Weekly Market Highlights 20 January 2023 Latest Binance Res | Binance Research
Weekly Market Highlights
20 January 2023
Latest Binance Research Publications
Check out our latest releases:
1) Wallets: A Deep Dive into Crypto Custody https://research.binance.com/en/analysis/wallets-deep-dive
2) Full-Year Review 2022 & Themes for 2023 https://research.binance.com/en/analysis/full-year-2022
3) Crypto Ecosystem One-Pager https://research.binance.com/en/analysis/ecosystem-one-pager
Macro / TradFi
- “Soft landing” vs. “hard downturn” - which camp are you in? The tug of war between both camps seem to have kept the U.S. equity market indices relatively range-bound. While inflation data have improved, growth figures have shown signs of pressure. For example, while the U.S. producer price index for final demand fell -0.5% in December (the most since April 2020), U.S. retail sales recorded its biggest drop in 12 months (-1.1% actual vs. -0.4% expectations).
- On the other side of the globe, the Bank of Japan (BOJ)’s surprise move on Wednesday to keep yield curve control targets unchanged contributed to a weakening Yen. JPY fell as much as 3% intraday against USD, but has since recovered almost all lost ground after latest data showed that Japan's consumer inflation hit a new 41-year high.
L1/L2:
- BNB Chain has completed its 22nd BNB burn and first quarterly burn of 2023. 2,064,494.32 BNB (~US$575M) was burned. For context, when BNB was launched in 2017, a commitment was made to remove 100 million BNB (half of its total supply) from circulation through a burning process and to eventually keep only 100 million BNB in circulation. This commitment is automatically honored each quarter and calculated according to the Auto-Burn formula.
- Polygon PoS has gone through a hard fork upgrade on January 17 with the aim to reduce the severity of gas spikes, and to address chain reorganizations (reorgs) to reduce time to finality.
- After 15 months of development, Polkadot has released version 3 of its cross-chain messaging format. Cross-Consensus Messaging (XCM) v3 will improve cross-chain communication and will work for bridges, exchanges, NFTs, and more.
DeFi:
- DeFi protocol Sushi has announced its 2023 roadmap. The roadmap includes the release of Sushi’s DEX aggregation router in Q1, a redesigned tokenomics, and the launch of Sushi’s decentralized incubator called Sushi Studios.
- Trader Joe has revealed plans to revamp the tokenomics of its $JOE tokens. TLDR - JOE will become a multichain token; sJOE will be available on BNB Chain and Arbitrum; veJOE stakers can earn boosted rewards from the Liquidity Books rewards program; rJOE staking will be deprecated.
NFTs:
- The war on NFT royalties continues. Yuga Labs, the firm behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, has blacklisted addresses related to marketplaces that do not mandate NFT royalties (Blur, SudoSwap, LooksRare and NFTX) in its Sewer Pass mint. These platforms will not be able to facilitate transactions related to the Sewer Pass NFTs. For Binance Research’s views on NFT royalties, be sure to check out our full-year report (URL above).
- NFT marketplace, Blur, will delay the launch of its native $BLUR token from the end of January to February 14.
Others:
- Crypto lender Genesis has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The largest creditors include Gemini with US$765M, Mirana with US$151M, and Babel Finance with US$150M, among others.
- Several notable fund raises this week... HashKey Capital, a global asset manager, has raised US$500M for its third fund to invest primarily in infrastructure, tooling, and applications that have the potential for mass adoption. Separately, Deal Box has launched a US$125M venture capital fund that will invest in blockchain and web3 startups. Other raises this week include Plai Lab (US$32M), Carry1st (US$27M), Parfin (US$15M), Obol Labs (US$12.5M) and more.
- There are now 23,343 monthly active developers in crypto. Based on Electric Capital’s 2022 developer report, monthly active developers grew +5% year-over-year, despite a 70+% decline in prices.
That’s a wrap!
Binance Research
