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 August 29, 2022.

Bullish Exchange

This week’s peak trade volume (24h): September 2, 2022, $748,046,381

Crypto market highlights

• The correlation between Bitcoin and US stock indices saw a short-term decoupling trend from August 15, through to August 25. BTC's correlation to the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 began dipping below 0.83 in the period with August 25 marking the lowest correlation, month-to-date at 0.47 and 0.32, respectively.
• Last week, digital asset investment total flows saw $27mn worth of outflows. Bitcoin saw the majority of outflows at $28.7mn and Ethereum saw inflows of $0.9mn. Short Bitcoin saw inflows of $1mn, while other assets like Solana, Cardano and Ripple saw inflows of $0.2mn, $0.1mn and $0.1mn respectively.
• The top 20 crypto VCs in North America currently have an aggregate AUM of $39.88bn, according to Coinstack Research. By location, 13 out of these 20 “Unicorn VCs” (AUM of $1bn+) are based in San Francisco, while New York comes in second with 4 out of 20 VCs based there. 
• While Ethereum saw a rise in the volume of futures contracts in the month of August, Bitcoin, conversely saw a 21-month low in Bitcoin Futures volume, below $1tn.
• As the Merge approaches, Santiment data indicates that ETH supply held by the top 10 non-exchange wallets has been trending down, while supply held by top exchange wallets has observed an increase in ETH deposited.

Macro market highlights

• (26/08/2022) US equity markets took a tumble in last Friday's trading session after the Fed reiterated its hawkish stance at the Jackson Hole address. Jerome Powell highlighted that "another unusually large increase could be appropriate" at the next meeting. In his address, Powell hinted that the Fed was cautious about prematurely loosening policy and may maintain a restrictive policy stance for some time. The S&P 500 was down by 3.3%, the Dow fell by 3.0% and the Nasdaq Composite tumbled by 3.9%.
• (01/09/2022) Tough start to September with US equity markets edging lower for the fourth consecutive day. The S&P 500 fell by 0.8%, the Dow was down by 0.9% and the Nasdaq Composite fell by 0.6%.
• (02/09/2022) US equity markets broke out of a four-day losing streak in Thursday's trading session as initial jobless claims data indicated a decrease by 5,000 to 232,000. The S&P 500 rose by 0.3%, the Dow was up by 0.5% and the Nasdaq Composite fell by 0.3%.

Other updates

• Facebook and Instagram announced that users will now be able to post their NFTs once they connect their digital wallet to the app. Current wallet connections include Coinbase Wallet and Dapper across 100 countries throughout Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Americas, and the Middle East. (Source: Meta)
• Blockchain security firm Peckshield unveiled an exploit on Cream Finance leading to an estimated loss of ~$18.8mn. Cream Finance confirmed the attack and has cited that they were “pausing supply and borrow on AMP.”
• Kyle Roche, founding partner at Roche Freedman, a law firm that made the spotlight after bringing high- profile class action lawsuits in the crypto industry, has filed to withdraw as counsel from several cases. Class action suits against firms like Binance, BitMex, Tether and Tron have been withdrawn by Roche. 
• Crypto.com has allegedly backed out of its $495mn sponsorship deal with the European Champions League (UEFA)
• Attorney General Karl Racine has tweeted that the District of Columbia is suing Michael Saylor for tax fraud. Racine also stated that they will also be suing MicroStrategy for “..conspiring to help him evade taxes...”

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