Headlines
Cryptocurrency adoption jumps 6.4% in H1 2024, driven primarily by Bitcoin and Ethereum growth
According to Crypto.com’s latest market size report, the number of owners in the global cryptocurrency market has increased significantly in the first half of this year.
As of June, this number has increased by 6.4% to 617 million from 580 million at the end of 2023. This growth was mainly driven by key developments in the Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystems, especially the launch of their related spot ETFs.
Trump: If elected, he would consider having Elon Musk serve in the cabinet or in an advisory role
Former US President Trump said that if he is elected as the next US president, he will consider canceling the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit; he will also consider letting Elon Musk serve in a cabinet or advisory role if he is willing.
According to Fox Business reporter Eleanor Terrett on the X platform, the Democratic Party of the United States officially released their party platform on the first day of its National Convention, but there was no mention of blockchain technology, Bitcoin, digital assets or anything related to encryption.
Coinbase: Young voters expected to be decisive factor again in 2024 US election
Coinbase said in a blog post that young voters played a decisive role in the 2020 US election and are expected to be a decisive factor again in 2024. Generation Z and millennial voters account for 40% of all eligible voters and will become the majority of voters by 2028. These voters largely represent people who support cryptocurrency and innovation and want to support candidates who can help improve and update the system. Any candidate who wants to win in 2024 must take into account young voters who support cryptocurrency.
Industry News
According to Trader T monitoring, the U.S. Ethereum spot ETF had a net outflow of $13.5 million yesterday, with a trading volume of $124 million, including:
BlackRock ETHA has no inflows/outflows;
Grayscale ETHE had a net outflow of $20.3 million;
Grayscale ETH net inflow of $4.9 million;
Fidelity FETH has no inflow/outflow of funds;
Bitwise ETHW saw net inflows of $1.9 million.
Before Cboe BZX removed the related Solana ETF 19 b-4 filing, the U.S. SEC met with potential issuers to discuss its concerns about Solana’s potential status as a security, people familiar with the matter said.
They said that after the discussion, the SEC and Cboe agreed not to file a Form 19b-4 with the Federal Register, which would have initiated the approval process. Doing so would have put pressure on the SEC to make a decision related to the Solana ETF.
Bitcoin and the broader crypto market have seen sharp declines so far this month, even as global stock markets are returning to all-time highs after shaking off jitters about U.S. growth.
Bitcoin has fallen about 10% in August, lagging a nearly 1% gain in MSCI Inc.’s global stock index and a rally in gold prices to an all-time high. The Bloomberg Global Bond Index is up nearly 2% in the same period.
QCP Capital said in its latest market analysis that the stock market is unusually optimistic, with US stocks at all-time highs and Asian stocks largely bullish today as markets expect an imminent US rate cut and soft landing. However, there are still signs of nervousness in the market as the options market expects Powells speech at Jackson Hole on Friday to cause a 1% move in the SP 500.
Contrary to stocks, sentiment in the cryptocurrency market is very pessimistic. Over the weekend, the Bitcoin perpetual contract funding rate fell to -13%, the lowest level since 2022.
The market seems to have overlooked the possibility of further unwinding of the yen/dollar carry trade. According to Bloomberg, Vanguard and other funds are increasing their bets on further rate hikes by the Bank of Japan. Whether this will be a catalyst for another decline in the entire market remains to be seen. However, QCP added that it remains optimistic and bullish on the market.
Analysis: Ethereum’s daily average gas fee and daily destruction volume hit new lows
CryptoQuant analyst EgyHash wrote that Ethereums average daily gas fee was only 2.9 Gwei recently, a record low. Its average daily fee in US dollars also hit a multi-year low of only US$0.85.
As a result, the average daily destruction rate of Ethereum also dropped to a historical low, with 115 ETH destroyed per day.
Despite a sharp drop in Ethereum gas fees and efficiency rates, its average daily transaction volume has remained the same or increased significantly compared to the same period in the past two years.
This drop could be related to the Dencun upgrade that was activated on Ethereum on March 13 of this year. While low fees are good for users, they are not so good for investors, especially considering that a large portion of Ethereum’s usage is moving to its L2 network and the potential problems this could cause, such as user and liquidity fragmentation.
