ed Weng, who has a background in digital advertising, the adtech aims to sell services to clients eager to get a headstart on connecting with the growing number of consumers embracing blockchain-enabled solutions and products.
Spearbit raises $7M to improve security audits in crypto through its open marketplace
Security is paramount in crypto, but as regular coverage of hacks and other exploits make plain, it is not taken seriously enough. Spearbit wants to change that, and it just raised a new round to accelerate its efforts.
The startup raised $7 million in a funding round led by Framework Ventures with Nascent, 1kx, Volt Capital, Breed VC, Robot Ventures and others participating, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. The capital will go toward building out Cantina, its open marketplace for web3 security auditors, as well as hiring more software engineers to automate its services and product marketplace workflow, company co-founder Spencer Macdonald shared.
The startup previously raised a pre-seed round of $1.5 million in late 2021, bringing its total capital raised to $8.5 million today. The startup did not disclose a valuation, but PitchBook data pegs its worth at around $48 million on a post-money basis.
Jump Crypto Backs $5M Round for Bitcoin Wallet Xverse
Bitcoin Web3 wallet Xverse has raised $5 million in a seed round led by noted industry investor Jump Crypto. The new funding will help the company accelerate development of advanced features related to decentralized finance (DeFi) and Stacks, Lightning and other Bitcoin scaling solutions.
Hong Kong-based Xverse supports Ordinals, a method of generating non-fungible tokens (NFT) on the Bitcoin blockchain using inscription that launched in January. Last month, Ordinals were in the spotlight after daily new inscriptions hit 350,000. Xverse is available through iOS, Android and a Chrome extension.
DeFi
DeFi yield protocol announced $7M raised and led by Coinbase
We are excited to announce Affine’s $7M raised, led by Coinbase Ventures, with participation from Circle Ventures,Hack VC and Jump Crypto.
Holdstation is delighted to reveal a significant stride forward – securing a $2M investment from K300 Ventures, a prominent and well-known venture capital firm. This partnership will accelerate the development of Smart Contract Wallets for on-chain Futures Trading, with a strong focus on Layer 2 and trading privacy, contributing to the advancement of Web3 adoption and beyond.
Binance Labs Invests $10M to Accelerate Helio Protocol’s Liquid Staking Pivot – Decrypt
Binance’s venture arm Binance Labs has invested $10 million into Helio Protocol to help expand the protocol’s ongoing pivot to becoming a liquid staking platform.
Though Helio is currently built on the proof-of-stake network BNB Chain, this new funding is expected to help the platform expand to other chains. “Helio’s objective is to launch on Ethereum, and subsequently with prominent L2 networks like Arbitrum and Zksync,” a Binance Labs spokesperson told Decrypt.
Coinbase announced strategic invest on Rocket Pool through 2nd market $RPL purchasing
Exciting news to share: Coinbase Ventures recently made a strategic investment into @Rocket_Pool by purchasing RPL tokens from the Rocket Pool team.
Crypto Liquid Staking Infrastructure Startup Puffer Co-lead by Lemniscap and Lightspeed Faction in $5.5M Round
Blockchain infrastructure company Puffer Finance raised $5.5 million in a seed funding round co-led by Lemniscap and the joint venture of Lightspeed and Faction. Other investors included Brevan Howard Digital, the digital asset arm of the global asset manager with $33 billion in assets under management.
The new capital will help accelerate the development of Puffer’s open-source Secure-Signer product and go toward the creation of a permissionless staking pool.
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Market Movement
JPMorgan says PayPal stablecoin could boost Ethereum activity | The Block
The launch this week of PayPal’s stablecoin could benefit Ethereum by increasing its total value locked, according to JPMorgan.
“This could boost Ethereum activity and enhance Ethereum’s network utility as a stablecoin/DeFi platform,” JPMorgan analyst Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou told The Block. “In other words, more firms would be encouraged in the future to choose the Ethereum blockchain (or its layer 2 platforms) for their stablecoin or decentralized projects.”
Ethereum could further benefit from PYUSD because the stablecoin could fill the void left by the $20 billion shrinkage of Binance’s BUSD stablecoin, which was forced to shut down by U.S. regulators earlier this year, Panigirtzoglou said. If PYUSD fills that void, “DeFi TVL would shift from Binance Smart Chain to the Ethereum blockchain (or its layer 2 platforms),” he added.
Circle banks on $1 billion cash cushion to weather stablecoin race: Bloomberg | The Block
Jeremy Allaire says Circle is banking on $1 billion in cash reserves to weather decreasing market share and fresh coopetition from other stablecoins, CEO Jeremy Allaire told Bloomberg News.
Circle’s total stablecoin supply has been shrinking since the beginning of the year, with its popular USDC hovering around $24 billion as of August, according to data from The Block. That’s about a 43% decrease from the coin’s $42 billion supply in January.
