Crypto Push

2022-10-21 19:00:07 ​This country is buying more USDC than the rest of the world

Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the United States, has published a report which takes a deep dive into the adoption of USD Coin (USDC), the stablecoin issued by Circle.

Americans buy 3 times more USDC
The research conducted by Coinbase found that USD purchases of the second largest stablecoin by market capitalization were three times as much as other currencies around the world.

So Americans are buying the most USDC when compared with the rest of the world. The fees levied on conversion have been identified as one of the factors behind the “conservative” adoption of USDC in the world.

“In part, this is because, outside of the US, users usually have to pay fees in the process of converting their local currency into USDC, and this is a barrier to broader international adoption.” Coinbase’s report read.

Fee waiver to boost adoption
To deal with this problem, Coinbase has decided to waive the commission fees associated with USDC conversions. “ Coinbase will waive commission fees when customers buy or sell USDC via any fiat currency on Coinbase, from AUD to ZAR.” the exchange stated.

The exchange is hoping that the fee waiver will encourage international users to transact with the stablecoin, leading to an increase in the adoption of the broader DeFi market.

It is important to note that USD Coin is a joint project of Coinbase in association with Circle, under a joint venture known as the CENTRE Consortium.

Dealing with Binance’s auto-conversion
On 5 September 20222, Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, announced the BUSD auto-conversion, which would effectively convert all balances of USDC, USDP, and TUSD, to the Binance-issued stablecoin Binance USD (BUSD).

This decision was likely taken to increase the adoption of BUSD while decreasing clients’ exposure to major rival USDC.

According to data from CoinMarketCap, USDC, at press time, was trading at $1, as per its dollar peg. Its market capitalization stood at $43.9 billion, with a 24-hour trading volume of $2.6 billion. Open / Comment

2022-10-18 19:00:05 ​​The latest SNX hype may have a stablecoin connection waiting to be explored

Synthetix SNX managed to pull off a solid uptick by more than 10% as of 17 October. This performance meant that it had outperformed many of the top cryptocurrencies during the same period. But can SNX maintain the trend?

SNX’s performance may not just be a fluke especially if we consider that most of its top counterparts gained in the lower single digits. A deeper dive into Synthetix revealed that the upside may have been associated to its st0ablecoin demand.

Synthetix’s stablecoin sUSD experienced a volume explosion within the last 24 hours, by more than 150%. Its 24-hour trading volume grew by slightly over half a million while its market cap increased by over $2 million. This confirmed strong demand for the stablecoin which may have in turn triggered higher demand for SNX.

Fuel for the bulls
SNX’s latest upside can be considered as an outcome of the bullish performance that it delivered last week. Its $2.34 price of 17 October represented a 25% upside from its recent local low which almost retested June lows.

The recent SNX low also meant it had a 137% drawdown from its end-of-July top. Some friction was also expected now that stood around the Relative Strength Index (RSI) level of 50. However, some more upside might still play out if the latest pivot marks the start of a bullish relief rally.

A sharp increase in active transactions accompanied SNX’s current upside. This confirmed the return of bullish volumes especially in the last 24 hours.

The active addresses observation reflected the current short-term demand characteristics. A look at SNX flows may help provide more clarity with regards to whether this was the start of a bullish relief.

SNX’s supply dynamics also revealed a decline in the amount of cryptocurrency on exchanges. Additionally, supply outside exchanges increased by a significant margin in the last seven days.

Furthermore, the supply metrics confirmed that a significant amount of SNX moved outside exchanges and into private wallets. While these observation pointed towards a higher likelihood of more bullish times ahead, they did not necessarily provide a guarantee of the said outcome.

Higher demand for sUSD might be a clue that traders were preparing for more trading ahead and this was driving up the stablecoin demand. Other forces driving the demand for SNX may also come into play. For example, demand for sports betting may also fuel more upside for the cryptocurrency during the upcoming soccer world cup.

Overtime Markets, a sports betting platform built by Thales, was strategically positioned to fuel this demand from the sports betting industry. This is because Thales is native to the to the Synthetix network. Open / Comment

2022-10-13 20:00:08 ​​Assessing the state of DeFi in Q3 for your ‘more signal, less noise’ strategy

Assessing the Q3 performance of the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, CoinShares found that while the total value locked (TVL) of DeFi protocols increased by just 3% within the 3-month period, revenues across the various sectors that make up the DeFi ecosystem fell by 44% on a quarter-on-quarter basis.

