With roughly nine months until major federal and state elections, New York State gubernatorial candidate Jumaane Williams is making crypto mining an issue in his campaign, criticizing the lack of regulatory clarity.
Speaking to climate activists and protestors at Seneca Lake in upstate New York on Monday, Williams called on current Governor Kathy Hochul to deny permits for proof-of-work crypto mining firms seeking to operate in the state, citing potential environmental concerns as well as any “harmful” economic impact. The gubernatorial candidate cited China’s crackdown on proof-of-work miners to back his claims.
“Twenty percent of America’s mines operate in New York state without any oversight or regulation,” said Williams. “We need to ask questions now rather than dealing with the fallout later by creating the right infrastructure to protect Seneca Lake and all of New York state from harmful economic and environmental impacts.”
Bitcoin mines that use a ‘proof-of-work’ process have the potential to devastate the environment & local economy, so today I joined advocates & community members on #SenecaLake to call on @GovKathyHochul to declare a moratorium on this type of mining. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/DHWFmmuv72
Politicians and activists have often targeted crypto mining operations around Seneca Lake and across the state. In June, a bill that would have required miners in New York to halt operations for three years — but exempted certain projects operating on renewable energy — in an effort to slow the environmental impact of crypto was defeated in the state’s legislature.
Greenidge Generation’s Bitcoin (BTC) plant operates in the area and aims to dedicate 85 megawatts to crypto mining in 2022. Residents near Seneca Lake have previously claimed that Greenidge’s plant was heating up the body of water and releasing greenhouse gases, threatening the ecosystem of several species of fish and otherwise damaging the environment.
The company has repeatedly denied such claims and threatened to consider “all legal remedies available” against thactivists pushing them. However, New York Commissioner of Environmental Conservation Basil Seggos has also criticized Greenidge, saying in September the firm “has not shown compliance with NY’s climate law” in regards to its BTC mining operations.
Related: New York businesses ask governor to deny permits for crypto mining
Hochul has only been in office since August following the departure of former governor Andrew Cuomo, but will face Williams and other gubernatorial candidates in a November 2022 election. During her time as governor, Hochul has nominated Adrienne Harris to lead New York State’s Department of Financial Services.
Dubai, UAE, Jan 31st, 2022 — MRHB DeFi, the world’s first decentralized finance ecosystem platform focused on ethical, sustainable and halal crypto opportunities, has successfully raised a total of USD 5.5 million through a series of private and public funding rounds which culminated in an initial DEX offering (IDO) that was oversubscribed on the DODO and ZeeDO launchpads.
Prior to its IDO, the startup gave the community direct access through two public sales on its official website, which saw tremendous support from its community of over 50,000 members.
“Our fundingrounds have surpassed our expectations and prove beyond doubt the huge demand for ethics in the cryptoverse,” said MRHB DeFi CEO Naquib Mohammed. “We want to take the opportunity to express our heartfelt appreciation for our valued partners and loyal supporters, without whom we would not have made it this far. These are just the first steps of our ambitious multi-year journey that we have begun, together with our community, to ensure that everyone can participate in building an ecosystem where trust and values matter — hence giving access to the growing opportunities of the crypto-economy.”
The ethical startup is also backed by investors and partners which include Polygon Technology, Sheesha Finance, Australian Gulf Capital, Mozaic, NewTribe Capital, Blockchain Australia, Contango Digital Assets, Masary Capital, ZKSync, Acreditus Partners, EMGS Group, Sinofy Group, Sukhavati Protocol and MKD Capital amongst others.
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” — Nelson Mandela
MRHB began as an idea 15 months ago, when Naquib, who was at that time working on Enterprise Blockchain use cases, was interviewed by a crypto news agency about the general trends of DLT.
The questions came around to the acceptance of crypto within the muslim communities in the Middle East, an interesting angle which led Naquib to delve further into the DeFi world, where he noticed the absence of halal projects. Understanding that there was a gap, he started putting down ideas and developing conversations with tech friends and like-minded connections, all of whom saw the immense possibilities with crypto but were disheartened by the absence of projects and protocols that were halal and consistent with their financial and ethical principles. The immense complexity of the cryptoverse as a whole also stood out as a further deterrent.
Resident in Saudi Arabia, he soon realised through various community discussions — both in the middle east and farther afield — that many fellow Millennials and Gen Z’ers were facing the same challenges and were hence avoiding the entire cryptoverse. This meant that many communities — especially Muslims — were excluded from the opportunities in this new tech frontier. Thus began his journey of taking on the challenge and goal of building a landmark halal project in the DeFi ecosystem.