Despite the approval of the Ethereum spot ETF, the price of ETH has not improved since the Dencun upgrade. During this period, the supply of ETH increased by more than 197,000 (worth more than $500 million), while its price fell by 35%.
Project News
Last week, the number of active addresses on the Base chain reached 4 million, a record high
Jesse Pollak, head of the Base protocol, posted on X that data showed that the number of active addresses on the Base chain reached 4 million last week, setting a record high.
Pichi Finance: PCH claiming is now live
PointsFi marketplace Pichi Finance announced that PCH claims are now live on its official website, and users can choose to claim the entire allocation, or stake it to receive a 3x points bonus to increase rewards in Airdrop Season 2.
UniSat launches BRC-20 tokenization service on Fractal testnet
UniSat announced on the X platform that the BRC-20 engraving service of the Bitcoin extension network Fractal Bitcoin testnet has been officially launched. In order to avoid conflicts with existing assets on the Bitcoin mainnet, the BRC-20 rules on Fractal have been specially customized.
Drift Protocol Launches BET Prediction Market on Solana Chain
According to official news, Drift Protocol announced the launch of the prediction market BET on Solana. The first prediction market revolves around the US election. More market categories will be launched in the future, covering sports (F1, CryptoFightNight), cryptocurrency and culture (Solana debate results).
DefiLlama data shows that pump.fun, the Solana ecosystem Meme coin issuance platform, has earned $27.92 million in the past 30 days, surpassing Solana (US$20.15 million) and is currently ranked fifth, only behind Tether (about US$400 million), Circle (US$123.84 million), Ethereum (US$47.81 million) and Tron (US$38.09 million).
Investment and Financing
Fabric, a company developing cryptographic VPU chips, announced the completion of a $33 million Series A financing round, led by Blockchain Capital and 1kx, with participation from Offchain Labs, Polygon and Matter Labs. The new funds will be used to build computing chips, software and encryption algorithms. The core of Fabrics roadmap is to build a new processing unit called Verifiable Processing Unit (VPU), which will be specifically used to process encryption technology.
Bitwise acquires cryptocurrency ETP issuer ETC Group, expanding its business into Europe
Bitwise Asset Management announced today that it has acquired ETC Group, a London-based cryptocurrency ETP issuer with over $1 billion in assets under management. This also marks Bitwise’s expansion into Europe and adds nine European-listed cryptocurrency ETPs to Bitwise’s broad suite of ETPs, hedge fund solutions, and separately managed accounts.
Bitcoin Ecosystem Income Network Corn Completes $6.7 Million Funding, Polychain Leads Investment
Corn, a Bitcoin ecosystem income network, has completed a $6.7 million financing round led by Polychain, with participation from Binance Labs, Framework Ventures, OKX Ventures, HTX, Ventures and Relayer Capital. It is reported that the project aims to enhance the practicality of Bitcoin and introduce new income-generating opportunities.
BiFinance Completes $10 Million Series A Financing, Led by Sunfund Fortuna Global Opportunities
Digital asset trading platform BiFinance announced on X platform that it has completed a $10 million Series A financing round, led by Sunfund Fortuna Global Opportunities, with participation from Eternal Asia Group, SDM Education and TigerBCDAO. It is reported that BiFinances valuation in this round of financing reached $100 million. The new funds will be used to further connect traditional financial assets such as stocks and bonds with the Web3 ecosystem and provide asset-backed tokens (RWA/STO) to enterprises.
Newfire Technology, a Hong Kong-listed company, announced that it would acquire all issued shares of Avenir Asset Holding for approximately US$33.23 million (approximately HK$238 million), and plans to pay by issuing up to nearly 110 million new shares. Avenir Asset Holding indirectly holds approximately 84.62% of BitTrades shares. After the transaction is completed, it will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Newfire Technology, and BitTrade will become its indirect subsidiary. BitTrade is mainly engaged in cryptocurrency trading business.
Regulatory trends
On the morning of August 19, the Supreme Peoples Court and the Supreme Peoples Procuratorate jointly held a press conference to release the Interpretation on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in Handling Criminal Cases of Money Laundering (hereinafter referred to as the Interpretation). The Interpretation will come into effect on August 20, 2024, with a total of 13 articles, the main contents of which include:
1. Clarify the identification standards for the crimes of self-laundering and money laundering by others, as well as the examination and identification standards for the subjective understanding of the crime of money laundering by others.
