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 December 19, 2022.

Bullish Exchange

This week’s peak trade volume (24h): December 20, 2022, $669,806,901 (39,868 BTC)

Crypto market highlights

• Requests for information by US law enforcement and agencies remain the highest by country during the period Q4, 2021 to Q3, 2022. The US received 4,736 law enforcement information requests, followed by the UK with 1,740 requests and Germany with 1,668 requests. Information requests from exchanges by regulators rose by ~66% YoY.
• As of November 30, the past 30-days of NFT volume was dominated by the Ethereum chain with over 78% in market share. November recorded the worst month for NFT volumes year-to-date, falling by 90% since its January peak.
• LooksRare and X2Y2 exhibit a significantly high % of wash trade volume at 98% and 87% respectively. OpenSea, CryptoPunks & Foundation on the other hand both have less than 3% of wash trades with mostly organic trade volume.

Macro market highlights

• US equity markets closed on a lower note in last Friday's session after the Fed hiked rates by 50bps on Wednesday, maintaining a dovish tone. The S&P 500 fell by 1.1%, the Dow dipped by 0.9%, and the Nasdaq Composite was down by 1.0%.
• US equity markets closed on a lower note in Monday's session for the fourth day. The S&P 500 fell by 0.9%, the Dow dipped by 0.5%, and the Nasdaq Composite was down by 1.5%.
• US equity markets saw some relief in Tuesday's trading session after four consecutive days of losses The S&P 500 rose by 0.1%, the Dow climbed by 0.3%, and the Nasdaq Composite saw little change.
• US equity markets saw a strong rebound after consumer confidence data climbed to its highest level since April. The S&P 500 rose by 1.5%, the Dow climbed by 1.6%, and the Nasdaq Composite was up by 1.5%.
• US equity markets dipped in Thursday's session erasing two consecutive days of gains. The S&P 500 fell by 1.5%, the Dow retreated by 1.1%, and the Nasdaq Composite was down by 2.2%

Other updates

• After five years of being inactive, two Ethereum whales have been noted transferring a total of nearly $30mn in ETH. The total ETH denominated amount that was moved by the two was 22,983 ETH. (Source: Beincrypto)
•  3AC moved 2,000ETH which is ~$2.38mn from Binance with the remaining wallet balance at $7.85mn.
• Binance US won the bid for Voyager Digital Ltd for its assets. Binance US will also offer $10mn in good faith deposit with $15mn in expenses for Voyager to be reimbursed. (Source: PR Newswire)
• Five wallets linked to QuadrigaCX moved ~104 BTC on December 17 after years of inactivity.
• SBF reportedly signed his extradition papers, agreeing to be sent back to the US to face criminal charges. (Source: Bloomberg)
• FTX announced they may use legal means to claw back political donations and contributions that were made by its former executives. In a press release, the company said that they had “been approached by a number of recipients of contributions or other payments” where these parties have sought“ directions for the return of such funds.” (Source: COINTELEGRAPH)
• Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges and are cooperating with the Justice Department’s investigation into SBF. (Source: COINTELEGRAPH)
• A US federal judge granted the release of SBF on a $250mn pre-trial bond while he awaits fraud and criminal charges. The bond amount was ”the largest-ever pretrial bond” (Source: CNBC)
• Ankr Protocol confirms in its new blog post that the December hack was conducted by an employee of the project.

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