Allaire tied the declining levels to Binance’s decision to move away from the stablecoin in favor of its own stablecoin BUSD in September of last year.
Microsoft partners with Aptos to explore digital payments and tokenization | The Block
Aptos Labs, the Layer 1 blockchain created by former Meta employees, has announced a new partnership with tech giant Microsoft.
Aside from the two companies exploring “innovative solutions” related to asset tokenization, digital payments and central bank digital currencies, Aptos will also utilize Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service.
It appears, in the beginning, much of the partnership will be centered around using Microsoft’s artificial intelligence capabilities to both ease the process of onboarding users to web3 and aid “developers as they build smart contracts and decentralized apps,” the two companies said in a statement.
Metamask takes top spot as most popular wallet with 22 million downloads: CoinGecko report | The Block
MetaMask is the most popular crypto hot wallet, with over 22.66 million app downloads to date, according to a new report by CoinGecko.
MetaMask is followed by Coinbase Wallet, Trust Wallet and Blockchain.com Wallet, with each boasting slightly over ten million installations. Bitcoin.com Wallet comes in fifth place with five million installations. In total, the top four crypto hot wallets represent 66.6% of total wallet installations with a combined 54.06 million downloads.
The report, titled “Most Popular Crypto Hot Wallets for Self-Custody” added “the ten most popular crypto hot wallets have over four times the number of installations for less popular wallets.”
Coinbase’s Base mainnet officially opens to the general public | The Block
Coinbase’s Base mainnet has officially opened to the general public, featuring over 100 dapps and service providers as part of the Base ecosystem.
Users can explore these dapps and benefit from lower transaction fees and faster transaction speeds compared to Ethereum, said Jesse Pollak, the lead for protocols at Coinbase.
Since its testnet debut in February and the subsequent developer-only release in July, Base has integrated with a myriad of crypto projects, including DeFi protocols, wallets, bridges, oracles, and both analytics and infrastructure providers.
Binance Labs commits $5 million to invest in Curve DAO tokens | The Block
Binance Labs, the venture capital and incubation arm of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, has committed to a $5 million investment in Curve DAO tokens.
Yi He, co-founder of Binance and head of Binance Labs, announced the collaboration that will also see Curve Finance deploy to the Binance-backed BNB Chain.
The investment appears to be part of recent OTC deals done by Curve founder Michael Egorov with notable figures in the crypto space. Among these, Huobi’s co-founder Jun Du acquired 10 million CRV tokens, while Tron’s founder Justin Sun bought 5 million CRV at a cost of $2 million.
Aave DAO approves $2 million purchase of Curve tokens in OTC deal | The Block
The decentralized autonomous organization responsible for Aave’s lending protocol has approved a governance decision to buy $2 million worth of Curve tokens.
The purchase will be made using USDT from the Aave DAO treasury and will be conducted through an over-the-counter transaction with Michael Egorov, the founder of Curve Finance.
The proposal, presented by Aave Chan Initiative founder Marc Zeller, gained approval with 57% of the votes in favor, allowing Aave DAO to acquire the tokens. According to the proposal, the acquired tokens will be staked on Curve Finance to improve liquidity for Aave’s stablecoin GHO on the platform.
Visa unveils experimental solution to abstract away gas fees | The Block
Global payments giant Visa introduced an experimental solution on Ethereum that removes some of the barriers associated with paying gas fees on the network.
The experimental solution on Ethereum’s Goerli testnet streamlines the interaction between users and the network by leveraging account abstraction technology and the ERC-4337 standard, according to Visa. By doing so, the need for end-users to maintain ether (ETH), Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency, for transaction or “gas” fees is eliminated. Users will still have to technically pay a gas fee, but the method allows them to pay with any token such as USDC or USDT—removing a layer of friction in Ethereum payments. Visa can cover those fees as well.
Binance is applying to get registered in Taiwan for AML compliance: sources | The Block
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, is applying to get registered under Taiwan’s Money Laundering Control Act, currently the only crypto-related regulations local authorities have produced.
At a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) told the dozens of domestic crypto service providers in attendance that Binance is applying to get registered for anti-money laundering compliance, two sources familiar with the matter said.Taiwan has required virtual assets services providers (VASPs) to comply with its anti-money laundering laws since the FSC introduced anti-money laundering rules in July 2021. Otherwise, the industry remains largely unregulated in the country.
BoE recruiting academics for next phase of digital pound design | The Block
The Bank of England is recruiting academics for its newly created central bank digital currency Academic Advisory Group.
“We will bring together experts related to our work on the digital pound, including monetary policy, finance, competition economics, industrial organisation, behavioural science, law, innovation theory, marketing, and business,” the BoE said in a statement.
The BoE wants academics to help it, “understand the practical challenges of designing, implementing and operating a CBDC.”
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Comma3 Opinions
Comma3 Investment Team