Acknowledging the impact of the downturn in the global financial sector on the cryptocurrency market in the last quarter, CoinShares found that in addition to a decline in DeFi revenue, NFT revenues fell by 70% in Q3.

The gaming sector suffered the most brunt as revenue fell by 98% since Q2. The joint revenues of Infrastructure Bridges and Liquid Staking platforms totaled $20 million, declining by 34% in Q3. Generally, total sector revenues dropped by 64%.

The DeFi sector
Interestingly, CoinShares found that Q3 was marked by a growth in the TVL market share of non-Ethereum chains. With $25 billion held in these chains in Q3, their TVL market share rose to 40%.

In Q2, non-Ethereum chains held just 36% of the total TVL across DeFi protocols. According to CoinShares, this was attributable to the collapse of the Terra ecosystem, which led to a “sharp rise in Ethereum’s market share.”

In addition, of the six sectors that make up the DeFi ecosystem (Lending, decentralized exchanges (DEXes), Bridges, Asset Management, and Staking), the Lending sector logged the highest TVL in the 90-day period under consideration.

DEXes recorded a decline in trading volume in Q3. As contained in the report, trading volume across DEXes fell by 36% between July and September. In comparison, centralized exchange (CEX) merely saw an 11% decline in trading volumes within the same period.

With regards to trading volumes on DEXes, Uniswap UNI remained the “market leader” with 51% of the market share. It was closely followed by PancakeSwapCAKE and Curve CRV with 13% and 7%, respectively.

In addition to DEXes, another sector within the DeFi ecosystem that suffered a decline in Q3 was the Lending sector. As contained in the report, the total revenue made by lending protocols in Q3 equaled $11 million, a 53% decline on a quarter-on-quarter basis.

Interestingly, a sector within the DeFi ecosystem that continued to see growth in the last two quarters was the Derivatives sector. According to CoinShares,

“Over the last two quarters, nearly $250 billion of volume has been traded on decentralized derivatives exchanges. High trading volumes, scalability of Layer 2s, and a large suite of financial products (options, perpetual futures, structured products, etc.) have led to the sector’s success.” Open / Comment

2022-10-10 19:00:07 ​​Avalanche’s developments may poke AVAX bulls, but will they step out to play

Avalanche AVAX, on 9 October, confirmed that it will host Crypto Royale in mid-October. A timely announcement considering that AVAX has been struggling to bounce off its short-term support. Is this upcoming development enough to bolster AVAX bulls?

The announcement that Avalanche will host Crypto Royale this month could bring some weight to it. Play to earn games made headlines in 2021, revealing their potential to revolutionize the gaming industry.

This is why it is a big deal that Avalanche will host a play-to-earn game. It has potential to boost demand for AVAX if it will be linked to in-game tokenomics.

According to the official announcement, players will get a chance to earn AVAX and the game’s official token, ROY. The curious question on many AVAX enthusiasts’ minds is whether this will be a positive move for the cryptocurrency. The game’s launch on AVAX can potentially boost investor sentiment, but it remains to be seen whether it will be enough for AVAX to blast off from its current support level.

Poking the bull
As of 9 October, AVAX concluded the second half of last week on a bearish trajectory. This performance meant that its previous rally attempt was capped to within its short-term support near the $16 price range. AVAX traded at $16.90 as of 9 October. However, at press time, AVAX stood at $17 post a 1.5% surge in the last 24 hours.

AVAX’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) demonstrated signs of relative strength especially in the last two months. It achieved higher lows since the end of August, despite a price downside. Such an observation is often followed by a major pivot because it indicates healthy accumulation in the bottom range.

AVAX bullish volumes have prevailed in the last four weeks. Nevertheless, the cryptocurrency’s on-chain volumes tanked substantially during this period. In other words, there was less sell pressure than there was at around the same time in September.

Low bearish volumes make it easier for the bulls to take over. However, there are other signs that may favor a bullish pivot. For example, Avalanche demonstrated strong development activity since the start of October. Investors might find this encouraging, potentially leading to a sentiment shift favoring the bulls.