2. Clarify the criteria for determining “serious circumstances” of money laundering crimes.
3. Clarify the seven specific circumstances of using other methods to conceal or hide the source and nature of criminal proceeds and their proceeds.
4. Clarify the principle of concurrent punishment for money laundering and other crimes such as concealing and hiding criminal proceeds and profits from criminal proceeds.
5. Clarify the amount of fines.
6. Clarify the standards for lenient punishment.
The Interpretation lists virtual asset transactions as one of the ways of money laundering. It is clear that the transfer and conversion of criminal proceeds and their benefits through virtual asset transactions and financial asset exchanges can be identified as covering up and concealing the source and nature of criminal proceeds and their benefits by other means as stipulated in Article 191, Paragraph 1, Item 5 of the Criminal Law.
Character Voice
Simon Gerovich, CEO of Metaplanet Inc., a Japanese listed company, announced that the company increased its holdings of 500 million yen (about 57,273 BTC) at an average price of 8,730,117 yen. As of August 20, Metaplanet held about 360,368 BTC, spending a total of 3.45 billion yen at an average price of 9,573,556 yen.
Bernstein Research: Trumps potential victory may stimulate BTC to rebound
Bernstein Research released a report saying that the cryptocurrency market, especially Bitcoin, may undergo a major shift depending on the results of the upcoming US presidential election. Analysis shows that Donald Trumps potential victory may catalyze the bottoming out of Bitcoin prices, leading to an increase in the prices of major cryptocurrencies. The report pointed out that Bitcoin prices will only bottom out and rebound if the crypto market becomes interested in Trumps possible victory, as the crypto market continues to interpret the Republican victory as a factor that is favorable to crypto policies.
Despite a broad rally in U.S. stocks ahead of a speech by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell at the Jackson Hole conference later this week, Bitcoin prices have edged lower over the past 24 hours. Bitcoin prices have fallen nearly 3% over the past 24 hours, trading around $58,500. Valentin Fournier, an analyst at BRN, said the upcoming Jackson Hole meeting could lead to increased volatility in Bitcoin prices, and that Bitcoin volatility could rise in the coming days or week as the market awaits further news from the Fed at the Jackson Hole symposium and macroeconomic indicators.
As the markets expectations for the Fed to cut interest rates next month are getting higher, the Fed is likely to deliver on that expectation. Wall Street tycoon Peter Schiff said that we will see a rate cut in September, mainly because the market is now counting on a September rate cut. This is why U.S. stocks rebounded after the sell-off on Monday. Since the market has already priced in the possibility of a September rate cut, there is no reason for Powell not to deliver. He always meets market expectations and he doesnt want to cause surprises in the market.
According to Leon Waidmann, research director of Onchain Foundation, who wrote on the X platform, Glassnode data shows that despite the current price drop, the balance of Ethereum on exchanges has dropped below 10%, significantly lower than the exchange balance of Bitcoin. When the market demand for Ethereum rises again, its price may rise rapidly.
Patrick Hansen, senior director of EU strategy and policy at Circle, wrote on X that based on DefiLlama data, the market value of EURC has exceeded 50 million euros.
EURC’s market capitalization has risen by 36% in the past week, mainly due to its launch on the Base chain (which already has around 8 million EURC on it) and growth on the Ethereum chain.
At this rate, EURC will soon become the number one Euro stablecoin by market cap.
According to a post by SlowMist founder Yu Xian on the X platform, after a preliminary look at the suspected theft of 4,064 BTC, it seems that some of the source funds are related to Genesis Global Trading.
Earlier news, the chain detective ZachXBT posted on the X platform that a suspicious transfer occurred 7 hours ago, and the potential victim lost 4064 BTC (about 238 million US dollars). The funds were quickly transferred to ThorChain, eXch, Kucoin, ChangeNow, Railgun, and Avalanche Bridge.
DWF Labs co-founder Andrei Grachev wrote on X: “These are some of my personal observations (on the crypto market) over the past two years:
Depression > Recovery > Bull Market > Correction > Meme Season > Correction > Perp Season > Recovery > Bull Market We are currently in Perp Season. Note: The above is not financial advice, DYOR. ”