Over the course of six months, Naquib assembled a team that included not just developers but reputable industry professionals and Shariah experts, all of whom shared his vision of creating an ethical DeFi ecosystem that reflects community values and beliefs. It would be the first to fill a major gap in the crypto space and address the needs of communities that number more than a billion, who have all thus far been excluded due to ethics, faith, fear and complexity.
While the DeFi offerings were aimed at adhering to ethical investment and financing principles rooted in Islamic Finance (primarily the prohibition on interest-based lending and income, and sectors deemed unethical or exploitative like gambling, pornography etc), MRHB would also be focused on removing technological complexity. Thus the overall objective was to build a more empowering and ethical community-focused platform that would also cater to those new to crypto while addressing the negative perception created by extensive instances of fraud, risk and opacity in the crypto space.
The Islamic Finance sector is the first target and is the largest and most active faith-based market. It is currently sized at around USD 3 trillion — attracting even a small portion of Islamic liquidity into DeFi will represent a major boost to the total value of the DeFi sector worldwide.
Community Focused and Community Supported
Approximately 85% of the funds raised came from the MRHB global community which spans from Canada to Australia — all of whom are looking for an ethical and halal entry into the cryptoverse. The inclusive startup is aptly named, with MRHB being short for “Marhaba”, which means “welcome” in Arabic, as the project ushers in entire crypto newbie communities.
The platform’s $MRHB token is now available for trades on PancakeSwap, one of the leading decentralized exchanges on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) network and remains above the launch price in spite of overall bearish markets.
To reward the community and encourage more market liquidity, a 5 million pool of MRHB token rewards has been set aside for token holders who provide liquidity to the MRHB/BNB pool on PancakeSwap. These rewards are for the next two months and apply on top of their share of trading fees earned. Token lockups for early project supporters will begin soon, allowing liquidity providers to invest their $MRHB tokens and receive additional rewards.
MRHB DeFi is already moving forward with their production roadmap, having recently launched its Souq NFT Marketplace, the first NFT marketplace guaranteed to contain halal-only content. The launch of Sahal Wallet, a non-custodial mobile wallet featuring filtering technology that will allow for frictionless access to halal tokens, is slated for the middle of next month. The pioneering Liquidity Harvester, MRHB’s passive and stable crypto income product, will be launching in Q2 and the project is currently in advanced discussions with pioneering regulated institutional partners to offer halal crypto-wealth products. More decentralized and centralized exchange listings are also coming up in the near future, welcome news for the MRHB community.
About MRHB DeFi
MRHB DeFi is a halal, decentralised finance platform built to embody the true spirit of an “Ethical and Inclusive DeFi” by following faith-based financial and business principles, where all excluded communities can benefit from the full empowerment potential of DeFi.
The diverse team is comprised of researchers, technocrats, influencers, Islamic fintech experts & business entrepreneurs, who came together to ensure that MRHB DeFi prevails in a manner that will impact society as a whole, essentially bridging the gap between the faith-conscious communities and the blockchain world.
The crypto market seems to have lost its luster for a while now, with the overall market valuation falling below $2-trillion. Despite Bitcoin’s 13th birthday celebrations, the crypto carnage has persisted. The blue-chip cryptos are now battling for action with a dramatic drop in volumes. However, the current drop has not affected some tokens and has not deterred investors, who are now looking for tokens to fill their bags. Here are a few expert-picked crypto tokens that are showing great potential.
Axie Infinity ($AXS)
Axie Infinity is a play-to-earn game that allows users to buy, breed, and sell Axies (pets) against one another in order to win in-game crypto called the smooth love potions, which you can convert into real money.
Players can cash out their tokens regularly. Smooth Love Potion ($SLP) and Axie Infinity Shard ($AXS) are the two types of tokens in the game, and both are tradable on crypto exchanges. $SLP is used for in-game transactions and rewards whereas $AXS is the governance token that powers the entire ecosystem. Axie Infinity, which runs on its own sidechain Ronin, has gained enormous popularity in 2021.
Decentraland ($MANA)
$MANA is the native token of Decentraland, a growing blockchain-powered virtual world based on the Ethereum blockchain. This project began in 2017 as a foundation for developing multiplayer games, but it quickly gained traction due to the metaverse buzz in 2021. The Decentraland Builder contains hundreds of 3D objects that players can use to build or manufacture nearly anything in this virtual environment as game tokens.
Players can use free and open marketplaces to buy and sell virtual parcels built inside Decentraland. It comes as no surprise that $MANA is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies of 2021. Players can also use $MANA to buy in-game items like avatar costumes, as well as vote on future Decentraland developments where a single $MANA token represents a single vote.
