Bitget Hot Takes (July 25 - July 31)
Bitget Hot Takes is the exclusive weekly newsletter series by Bitget Academy, the 360-degree onboarding guide for all crypto enthusiasts.
Central Themes
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BGB continued to go up with low volatility.
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Bitcoin crossed the US$24,000 mark after FED hiked interest rates by 75bps for two months in a row.
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Tether denied holding Chinese commercial papers, regained peg after 68 days.
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DeFi, L1 & L2 in focus.
BGB Rose Steadily With Low Volatility
Bitget Token ended the week with a green from seven consecutive days of positive cumulative returns. BGB holders could have a 1.7% increase in profits if they choose to realise yesterday, however we are expecting BGB price to go up step by step.
It should be noted as well that the BGB price didn’t see any radical changes with the 0.1654% weekly volatility.
Market Essentials: Bitcoin & Stablecoins
The global market capitalisation remained above US$1 trillion for most of the days, except for Tuesday (June 26) and Wednesday (June 27) before the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, which was expected to result in an ‘only’ 0.75% increase in interest rates in the U.S.
Even though the correlation between Bitcoin and the stock market has been somewhat on the way down since mid-May, the figure stays over 50%, meaning that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies still tend to follow the movement of stocks. Therefore, a rate hike of 75bps had cheered both markets.
Source: Delphi Digital
More on Bitcoin’s correlation with other assets is reported in Bitget 2022 Semi-annual Crypto Briefing.
Bitcoin is persistently up since the FOMC meeting and now trading between US$23,700 and US$24,200.
Source: CoinGecko
This can also be backed by a drop in Bitcoin network difficulty, meaning production rate is slowed down. Our memo for Bitcoin mining difficulty:
Less miners = Lowered difficulty = Scarcer Bitcoin
Source: Glassnode
Meanwhile, Tether has reclaimed the US$1 peg after 68 days after a period of constantly reducing their commercial paper holdings and denied rumours about its reserve of Chinese/Asian commercial papers.
Source: Kaiko Analytics
It is important to note that USDT is more widely in Asian and European countries, while the U.S. has turned to USDC as shown in the frequency charts below:
Source: CoinMetrics
DeFi, L1 & L2
Decentralised Finance
DeFi has suffered heavy losses in Q2 2022, mostly due to a spreading contagion in lending activities. That does not stop builders from the hustle; leaders of the space are paving way for a return of decentralised finance:
- Curve Finance has applied for a 1 million OP token grant from Optimism to incentivise liquidity on Curve-Optimism pools;
- SushiSwap team nominated a new potential 'Head Chef', whose appointment will be decided by the Sushi community. Many are looking for changes in SushiSwap’s prospects, should the new Chef be welcomed on board, as he has deep ties with the NFT space.
- Aave’s proposal of GHO launch has been approved. GHO is a digital asset-backed stablecoin who borrow interests will 100% go to the DAO.
- Moonbeam has partnered with the Cosmos-based exchange Osmosis to enable swap between Polkadot and Cosmos.
- After Lido DAO rejected the sale plan of US$14.5 million in LDO to Dragonfly Capital, Lido Finance has come up with a new proposal with the inclusion of a vesting plan to tackle the community concerns. Another change in the sale is how LDO price is calculated: a seven-day average of LDO at the end of voting plus 5% premium instead of a flat rate.
- Velodrome, a DEX built on the L2 solution Optimism, has crossed the US$100 million mark in total value locked (TVL) for the first time on July 28, challenging dominant platforms such as Uniswap.
- Clearpool, a decentralised marketplace for non-collateralised lending, has brought its pools to Polygon.
Something to watch out:
- Flash loan attacks: Solana-based Nirvana Finance was the latest victim, with US$3.49 million drained from its treasury. The native token of the protocol (ANA) lost 89% and its stablecoin (NIRV) lost 90% of its peg right afterwards.
- Crypto lender BlockFi released a quarter-end report, which shows that the firm had US$1.8 billion in open loans and US$600 million exposure by the end of June.
L1 & L2
Both Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC) are rallying as Ethereum developers finally decided on the date for the final testnet before The Merge. The Goerli testnet will take place from August 6 to August 12 before Ethereum merges with the Beacon Chain in September this year.
In an effort to attract new projects, Fantom community has decided to use one-third of the network burn fees for project funding. Around the same time, Algorand announced that their current COO will serve as the new interim CEO.
Last but not least, the Harmony team is finally proposing two reimbursement options for victims of the Horizon bridge attack in June, both via the minting of ONE.
Capital Injections Unwavering
Crypto companies have collectively raised nearly US$300 million within the last 7 days. The latest banking giant to join the digital space was Barclays, who is taking a stake at the US$2 billion valuation crypto firm Copper. Meanwhile, the early-staged crypto ventures fund Variant raised US$450 million for Web3 or, “user-owned web”, investments.
Below are last week deals:
- Public chain Aptos secured US$150 million in a Series A funding round led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto;
- Root Protocol, an on-chain marketplace for financial, prediction and commercial markets, raised US$9 million in a seed round led by Road Capital, Soma Capital, Nima Capital and Manifest Crypto. Root Protocol will be built on top of the hacked stablecoin protocol Beanstalk;
- Topl, a blockchain ecosystem designed to help companies track sustainability and social impact initiatives, announced a US$15 million Series A led by Mercury, Republic Asia and Cryptology Asset Group;
- NFT domain provider Unstoppable Domains closed US$65 million in a Series A funding round led by Pantera Capital;
- NFT indexing company Center raised US$11 million in a seed round. Among participants were Thrive and Founders Fund;
- Health and fitness app Sweatcoin raised US$13 million from Spartan Capital. Electric Capital, OKX Blockdream Ventures, Goodwater Capital and GSR Capital;
- Space and Time, the first decentralised data warehouse, closed a US$10 million seed round led by Framework Ventures;
- Aurigami, a lending protocol on Aurora, announced a US$12 million token round. The private round was led by Dragonfly Capital and Polychain Capital, and the public round took place on KuCoin, ByBit and Impossible Finance.
More Positive Signals
Universities can become the next driving force of metaverse adoption. Wharton Business School has announced a six-week online program focusing on the economic and technological elements of metaverse. It is the first Ivy League Business School to launch such a program. Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) takes another approach by building virtual campuses in the metaverse. Students will be able to participate in virtual classes and interact with classmates in MetaHKUST.
Full-service broker Charles Schwab will launch its first crypto ETF on New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on August 4 under the ticker symbol of STCE. The fund will not invest directly in digital assets, similar to ETFs by BlackRock and Fidelity Investments.
The Latest Bitget News
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Good Reads
Bitget Semi-annual Report 2022
How to Use Bitget - The Beginner's Guide (Tutorial Video)
What Is Liquidation & How To Avoid It
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