However, the weighted sentiment indicated that investors were still siding with the bears. The current sentiment consensus sat at its lowest four-week level, explaining why the bulls may have not come out to play. We observed a bullish attempt last time that the weighted sentiment was in the same level.

A week ago we saw a bullish attempt occur but it failed to deliver as expected. It is likely that another bullish attempt will occur in the next few days given the alignment of factors in favor of. The Crypto Royale game will boot engagement but it remains to be seen whether the same will apply to the price action. Open / Comment

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2022-10-07 21:00:02 ​​Betting against Tron [TRX] in Q4? Read this update first

TRONDAO recently released its weekly report that showcased the growth of the network in the DeFi space. It also elaborated on the improvements the network noticed in terms of the number of accounts and transactions.

During the time when the report was published, TRX observed growth of 4.12% in its prices over the past week.

Will the growth of TRON in the DeFi space combined with its on-chain performance be enough to propel TRX to the moon?

Looking at the numbers
In terms of DeFi activities, TRX has shown massive growth over the past few weeks. As can be observed from the image below, the TVL witnessed a spike from 22 September to grow from $5.3 billion all the way to $5.7 billion at press time.

According to TRON’s weekly report, the number of addresses on the Tron mainnet has gone from 113,696,677 to 1,265,936 over the past week. Thus, indicating that more users are signing up for Tron.

One of the reasons for this growth could be Tron’s increasing popularity in the social media landscape. Tron observed a 41% growth in its social mentions and a spike of 66% in terms of social media presence.

Although TRX seems to have grown in popularity, the public sentiment had not been on Tron’s side during this period. As can be observed from the chart below, the sentiment for Tron had mostly been negative throughout the past month.

This amount of negative sentiment can have a bearish impact on TRX’s price in the near future.

Moreover, there was also a decline observed in Tron’s development activity which could be a cause of concern for potential investors.

A decline in development activity means that there is less activity on Tron’s GitHub, which implies that the momentum at which updates and upgrades are being made onto the Tron network has declined.

TRX’s volume also took a toll and declined by 57.35% according to Messari, a crypto analytics firm.

All these factors should be considered by investors who are planning on investing in TRX.

At the time of press, TRX was trading at $0.06271 and its price had appreciated by 1.02% in the last 24 hours. Open / Comment

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2022-10-04 21:00:03 ​​Decoding the significance of 17 October for the bankrupt Celsius Network

Celsius Network CEL, the New Jersey-based bankrupt cryptocurrency lending company, managed to set the date for auctioning its assets. As per the document filed with the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York on 3 October, Celsius will have its final auction on 17 October.

Furthermore, a sale hearing would occur on 1 November via Zoom before Chief US Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn. This event is anticipated to have the participation of a large number of interested parties.

Troubled exchange to find a bidder
It was in June 2022 that Celsius suspended asset withdrawals and transfers on its platform, citing “extreme” market conditions. The organization further filed for bankruptcy the following month. The exchange also stated that it had $167 million in liquidity to support its current operations and restructuring its business.

Celsius also disclosed that it owed its users $4.7 billion. Since then, 58,000 custodial account holders that together lost $150 million have come together to recover their funds.

Last month, the court allowed approved the appointment of Shoba Pillay as an independent examiner to provide a full report on Celsius’ assets and liabilities. However, Celsius was not the only crypto firm to have collapsed this year. TerraUSD stablecoin, hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and crypto lender Voyager Digital also collapsed during the same phase, leading to the global crypto crash.

Crypto billionaire SBF considers acquiring Celsius
FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried “SBF” has been considering to bail out the troubled exchange. The billionaire opined on Twitter that if FTX gets involved, then the bid for Celsius would be determined by fair market price, similar to its dealing with Voyager.

Recently, FTX successfully acquired the auctioned assets of Voyager with an offer of about $1.4 billion. Voyager claimed that the bid comprised the actual market value of its cryptocurrency assets at a determined period (roughly $1.3 billion). This was combined with $111 million of what it claimed was incremental value but did not provide any other information.

Celsius has been one of the most high-profile casualties of this year’s crypto crash, and how this case proceeds will have major repercussions on the industry. Open / Comment

2022-10-01 16:00:05 ​​How Ethereum [ETH] is faring amid reshuffled demand

Ethereum ETH volumes have been all over the place in the last three months and more so in September. Perhaps an expected outcome, given the drastic changes that have taken place in the crypto market during the month.