Gala ($GALA)
Gala is a P2E game based on the Ethereum network with its own native token called $GALA. It was founded in 2019 by Eric Schiermeyer, one of the co-founders of the leading mobile game company Zynga, that created popular games like Mafia Wars and Farmville. The game already has 1.3 million registered users and its goal with blockchain is to give users more power over their gaming experiences.
The game aims to change the reality in which players spend thousands of dollars on in-game items and spend countless hours playing the game, only to have it all taken away with the click of a button. Gala leverages NFTs that allow users to vote on new games and influence how they operate. $GALA token is the heart of the system that can be used to purchase NFTs as well as in-game items. Gala One has already released their flagship game Town Star, and there are many more games in the works that are expected to launch in 2022.
The Sandbox ($SAND)
The Sandbox is an Ethereum-based project that allows users to construct and explore galaxies in a virtual cosmos. Initially, it launched as a normal mobile and PC game but Animoca Brands then turned into a blockchain gaming ecosystem powered by crypto and NFTs.
Players in the system create and design their own characters in order to access the Sandbox metaverse’s many landscapes, games, and centers. The produced digital objects may then be monetized with NFTs and sold for $SAND tokens on the Sandbox Marketplace. Unlike other popular play-to-earn games, the Sandbox does not have a preset gameplay universe. Instead, it takes a dynamic approach, allowing users to personalize anything using free and easy design tools.
FireZard ($ZARD)
FireZard is a new P2E game based on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) network. It is the first Trading Card Game that passively and instantly rewards investors in an attractive and collectible way through NFTs. The game revolves around the major five dragons that are employed to compete with other players. Each FireZard NFT Card represents a dragon and has its own set of features.
Moreover, the Cards are not only collectible, but they have an instant win prize attached to them that is worth anything from 0.1 BNB to 5 BNB. Players of this game are massively rewarded with the game’s native tokens, $ZARD, and $FLAME. $FLAME tokens will only be used for in-game activities, whereas $ZARD tokens will play a much larger role in propelling the platform. With the game still in its early stages, $ZARD is expected to explode in the coming months.
2022 Will be the Year of Gaming Crypto
Blockchain gaming is a rapidly expanding area within the crypto and blockchain sectors, and it is likely to expand more in the coming months. These are some of the projects that have a lot of potential and should be looked into further for 2022 and beyond.
Interoperability is shaping up to be one of the main themes for the cryptocurrency market in 2022 as projects across the ecosystem unveil integrations that make their networks Ethereum (ETH) Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible.
While this has been one of the long-term goals of the ecosystem as a step on the path to an interconnected network of protocols, it has also created a new decentralized finance (DeFi) market for multi-chain bridges and decentralized finance.
Here are three of the top volume cross-chain bridges that the cryptocurrency community uses to transfer assets between blockchain networks.
Multichain
Multichain (MULTI), formerly known as Anyswap, is a cross-chain router protocol that aims to become the go-to router for the emerging Web3 ecosystem.
According to data from Defi Llama, Multichain is the top-ranked cross-chain swap protocol by total value locked, with $8.95 billion currently locked on the platform.
Multichain total value locked. Source: Defi Llama
One of the main reasons for the high TVL on Multichain is the large number of blockchain networks supported by the protocol. Currently, 30 different chainscan be accessed on the network.
Blockchain protocols supported by Multichain. Source: Multichain
According to data provided by Multichain, the protocol has processed a total of $53.15 billion worth of volume since launching, with $19.08 billion of that being transacted in the past 30 days alone. There are currently 485,399 users that have interacted with the Multichain protocol, amounting to nearly 2.256 million transactions.
Multichain network statistics. Source: Multichain
Users who deposit tokens into one of the pools supported by Multichain receive a sare of the transaction fees generated by the pool in question.
The protocol’s native MULTI token is used to vote and participate in the governance of the Multichain ecosystem and has a circulating supply of 18.64 million tokens out of a total 100 million.
Synapse
Synapse (SYN) refers to itself as a “cross-chain layer ∞ protocol” that is designed to offer users interoperability between separate blockchain networks.
According to data from Defi Llama, Synapse recently hit an all-time high in total value locked of $1.16 billion prior to experiencing a wave of outflows that lowered the TVL to 740.43 million.
Total value locked on Synapse. Source: Defi Llama
The Synapse protocol currently supports 12 different chains which have a combined total bridged volume of $5.33 billion according to data from the platform’s dashboard.
Total bridged volume on each network supported by Synapse. Source: Synapse
A large percentage of the total volume recorded on Synapse has come since the start of 2022 with the protocol seeing an all-time high bridge volume of $157.8 million on Jan. 23.
Synapse bridge volume. Source: Synapse Analytics
The protocol’s native SYN token has several uses within the ecosystem. Token holders can use it to conduct community governance votes via the SynapseDAO, liquidity providers (LPs) receive a percentage yield paid out in SYN for their deposits and it is also used as a subsidy to pay for the gas expended by network validators to secure transactions across the network.
