MARKET WRAP

1. Cryptos Continue Sidewinding, Weathering the World’s Mess

CoinDesk – October 21, 2022 at 5:17 pm EST

Cryptos

Hanging on for dear life, Bitcoin ($BTC) seemed to behave more stably than almost every other asset last week, despite all sorts of mess worldwide, both financially and politically. Yesterday, $BTC held its value above the $19K support for the 14th consecutive day, trading around $19,200, up over the past 24 hours. Ether ($ETH) changed hands just below its $1300 support but has not declined past that for the past month. All other altcoins remained relatively stable, as well, with the outliers being $XRP and $EOS, climbing about 3%, Aptos’ $APT up 4.5% after a nasty start a few days prior. Axie Infinity’s $AXIE dropped roughly 6%.

Web3 money is fairing better than expected given the current world order.

$BTC has been range-bound for multiple weeks and is notably growing less volatile compared to other normally stable assets, such as the British sterling (£).

Insights

On the macro side of things, investors are embroiled in a discussion about high inflation as they have been over the past year, and more recently, about the declining yen as well as the pound. In particular, the British currency has tanked, seeing levels of volatility on par with $BTC. This past Thursday, the newly elected UK prime minister Liz Truss resigned just 44 days after her start date, leaving the government’s pending Financial Services and Markets Bill, intended to allow crypto assets as viable payment across the nation, in deliberation without a Conservative party leader.

Equities

Equities performed higher than expected given the state of gloomy economic forecasts, due in part to the situation in the UK as well as the state of inflation worldwide. The Nasdaq, DJIA, and S&P were up 2.5% at the market close. Brent crude oil, a measure of energy markets, was up more than 15% since the start of this year, trading over $93 per barrel. Gold climbed up 1.6% to $1654 per ounce. At the beginning of next month, the Fed will likely increase interest rates another 75 basis points, but investor sentiments have shifted slightly, predicting that monetary hawkishness will wane.

Takeaways

While cryptos appear to be remaining well-protected by their support levels, the market is still deeply entrenched by poor macroeconomic issues, inflation being the primary among them. According to Goldman Sachs strategist Kamakshya Trivedi, the US dollar index appears to be on the rise still, indicating that we might not see a loosening of monetary policy from the Fed until economic activity declines and the dollar sees its peak, which “feels several quarters away.” At the moment, the dollar index is 113.69, which is the strongest reading it received since early 2002. If it takes much longer for the dollar index to dial back, then $BTC could see a decline in the short term.

2. Aptos ($APT) Drops Over 40% on First-Day Trading

CryptoSlate – October 19, 2022 at 7:26 am EST

This past Wednesday, Aptos, a new Layer 1 blockchain launched its native token $APT on multiple trading platforms, reaching a large audience and a fast-growing token price that peaked at $59.39 on Binance

However, after just a few hours, the token tumbled to $7.40, dropping 45% from its peak on the first day. According to CoinGecko data, over 50% of trading volume occurred on Binance.

In response to the poor performance, the Aptos Foundation has pledged to distribute up to 150 $APT to Aptos Incentivized Testnet participants and anyone who minted APTOS:ZERO testnet NFTs. 

Other shady information has emerged from a previous Aptos developer, named Paul Fidika, who quit working at Aptos due to the fact that it failed to disclose its tokenomics. He said the following:

“All 101 validators were hand-picked by Aptos Lab/Foundation. You had to sign an arbitration agreement in the Cayman Islands to be included in the validator set.”

It has yet to be seen if the negative press surrounding Aptos’ level of transparency, decentralization, and worse-than-reported scalability performance will affect $APT in the long term. As of yesterday, $APT was up 4.5% from its trough last week.

3. Moola Market DeFi Protocol Hacked for $8.4M

Crypto News – October 19, 2022 at 1:00 pm EST

Last week, Moola Market, a DeFi protocol was hacked for a whopping $8.4M in $MOO. According to Igor Igamberdiev, Research Director at The Block, the hacker implemented an “incredibly simple attack” by initially using a 243K $CELO sum withdrawn from Binance.

“The attacker lent $60K CELO to Moola and borrowed $1.8M MOO to use them as collateral” before “pumping the MOO price with the remaining CELO, and to use it as collateral and borrow all other tokens.”

This year, according to Chainalysis, has been ripe with crypto-based crimes – more so than previous years. The blockchain analytical firm believes that much of this is attributable to DeFi in particular, according to a report earlier this year.

“Through July 2022, $1.9B worth of cryptocurrency has been stolen in hacks of services, compared to just under $1.2B at the same point in 2021.” 

4. USDT Will Be Available from ATMs in Brazil

Decrypt – October 21, 2022

Tether is planning to make USDT available at over 24,000 ATMs across Brazil. Paolo Ardoino, Tether’s CTO said that the main reason behind this is to include more Brazilians in the country’s growing economy, which is affected by inflation and a less-than-inclusive financial system.  

For over a year, Brazil’s economy has been experiencing a high inflation rate. In 2021, Brazilian tax authorities reported that Brazilian reliance on stablecoins has tripled compared to the previous year.

Brazil’s ATM users will be able to convert Brazilian Real into USDT and vice versa and easily send their USDT.

Tether is in a partnership with SmartPay, a Brazilian payments company, to integrate USDT with ATM providers in Brazil. The program is set to launch on November 3. 

5. Food Companies Obtain Trademarks to Join Metaverse

CoinTelegraph – October 18, 2022

A number of food & beverage corporations have recently start to position themselves within the web3 space by submitting trademark applications for the Metaverse and NFTs.

According to Mike Kondoudis, a certified trademark lawyer, Kraft Foods Group had registered a trademark for its recognizable Weinermobile, which is designed like a hot dog. The company plans to invest in NFTs, virtual food, drink, and restaurants.

California cult-classic In-N-Out Burger intends to offer temporary use of online non-downloadable software for users to access, transmit, exchange, and establish ownership of virtual goods, blockchain tokens, non-fungible tokens, digital media, digital files, and digital assets in the field of food, beverages, restaurants, and merchandise, according to the trademark application.

6. Swedish Telecom Giant Ericcson on 5G Tech as a Gateway to the Metaverse

Bitcoin.com – October 18, 2022

Ericcson, a Swedish telecom hardware and services company, has released a report of a study it conducted regarding the potential use of 5G technology as a gateway mechanism of introducing metaverse and extended reality applications to more users.

According to their report, users in 5G are more interested in the metaverse than their 4G counterparts, with the expectation of 510 million consumers this year. Roughly six out of ten 5G adopters hope the metaverse will become a reality shortly. 

Moreover, the study indicated that roughly half of the 5G users polled have already experienced metaverse services and platforms, which could create a wave of migration to XR headsets in the future.