Bullish Insights – Weekly Market Recap

The Bullish Insights Weekly Market Recap includes curated industry news and analysis from the Bullish team for the week of March 27, 2023.  

Bullish Exchange

This week’s peak exchange trade volume 24h: $438,079,735 (15,757 BTC)

This week’s headlines

• A push for the Digital Assets Bill 2023 has been expedited in Australian parliament by senator Andrew Brag as he expresses that “Australia can be a digital asset hub whilst protecting digital asset consumers. But we must act now.” 
• The Hong Kong Monetary Authority and Securities and Futures Commission is hosting a round-table discussion on April 28 to “share practical experiences and perspectives in opening and maintaining bank accounts” between crypto firms and banks.
• In a blog post addressing the CFTC’s allegations of US regulatory violations, CZ covered four key points:
  1. Binance’s use of KYC compliance and technology infrastructure to block US users
  2. The funds Binance helped US law enforcement seize worth $160mn in 2023
  3. That Binance holds 16 licences
  4. Denial of any market manipulation by Binance through its trading platform. 
• Boerse Stuttgart Digital has secured a crypto custodian license which will enable the firm to provide institutional clients services in crypto trading and custody. The BaFin license is regulated in Germany and will allow for digital assets brokerage, trading and custody.
• The Hong Kong branch of Bank of China, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank and Bank of Communications have reportedly begun extending its banking services to crypto companies in the special administrative region.
• Coinbase’s latest layer-2 project Base, is prioritising protocols that build within themes of flatcoins, decentralised identity, limit order book model exchanges, as well as DeFi security projects.
• Montenegro police have arrested Do Kwon after he used fake documents in preparation to board a plane. Montenegrin court has extended his detention by 30 days after he was detained for 72 hours.
• In support of cross-border payments and a “cashless society”, the Central Bank of UAE has signed an agreement with G42 Cloud and R3 to provide the tech and infrastructure for the nation’s CBDC plans.

Equity markets

• US regional banks saw a recovery in Monday's session bolstered by First Citizens' deal to purchase parts of SVB.
• US tech stocks saw a pull-back in Tuesday's session as investors turned their attention back to interest rate hikes.
• Investors turned risk-on in Wednesday's session with a rebounded appetite for banking sector stocks.
• US equity markets closed on a higher note in Thursday's session extending a two-day rally The S&P 500 rose by 0.6%, the Dow advanced by 0.4%, and the Nasdaq Composite climbed by 0.7%.

Crypto market highlights

• The correlation between Bitcoin and the Nasdaq 100 has risen to 0.9 as of March 30. In comparison the correlation of Bitcoin and the S&P 500 is 0.21, which started indicating a divergence with the Nasdaq 100 since March 17. The Nasdaq 100 index is largely weighted towards tech sector stocks and non-financials which may indicate that the correlation is tied closer to the tech sector than the financial sector.
• Bitcoin's recent jump in price action saw the BTC/USD pair hold above $25,000, since then miners have been in distribution mode. The 30-day change in supply of miner addresses indicates that since March 16, BTC miners have been net sellers.
• According to Kaiko, Binance's removal of their zero fee trading on BTC pairs has shown a significant effect on its market share. Since it's implementation on March 22 its market share has fallen to 58% on March 26, while its lost market share has been captured by other CEXs.
• Matter Labs finally opened its doors to mainnet launch for its zkEVM project zkSync on March 24. Since then there has been speculation circulating Twitter of a zkSync airdrop. The total number of wallets and bridged ETH began seeing an exponential spike since mainnet and the uptick in trend has since been maintaining itself despite Matter Labs expressing there were no plans for a token launch.

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