LPs also receive a share of the protocol fees earned by the Synapse platform on each transaction.
Related: Web3 innovations are replacing middlemen with middleware protocols
Celer cBridge
Another popular cross-chain bridge is the Celer cBridge, a multi-chain network that enables instant, low-cost value transfers between 19 different networks.
The cBridge is a subsector of the larger Celer (CELR) ecosystem and utilizes the CELR token for operations on the protocol and as the reward token for liquidity providers.
Along with the CELR rewards paid to LPs, a percentage of the transaction fees generated by people who use the liquidity pools to bridge funds across chains are paid out to LPs and added directly to the pools, allowing the rewards to compound.
According to data from cBridge analytics, the total value of funds locked in the bridge contract (pool-based bridge) and the funds locked in the token vault contract (canonical token bridge) currently stands at $240.92 million.
cBridge usage statistics. Source: cBridge
A total of 89,897 unique addresses have interacted with the protocol since inception and have conducted a total of $2.842 billion in transaction volume.
Similar to the transfer trend seen with Synapse, the transaction volume on cBridge has gotten noticeably higher in 2022 with a record $71.12 million being transacted on Jan. 22.
Daily transaction volume on cBridge. Source: cBridge analytics
Some of the protocols currently supported by cBridge include Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, Polygon, Fantom, Metis, Harmony, Gnosis, Arbitrum and Optimism.
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The price of Bitcoin has been recovering after a major slump into the low $30,000s. As of press time, BTC trades at $37,774 with a 1.9% profit in the last 24-hours and could see more gains in the short term.
Related Reading | Fidelity Says What We’ve Been Thinking: Countries & Central Banks Will Buy BTC
BTC on a downtrend in the 4-hour chart. Source: BTCUSD Tradingview
Bitcoin’s most recent recovery could be tied to the relief in the traditional market. At the time of writing, the S&P 500 Index records a +105 points or 1.44% profit in the 4-hour chart.
The cryptocurrency has displayed high levels of correlations with U.S. stocks and could continue to track them in the short term. In that sense, Bitcoin bulls could find backup on a sustained stock relief rally.
Data from Material Indicators shows some resistance, in lower timeframes, above BTC’s price current levels. Therefore, $39,000, and $40,000 have become important resistance levels that need to turn into support.
In case of further downside, Material Indicators records around $3 million in biding orders for Bitcoin near $36,000. These levels could operate as critical support on a bearish scenario, for lower timeframes, and must hold in order to prevent a re-test of previous lows near $33,000.
In the coming months, the bullish momentum could resume at full force, according to a report conducted by Finder. After consulting with a panel of 33 experts on the potential price scenarios for Bitcoin across multiple timeframes.
The consensus amongst these experts is bullish, a prediction that defies current market sentiment. The potential increase in interest rates by the U.S. Federal Reserve could operate as a headwind for Bitcoin. At least, this seems to be the dominating narrative for some market operators.
A Bitcoin Rally Before Another Multi-Year Bear Market?
As seen below, the experts have progressively flipped their bias from bullish for the better part of January, to neutral in the past week, and bearish for the week of February 6, 2022. The potential impact from the interest rates hike by the FED, the experts say, will remain a top concern for investors during the first part of the current year.
(The) first half of 2022 will be dominated by concerns over higher interest rates, which will impact all risk assets including Bitcoin. We wouldn’t be surprised to see Bitcoin decline a further 30% from current levels.
In that sense, over 50% of the interview panel believe Bitcoin could come out on top on an increasing interest rate scenario. The experts believe BTC’s price will peak at $93,717 in the next months, only to return to a $76,360 by the end of 2022.
Source: Finder’s Bitcoin Price Predictions Report
Related Reading |Bitcoin Bearish Signal: Binance Observes Massive Inflow Of 10k BTC
BTC’s price rally will be drive by more inflation. As NewsBTC has been reporting, Mike McGlone, Senior Commodity Strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence, has a similar point of view and has claimed the cryptocurrency will start to outperform stocks, and other risk-on assets. Finder’s panel added:
It is possible that the asset bubble the Fed created by keeping interest rates near 0% for over a decade may spill over into Bitcoin. However, the cryptocurrency has the gold-like fundamentals and trust to weather the storm better than its peers.
Yesterday, Grayscale published an update regarding the company’s digital assets under management. Due to the latest plunge in cryptocurrency assets, the overall value of its digital assets under management (AUM) dipped substantially in the last few weeks.
