MARKET WRAP

1. Cryptos Trade Flat Before This Week’s Consumer Price Index

CoinDesk – October 11, 2022 at 11:04 pm EST

Cryptos

Bitcoin and most major cryptos traded flat throughout the past week, replicating much of the trading action seen in October thus far. $BTC traded at around $19K, unable to consistently surpass the $20K support as the world continues to tread lightly around these risky assets, fearing a steep recession.

Insights

This week serves as a pivotal turning point for the markets as Wednesday marks yet another Federal Open Market Committee meeting, followed by the release of the Consumer Price Index on Thursday. Despite a relatively poor performance from $BTC and other cryptos, they have remained relatively stable over the past weeks. This week’s remarks from the FOMC could change that. If yet another 75 basis point increase is enacted, as expected, investors expect that things will remain as they are with month-to-month price action inching upward. If the Fed’s anti-inflation measures exceed this, however, we could see a big hit.

Equities

The Nasdaq leads the equity markets in this week’s continued losses, dropping 1.1% as opposed to a few fractional percentage point losses for the S&P 500 and DJIA. This is the second time that the Nasdaq has fallen into bear market territory this year, down at least 20% from its previous peak. Notably, gold declined 0.3% while the 10-year Treasury yield rose to 3.94%, which is quite high. Earnings reports from major companies like PepsiCo, BlackRock, and JPMorgan Chase are expected later this week to demonstrate poor performance, which may bode worse in the rest of October.

Takeaways

The market has been showing some mixed messages, especially on the crypto front. Evidence of low balances on exchanges has been seen recently, and this typically signals a coming price rally as people are holding their tokens. On the other hand, evidence of price action over the past months has demonstrated the unprecedented macroeconomic climate we are in, namely one where investors are risk-averse and prone to taking profits whenever possible. Either way, inflation data seems to be the name of the game, for now.

2. US Unemployment Rate Lower than Expected, BTC Slips from $20,000

Yahoo Finance – October 7, 2022 at 7:42 pm EST

The unemployment rate was announced at 3.5%, which was lower than economists' forecast of 3.7%. It could be partially attributed to a drop in labor force participation from 62.4% to 62.3% and is a level last observed in July. Following the US labor rate report, Bitcoin (BTC) lost roughly 2% of its value as the better-than-expected result reduced the Federal Reserve's flexibility to choose a slower rate hike at the upcoming monetary policy meeting in October.

3. Europe Enforces Complete Ban on All Crypto Services to Russia

CryptoNews – October 6, 2022 at 7:00 pm EST

The European Union has said that it is increasing sanctions against Russians by forbidding cryptocurrency service providers and exchanges from doing business with Russian entities. This move causes the economy of Russia becomes more solitary. However, attempts to limit crypto usage have failed many times in the past. This means the sanctions cannot be in place forever, this method may weaken Russia in the short term, but over the long run, the restriction would be extremely damaging for the European Union.

4. Founder Huobi Global Transferred his Stake to About Capital Worth 1 Billion 

CoinDesk – October 11, 2022, at 2:15 pm EST

Huobi Global, once China’s top crypto exchange, was acquired by About Capital after being forcibly removed by the Chinese government. Beijing’s crypto ban resulted in an 80% decrease in the price of Huobi’s native token price. As a result, Leon Li, Founder of Huobi, elected to sell his 60% stake in Huobi to About Capital. In return, About Capital intends to drive Huobi’s business with a series of new international brand promotion and business expansion initiatives. Under the new ownership, Huobi promises to be a globally prestigious exchange that will return as soon as the market recovers.

5. Global Crypto Exchange FTX Teamed up with Visa to Offer Debit Cards in 40 countries 

CNBC – October 7, 2022 at 10:34 am EST 

FTX has formed a partnership with Visa to release crypto debit cards in 40 different countries in Latin America, Europe, and Asia. The collaboration appears to confirm many people's belief that 75% of merchants will accept crypto within the next two years. FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried states that crypto debit cards can disrupt conventional payment networks. FTX announced plans to roll out a debit card in January after its competitor Coinbase released its version last summer. This new deal between FTX and Visa signals that the traditional economy is gradually accepting cryptocurrencies as mainstream and daresay “normal” methods of payment. 

6. Immunefi Hacked?

​​CryptoSlate – October 5, 2022 at 12:00 pm UTC

 

The web3 ecosystem lost over $428.7 million to 39 exploits in the third quarter — down 62.9% compared to over $1 billion lost in the same period of 2021. The Nomad Bridge and Wintermute hacks account for 79.85% — $350 million — of all recorded losses. 

Report from Crypto Losses report that about $398.9million was the total number of damage due to nearly 30 hack cases. In addition, other nine fraud cases were also exposed which resulted in approximately $29.8 million, $24.5 million of which lay in rug pull projects.

Over 98% of the losses were to blame for DeFi platforms, with reportedly $423.4 million lost from 36 incidents. The majority of the attacks (51.8%) stemmed from lBNB and Ethereum chains while Solana and Avalanche also bore a toll at 6.8% of all losses.

On Aug. 2, cross-chain protocol Nomad Bridge was inflicted with a heavy blow of $190 million drained out. 100 WBTC was stolen from the bridge some hackers exposed codes for hundreds of attackers to drain the protocol by “copy-pasting” their addresses.

Market maker Wintermute was on the same wagon when they lost $160 million to a hot wallet compromise on Sept. 20. A address flaw occurred and the attacker was able to drain some 90 crypto assets.

7. Walmart, Unilever, US Oil Fund, and US Gas Fund

Financefeeds - October 6, 2022 6:11 PM UTC

DeFiChain is a decentralized Proof-of-Stake blockchain created as a hard fork of the Bitcoin network to enable advanced Defi applications. It is dedicated to enabling fast, intelligent, and transparent decentralized financial services. DeFiChain offers liquidity mining, staking, decentralized assets, and decentralized loans. The DeFiChain Foundation’s mission is to bring Defi to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

DeFichain has added four new decentralized tokens: $dWMT (Walmart), $dUL (Unilever), $dUSO (US Oil Fund), and $dUNG (US Gas Fund). 

Users will be able to mint and trade these decentralized assets to get price exposure to the stocks and ETFs without leaving the Defi ecosystem. They can also buy dTokens - even in fractional pieces - on the DeFIChain DEX. DeFiChain already offers dTokens corresponding to the S&P500, Tesla, Apple, Alibaba, Gamestop, Nasdaq 100, Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, Meta, and many other stocks and ETFs. 

 

A dToken can either be held as an investment, traded on the DeFiChain DEX, or used for Liquidity Mining on the DEX. Users can mint dTokens on the DeFiChain blockchain by depositing BTC, DFI, dUSD, USDT or USDC as collateral in the DeFiChain Vault.

Launched in 2019, DeFiChain is the world’s leading blockchain on Bitcoin with over $658 million in Total Valued Locked (TVL). DeFiChain was created to offer all the Defi benefits including lending, borrowing, and investing. DeFiChain also offers full transparency and no single authority controls the network. Supported by a network of nodes or computers to facilitate fast and low-cost transactions, DeFiChain aims to resolve some of the common issues relating to security, decentralization, and scalability.