The demand for ETH also witnessed some volatility during the last four weeks. Nonetheless, recent events highlight interesting changes that many investors may not have expected. For example, the rising global inflation resulted in a stronger dollar and a devaluation of some major global currencies.

The Euro and Great Britain pound (GBP) are among some of the major fiat currencies that were negatively affected. As a consequence, their devaluation forced many to seek out alternatives for their wealth. According to a Messari analysis, Ethereum volumes increased against the GBP as investors readjusted their funds.

The report also noted that the observation was more pronounced for BTC than for ETH. It further added that the volume spikes were equivalent to normal volumes observed towards the end of 2020 and in the first few weeks of 2021.

While the aforementioned observations only focused on the European market, they were not a reflection of ETH’s overall volume. On-chain volumes further dropped by a substantial margin since mid-month despite peaks and troughs in-between.

ETH’s social volume was also down considerably as compared to its mid-month levels. It managed to achieve a slight uptick in the last 24 hours, which was a notable change considering the cryptocurrency’s current price level.

Calm before the storm?
ETH traded at $1,332 at press time, which was a slight upside from its monthly low on 21 September. Furthermore, it stuck with the current level for the last seven days, underscoring the low volatility and lack of strong demand.

This performance also reflected the low trading activity highlighted by the low number of daily addresses.

The active addresses metric portrayed a similar observation where active addresses tapered out from mid-month levels. Moreover, whales have also contributed to ETH’s sell pressure during the last two weeks.

Whales holding between 10,000 and one million ETH contributed the most to the selling pressure since mid-September. Their outflows slowed especially in the last few days and this may explain ETH’s sideways price action.

The same whales have contributed some downside pressure this week, thus explaining ETH’s struggle to overcome the current price level.

Meanwhile, some of the other top whales have been gradually accumulating at the lower price range. This included whales holding more than one million ETH.

Whales accumulating at the lower price levels can be considered a healthy sign for ETH, especially for the bulls as we head into October.

However, this does not guarantee that the price is immune from more downside. ETH’s press time level was at a slight premium compared to its 2022 lows and it was not oversold. Open / Comment

2022-09-28 19:00:04 ​​VeChain’s (VET) mainnet sees ~700k transactions but traders must be aware of…

VeChain, a platform that allowed businesses to create and execute decentralized applications (dApp) using VeChain (VET) was trending at press time. From the token trending the green to transactions occurring on the network- things looked optimistic for the #35th ranked crypto.

Trusting the future
VET, the native token witnessed a 6% surge as it traded around the $0.02 mark. Here’s a glimpse of the said rise on CoinMarketCap.

Meanwhile, even transactions on the platform recorded a significant high as shared by the VET community on Twitter. In just over three hours, VeChain pumped out almost 700k transactions for the biggest company in the world (Walmart).

‘No spam, no token shuffling, real world, economically beneficial on-chain activity for 1 company, with thousands to come,’ the tweet added.

Meanwhile, on chain metrics such as trading volume and development activity reiterated the same picture on Santiment. Especially the trading volume given the unprecedented hike below.

Whereas, the development activity, despite showing a modest high, didn’t quite create the same buzz as the former. But this could increase in the coming days given the upgrades on the network.

Piling it up
The VeChain blockchain development team chose to design and implement a finality gadget to run dual modes of consensus instead of replacing the Proof-of-Authority (PoA) consensus. The latest stage of PoA 2.0 enabled the latest development.

VeChain’s Peter Zhou tweeted that the latest stage of PoA 2.0 (the FOB finality or the VIP-220) has been running as expected on the testnet. He added that he looked forward to the stakeholder vote enabling its mainnet deployment.

This upgrade would combine the various types of blockchain consensus to achieve the holy grail of mechanisms for the real-world environment.

In addition to this, VeChain and TruTrace announced the list of industries they would integrate into the blockchain platform. As per the announcement, the platform would onboard TruTrace’s legal cannabis, food, apparel, and pharmaceutical industries.

Having said that, investors and traders should maintain caution and look for any vulnerabilities before jumping here. Open / Comment