The crypto asset manager now holds approximately $32 billion worth of assets under management. In April 2021, the overall value of Grayscale’s crypto AUM topped $50 billion. Bitcoin and Ethereum remained the top 2 digital holdings of Grayscale.
According to the latest numbers published by the company, it now has over $23 billion worth of BTC assets under management. Grayscale is also holding more than $7 billion worth of ETH assets under management.
With BTC and ETH trading nearly 50% off from their respective all-time highs, the latest dip in the value of Grayscale’s digital AUM was expected. Compared to the start of 2021, the company’s crypto assets under management are still up in value. Grayscale started 2021 with approximately $20 billion worth of digital AUM.
Crypto Market
With a market cap drop of more than $1.3 trillion in the last 10 weeks, the crypto market is going through one of its worst corrections. However, the digital assets showed some signals of stability in the past week. In the last 7 days, BTC gained almost 7% while BNB and DOGE spiked by more than 10%.
“Ethereum has regained the $2,550 level to end the week. With Bitcoin ending the week with a nice push of its own, and ETH’s active address remaining stable, the number 2 crypto asset by market cap should maintain stable prices if utility continues rising,” Santiment noted.
“Chainlink’s price was cut in half between January 10th and 24th. The crowd predictably became quite negative toward the popular ETH-based asset. Today, with the FUD appearing to be at its peak, LINK has rebounded a modest +7% in the past 4 hours,” the company added.
Yesterday, Grayscale published an update regarding the company’s digital assets under management. Due to the latest plunge in cryptocurrency assets, the overall value of its digital assets under management (AUM) dipped substantially in the last few weeks.
The crypto asset manager now holds approximately $32 billion worth of assets under management. In April 2021, the overall value of Grayscale’s crypto AUM topped $50 billion. Bitcoin and Ethereum remained the top 2 digital holdings of Grayscale.
According to the latest numbers published by the company, it now has over $23 billion worth of BTC assets under management. Grayscale is also holding more than $7 billion worth of ETH assets under management.
With BTC and ETH trading nearly 50% off from their respective all-time highs, the latest dip in the value of Grayscale’s digital AUM was expected. Compared to the start of 2021, the company’s crypto assets under management are still up in value. Grayscale started 2021 with approximately $20 billion worth of digital AUM.
Crypto Market
With a market cap drop of more than $1.3 trillion in the last 10 weeks, the crypto market is going through one of its worst corrections. However, the digital assets showed some signals of stability in the past week. In the last 7 days, BTC gained almost 7% while BNB and DOGE spiked by more than 10%.
“Ethereum has regained the $2,550 level to end the week. With Bitcoin ending the week with a nice push of its own, and ETH’s active address remaining stable, the number 2 crypto asset by market cap should maintain stable prices if utility continues rising,” Santiment noted.
“Chainlink’s price was cut in half between January 10th and 24th. The crowd predictably became quite negative toward the popular ETH-based asset. Today, with the FUD appearing to be at its peak, LINK has rebounded a modest +7% in the past 4 hours,” the company added.
The Boston Security Token Exchange (BSTX), a new facility of the Boston-based BOX exchange, received regulatory approval from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to operate as a blockchain-based securities exchange.
BSTX was launched jointly by BOX and Overstock’s blockchain arm tZERO, originally seeking approval for launching publicly-traded registered security tokens. However, the SEC approval to operate as a national securities exchange allows BSTX to use blockchain technology for faster settlements in traditional markets. According to the SEC,
“The Commission notes that the [BSTX] Exchange’s current proposal does not involve the trading of digital tokens and such a proposal, or any other additional use of blockchain technology.”
While the SEC has previously denied BSTX permission to offer crypto-focused services, the latest approval allows the facility to use a proprietary market data feed, BSTX Market Data Blockchain.
In addition, BSTX will also use blockchain technology to help investors experience faster transaction times on the same day (“T+0”) or the next day (“T+1”), instead of the standard two business-day (“T+2”) settlement cycle sported by traditional markets.
Along with the regulatory approval based on BSTX’s rule change proposals (SR-BOX-2021-06), the SEC placed four conditions for BOX in line with BSTX’s operations.
The requirement includes joining all relevant national market system plans related to equities trading, ensuring Regulatory Services Agreement with FINRA, Intermarket Surveillance Group membership for the BSTX facility, and an applicable governance structure.
Related: SEC reportedly probing crypto lending products by Gemini and Celsius
In line with the above developments, the SEC is also reportedly reviewing some of the high-yield crypto lending products offered by Gemini, Celsius Network and Voyager Digital.
As Cointelegraph reported, the SEC is conducting an inquiry into considering registering crypto lending services as securities. A Bloomberg report on the matter suggests that the SEC’s main concern lies with the high-yield offering by crypto lending services.
