Bullish Insights Weekly Market Recap
Aug 10, 2023 • 3 min read
The Bullish Insights Weekly Market Recap includes curated industry news and analysis from the Bullish team for the week of August 7, 2023.
Bullish exchange
This week’s peak exchange trade volume (24h): $457,458,327 (15,345 BTC) on August 9, 2023.
This week’s headlines
- Celo network has approved plans to transform its Layer 1 blockchain into a Layer 2 on Ethereum. Similarly, Fantom Foundation is currently exploring the integration of optimistic rollups to connect their blockchain to Ethereum.
- Microsoft and Aptos announced a partnership exploring the potentials of AI x DeFi products around CBDC’s, payments, tokenization etc.
- Paynet Crypto, a payment platform, has obtained a license for its cryptocurrency operations. The license was granted by the National Agency for Perspective Projects (NAPP) of Uzbekistan to LLC Paynet Crypto, a subsidiary of UZPAYNET LLC, the parent company responsible for the Paynet payment system.
- PayPal has launched PayPal USD (PUSD). According to the payments company, the new stablecoin is backed by US treasuries, and cash equivalents.
- Cypher Protocol, a large DEX on the Solana platform has been exploited. An estimated $1mn was hacked from the futures exchange.
- Mining company Bitdeer has commenced its power-on testing at its latest mining facility in Bhutan. The company noted that the facility is housing 23,000 new mining rigs as of the end of July.
- DeFi protocol MakerDAO launched lending platform Spark Protocol, but has banned users gaining access via VPN. The project’s decision to implement VPN blocks is speculated to be due to restricting US user access to the platform.
- E-commerce platform JD.com and China’s Minsheng Bank are collaborating in its launch of the digital CNY. Customers of the bank that fall in the pilot zone will be able to link their JD accounts facilitating e-commerce payments using the e-CNY.
- The deadline for the hacker of the CRV/ETH pool to return the funds has expired. Curve Finance has now issued a bounty worth $1.85mn (10% of the value of exploited funds) to the public in hope to identify the hacker.
Equity markets
- Other blue-chip stocks and Berkshire Hathaway helped drive a rebound in US equity markets on Monday after last week's losing streak.
- US equity markets closed in the red in Tuesday's trading session following weak Chinese export data and Moody's downgrade in the ratings of 10 US banks.
- Tech stocks retreated while energy stocks outperformed in Wednesday's trading session ahead of the release of CPI data. The S&P 500 fell by 0.7%, the Dow retreated by 0.5%, and the Nasdaq Composite dipped by 1.2%.
Crypto market highlights
- The long-term to short-term holders of BTC supply has historically held an inverse correlation. While short-term holder supply has been wavering below the 5mn BTC mark for since January last year, long-term holders have been exhibiting an increasing hodl trend. Long-term holders now make up 75% of circulation supply with 14.59mn BTC marking a new all-time high.
- Since Worldcoin's launch, Optimism's transaction volume has seen a surge, with the L2 gaining a notable increase in market share. From 15.9% dominance on July 23 to currently 24.3% as of August 8. Optimism has now exceeded zkSync claiming second place in the layer-2 race.
- When observing Github development activity over a 30-day period, the top 5 projects are Polkadot, Cardano, Hedera, ICP, Vega and Status protocol respectively. Polkadot saw 530 average daily Github Commits while Cardano saw 463 and Hedera saw 391.