In the latest crypto sell-off, BTC holders suffered huge losses. However, there was one bright spot for the holders of Bitcoin. The overall market dominance of the most valuable digital currency spiked by more than 4% in the last 8 weeks and crossed 42% on Friday.
In a jittery season for crypto bulls, the overall value of digital currencies plunged by approximately $1.4 trillion since 10 November 2021. The latest surge in BTC’s market dominance indicates that other digital currencies dropped more than Bitcoin in the recent market sell-off.
To put things into perspective, Ethereum has lost nearly 20% of its value just in the last 7 days. The correction in Solana was even worst as SOL dipped by 30% during the same period. Bitcoin performed relatively better with a drop of just 6% during the recent week.
In terms of drawdown from its all-time high levels, BTC is currently trading nearly 48% down from its all-time high level in November 2021. Cryptocurrency assets like Solana and Dogecoin are down 65% and 75%, respectively from their all-time highs.
Bitcoin Transfer Volume and Whales
With weak sentiment among retail traders, BTC whales are dominating the current market. Large transactions currently account for most of the trading volume. “Bitcoin transfer volumes continue to be dominated by institutional size flows, with more than 65% of all transactions being larger than $1M in value. The uptrend in institutional dominance in on-chain volumes started around Oct 2020 when prices were around $10k to $11k,” Glassnode noted.
“BTC whale addresses with 100+ Bitcoin continue their long-term pattern of accumulation during this volatility in the 34k to 38k range. In the past 5 years, 1.7M BTC has been added to these large addresses, including 60k more in the past 2 months,” Santiment highlighted in a Tweet.
In the latest crypto sell-off, BTC holders suffered huge losses. However, there was one bright spot for the holders of Bitcoin. The overall market dominance of the most valuable digital currency spiked by more than 4% in the last 8 weeks and crossed 42% on Friday.
In a jittery season for crypto bulls, the overall value of digital currencies plunged by approximately $1.4 trillion since 10 November 2021. The latest surge in BTC’s market dominance indicates that other digital currencies dropped more than Bitcoin in the recent market sell-off.
To put things into perspective, Ethereum has lost nearly 20% of its value just in the last 7 days. The correction in Solana was even worst as SOL dipped by 30% during the same period. Bitcoin performed relatively better with a drop of just 6% during the recent week.
In terms of drawdown from its all-time high levels, BTC is currently trading nearly 48% down from its all-time high level in November 2021. Cryptocurrency assets like Solana and Dogecoin are down 65% and 75%, respectively from their all-time highs.
Bitcoin Transfer Volume and Whales
With weak sentiment among retail traders, BTC whales are dominating the current market. Large transactions currently account for most of the trading volume. “Bitcoin transfer volumes continue to be dominated by institutional size flows, with more than 65% of all transactions being larger than $1M in value. The uptrend in institutional dominance in on-chain volumes started around Oct 2020 when prices were around $10k to $11k,” Glassnode noted.
“BTC whale addresses with 100+ Bitcoin continue their long-term pattern of accumulation during this volatility in the 34k to 38k range. In the past 5 years, 1.7M BTC has been added to these large addresses, including 60k more in the past 2 months,” Santiment highlighted in a Tweet.
Ethereum crumbled with the market during the last crash and is yet to recover to previous levels. The crash was characterized by sell-offs and liquidations from all angles, which continued even when the price dumped further. Fear of a bear market sparked this as investors wanted to get out before the price fell further. But not everyone followed this trend of dumping.
Whales have always been known to move differently from smaller investors when it comes to the crypto market and this time was no different. While investors panic sold their holdings at low prices, these whales quietly gobbled up the ETH being dumped on the market, increasing their dominance in the market once again.
Whales Fill Up On ETH
In the last few weeks, whales have taken advantage of the declining market values to buy cryptocurrencies at what can be essentially said to be a discount. The price of Ethereum had dumped as low as $2,100 following the crash, leaving even more room for the whales to increase their holdings. Smaller investors had followed suit but only after whales had bought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ETH.
Related Reading | Bitcoin Whales Take Advantage Of Market Crash To Gobble Up Millions In BTC
During this time, the number of addresses holding more than 10,000 ETH on their balances had also increased significantly. These whales had altogether purchased more than $500 million in ETH in only a couple of weeks.
ETH recovers to $2,400 post-crash | Source: ETHUSD on TradingView.com
This renewed support from whales and smaller investors had worked to slow down the decline of the digital asset. But proved to be not enough to spark a rebound back up to previous values. Despite growing support from these large investors, the market has remained in extreme fear, pointing to intense wariness from investors. This has caused them to hold back from putting any more money in the market.
Ethereum Struggles To Stay Afloat
Since the crash towards the low $2,100, Ethereum has had a hard time recovering in the market. While a bounce-back that was triggered by pioneer cryptocurrency bitcoin saw it recover above $2,400, it has not recorded much in the way of upward momentum since then.
Related Reading | Which Cryptocurrencies Suffered The Worse Collapse Since All-Time Highs?
Indicators point to the week playing out with continued low momentum for the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. It had previously tested the $2,700 point on Wednesday but had promptly taken a beating down that brought it back to $2,400.
ETH is trading below its 5-day, 20-day, 100-day, and 200-day moving averages for the first time in a year. Market sentiments remain bearish with more downtrend expected to come as support from whales taper off.
As of the time of writing, the digital asset is trading at $2,461, down 2.97% in the last 24 hours. Trading volume is up significantly over the same time period but is yet to translate into a higher value for the asset.
Featured image from Nairametrics, chart from TradingView.com
Around the Block from Coinbase Ventures sheds light on key trends in crypto. Written by Connor Dempsey, Ryan Yi & Justin Mart.
2021 was a historic year for both crypto markets and venture capital funding. Driven in part by institutional inflows, Bitcoin soared to new highs to start the year, the entire market followed suit nearing a record $3T market cap in November. Meanwhile, $30B in venture funding poured into the space: more than all prior years of crypto’s history combined.
2021 was also a record year for Coinbase Ventures, with just under 150 deals, averaging a new deal every 2.5 days. On a cumulative basis, more than 90% of the capital Coinbase Ventures has deployed since inception was deployed in 2021, reflecting an accelerated pace of activity in our fourth year of operation.
Coinbase Ventures is among the most active corporate venture funds in operation, with the mandate of increasing economic freedom around the world by supporting the leading entrepreneurs and projects in the ecosystem. Ultimately, we see crypto and Web3 as a rising tide that lifts all boats, Coinbase included, and Coinbase Ventures is dedicated to making investments that are crucial to the space’s overall growth.
In this edition of Around The Block, we’ll peer into the future through the lens of Coinbase Ventures’ 2021 activity. (Learn how Ventures aligns with Coinbase and its customers here).
Coinbase Venture’s portfolio now consists of over 250 companies, and broadly breaks down across the following verticals.
Let’s break down the pie, slice by slice.
Protocols & Web3 infrastructure
2021 saw crypto reach new heights in terms of utility, particularly in the nascent “Web3” space, which we generally think of as a trustless, permissionless, and decentralized internet that leverages blockchain technology: essentially, the plumbing that underpins everything from DeFi, NFTs, metaverses, and DAOs. At the bottom of the Web3 stack sit Layer 1 protocols, led by Ethereum, but 2021 saw Web3 begin to expand to other Layer 1s like Solana, Polygon, Avalanche, Terra, Flow, among dozens of others.
To help scale existing Layer 1s and enable higher throughput, we supported Layer 2 solutions including Matter Labs, Optimism, and Arbitrum. As multiple Layer 1s have proliferated, so has the demand to safely and easily move funds across blockchains. As such, Ventures’ was active in investing in projects working to facilitate this cross-chain movement, including Biconomy, Movr, LayerZero, Chainflip, and more. We also observed and funded new protocols working to bring better privacy to Web3 through various zero-knowledge solutions (Aleo, MobileCoin, and a third TBA).
We were also active across the infrastructure layer of the Web3 stack: primitives that form the backbone of user applications. Specifically, technologies that introduce standards to Web3 for data storage (Arweave), messaging (XMTP), and identity (Spruce). Given that 2021 was a great year for DAOs, we were active across infrastructure projects focused on enabling DAO creation/incorporation (Syndicate, Utopia), discovery/participation (Snapshot/Consensys’ Metamask), payroll/operations (Diagonal), and coordination (Orca).
Given investments made over the year, in 2022 we expect to see Web3 mature across multiple Layer 1 and Layer 2 ecosystems with UX that more closely resembles Web2 applications. Additionally, we expect to see the continued flourishing of DAOs in the year ahead, as well as better privacy features for Web3 applications.
DeFi
While 2021 hinted at a future where Web3 activity takes place across multiple Layer 1 and Layer 2 platforms, DeFi activity already began its migration over the course of the year. Much of this activity took place within EVM compatible chains (Avalanche, Polygon, BSC etc.) and Layer 2 environments (Arbitrum, Optimism). Meanwhile, non-EVM chains (Solana, Terra, Cosmos, Polkadot etc.) also saw impressive growth.
We’re believers in the multichain future, and although we remained most active within Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem, we also invested across Solana (Orca, Solend), Cosmos (Umee), Algorand (Folks), Polkadot (Acala, Moonbeam), NEAR, Polygon and Bitcoin. The multichain future of France appears bright, with just about every financial primitive one could imagine in development.
While DeFi made great strides in 2021, exploits of these nascent financial protocols hampered the ecosystem, amounting to over $10B. Better user protection remains paramount, which is why Coinbase Ventures supported DeFi insurance financial protocols including Neptune Mutual, Risk Harbor, Cozy Finance, and Nayms.
In 2022, the smart contract wars will rage on as Layer 1s and Layer 2s fight for user and developer mindshare. Hacking risks will persist but we’ll see increased maturity in DeFi insurance solutions. Lastly, it’s shaping up to be the year we see institutions enter the fray via “permissioned DeFi”, complete with KYC’d user pools and on-chain attestations.
NFT / Metaverse
2021 was also a year that saw the rapid rise of NFTs and renewed interest in “the metaverse.” Projects like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club took NFT sales from $200M in 2020 to a staggering$25B in 2021. Meanwhile, NFT based game Axie Infinityput play-to-earn gaming on the map as people in the Philippines were able to turn the game into a full time job. And elsewhere, Facebook’s rebrand to “Meta” catalyzed excitement around the metaverse.
In large part, NFTs spent 2021 in their “V0” phase, with most activity centered around simple buying and selling on marketplaces like OpenSea and Rarible. 2021 also saw NFTs emerge across L1/L2 ecosystems such as Flow (MomentRanks, Eternal GG) and Solana (Magic Eden, Solanalysis).
Ventures has now invested heavily in the NFT “utility” phase — one in which NFT assets expand to new types of mediums such as audio (Royal, Mint Songs, Sturdy), avatars (Genies, OFF), AR (Anima, Jambo), and gaming/GameFi (Ancient8, GuildFi). This will allow interesting social features to be layered on top of the programmatic recognition of NFTs (Gallery).
These NFT and gaming investments can broadly be bucketed with the metaverse, as they inch us closer to a possible future where we have a series of decentralized, interconnected virtual worlds with fully functioning economies. In 2022, look for a host of new gaming titles and applications, including those launched by traditional gaming studios. Also expect metaverse applications to expand from both decentralized initiatives like Decentraland and the Sandbox and incumbent Web2 companies like Microsoft/Activision and Meta.
Platform & Developer Tools
Without developers, there would be no crypto or Web3 applications for anyone to use. As such, support for the tooling that developers need to make crypto and Web3 thrive is a critical part of advancing the ecosystem.
Over the year, we followed the “developer journey” from staging (Tenderly), collaboration (Radicle), query (Covalent), audit (Certik, OpenZeppelin, Certora) and real-time simulation/monitoring (Chaos Labs, Gauntlet). We also invested in developer toolkits like API providers (Alchemy, Consensys’ Infura).
We expect the industry’s collective investment made in dev tooling to pay dividends in the years to come. With all of the developers pouring into Web3 from Web2, they’re sorely needed.
CeFi
Much of the value that finds its way into crypto initially does so through centralized platforms, and as such, centralized finance (CeFi) remains an active category. We believe that crypto is inherently global and there is a need for localized platforms that serve as onramps across distinct regulatory, banking, and infrastructure regimes. This is why in 2021, we were active investors in crypto financial service providers everywhere from LatAm, Pan-Africa, MENA, South Asia, Europe, and North America.
The year also saw a move towards traditional vehicles for crypto exposure — IRAs, IAs, ETFs, Trusts, etc. — punctuated by the approval of the BTC Futures ETF in the US. Coinbase Ventures actively invested in asset managers and brokers including AltoIRA, Onramp, Valkyrie, ForUsAll, Ledn, and One River Digital. We were also investors in various CeFi “picks and shovels”, with follow-on investments in TaxBit and CoinTracker, which automate crypto tax reporting across platforms. In addition, we supported projects helping startups integrate crypto with traditional fintech offerings, including Paxos, Tribal Credit, and Meow.
2021 set the stage for more regulated and compliant ways for institutional and individual investor capital to gain crypto exposure through centralized exchanges and traditional investment vehicles and fintech platforms in both the US and abroad. We expect this to be an ongoing theme in 2022.
2022 & beyond
Macro uncertainty has prices falling sharply into the new year, but one thing is certain: this is not the crypto ecosystem of 2018. Between the best performing asset class of the last decade being much more accessible to investors around the world, the maturation of the Web3 stack, and an explosion of exciting new use cases across DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, gaming, and the metaverse, this industry appears to be hitting escape velocity.
Just as the boom of 2017 fueled investments that laid the groundwork for the applications that are thriving today, what do you think the record $30B funneled into crypto and Web3 in 2021 will yield? The market appears uncertain in the near term, but the future appears brighter then it’s ever been.
