Weekly Market Highlights #26: December 19 - December 25
✨Last week's market had little volatility as the world entered the Christmas and New Year holidays.
✨However, all attention is still on Sam Bankman-Fried - the former CEO of FTX exchange was extradited to the US, then released on bail with a bond of up to $250M. At the same time, Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang - Sam's close subordinates, pleaded guilty.
✨Over the past week, the crypto market decreased ~$5B (from ~$808B to ~$813B) of its total capitalization
✨Bitcoin Boring Below $17K
✅Bitcoin dropped to a 3-week low on December 20 at $16,3K but reclaimed almost all lost value in less than a day. Another price decline two days later saw the asset slipping to $16,5K but bounced back to $16,8K hours later.
✅The end of the working week saw two major announcements from the US – about the GDP (an increase of 3.2% in Q3) and the PCE numbers, an inflation gauge covering consumer costs. Both had little impact on BTC, while the largest US stock market indexes experienced more volatility.
✨Most altcoins have failed to produce significant movements in the past week
✅BSCS is currently trading at ~$0,008137: +1,92% from its 7-day all-time low of $0,007984.
✅ETH has sustained above $1,2K as it sits flat on a daily scale.
✅BNB, DOGE, ADA, MATIC, OKB, TRX, SHIB, LTC, and DOT all have insignificant losses.
✅SOL has dropped the most from the larger-cap altcoins. A 5.3% decline on a 24-hour scale has pushed SOL down to just over $11.
✅OKX's native cryptocurrency (OKB) is the best performer from the larger-cap altcoins, just a few days after the exchange published its latest proof-of-reserve report, showing a 101% reserve ratio.
✨Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index is 28 - Fear, lower than at the beginning of the week (29)
BSCStation is one of the first launchpads to integrate Aptos and support Blockchain projects on its network
Having four years of research and development, the Aptos team has brought their product with the most convenient features to accelerate Web3 adoption for users:
Move language: A safe and flexible blockchain language
Aptos uses Move as its major language. Compared to several languages, Move is designed for safe resource management and verifiable execution on a blockchain. Transaction execution is deterministic, hermetic, and metered. Thus, the output of transaction execution is completely predictable and based only on the information contained within the transaction and current ledger state. Besides, the transaction executions will be defended against denial-of-service attacks.
People-First User Experience
Aptos’s core design principle is to prioritize developer and user experience. Only by focusing on a straightforward and relatable experience, web3 can connect with billions of online users. With decades of experience running millions of computers, the team has proudly confirmed to produce world-class, safe, and scalable products and infrastructure. They will continue to integrate new innovations and intuitive parallel programming models to adjust the user experience to billions of Web3-to-be users.
Safer account key recovery and rotation protocols
To mitigate key theft, Aptos supports the ability for any account to rotate its private key. Validators can also periodically rotate their consensus key as well for increased security. In order to avoid the issues of billions of dollars of value being locked away due to key loss, the team also works on developing novel techniques around key recovery that can be directly integrated into the blockchain account model.
With the advantages Aptos brings, we decide to integrate the network within the BSCStation ecosystem. Aptos has just released its mainnet at the end of October and we are proud to be one of the first launchpads supporting Aptos and projects launched IDO on that chain.
About Aptos
Aptos is a new Layer 1 blockchain aiming to build the safest and most scalable Layer 1 blockchain. It is established by former Meta employees (formerly Facebook) who are the original creators, researchers, designers, and builders of the Diem platform.
The team’s mission is to give billions of people equitable access to decentralized resources. The web3 stack is extensive and rich from smart contract platforms to developer infrastructure and tooling, wallets, and decentralized applications.
In testing, Aptos claimed that it has handled 130,000 transactions per second, which is an upgrade compared to other Layer 1 networks. With the mentioned execution, Aptos is one of the most awaited projects for its future development.
Website | Twitter | Discord | Medium | LinkedIn
a16z Leads $100M Funding Round For Web3 Privacy Layer Aztec Network
The company plans to hire more engineers despite the intense bear market.
💎Aztec Network – a privacy layer 2 chain for Web3 – announced (https://medium.com/@aztecnetwork/aztec-raises-100-million-to-build-encrypted-ethereum-dd5062ba949c) raising $100 million in a Series B financing led by VC giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The funding round also saw participation from A Capital, King River, Variant, SV Angel, Hash Key, Fenbushi, and AVG.5.
🔹Its partnership with a16z will fund the development of a “next-generation encrypted architecture” that would enable users to verify that they followed blockchain rules correctly without revealing any underlying information.
🔹The main focus of these encrypted blockchains is to allow privacy and anonymity concerning transaction execution.
🔹Following the development, Aztec CEO Zac Williamson stated,
“What we’re building is a revolutionary piece of technology that transforms how we interact with each other online, in which the end user is the customer rather than the product. End-to-end encrypted blockchains protect individuals, obviating the need for centralized financial systems.”
🔹Aztec Network rolled out Aztec Connect, an ecosystem that integrates with Ethereum decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols such as Aave, Lido, and Element Finance, last summer.
🔹The company plans to integrate with Compound and five other DeFi protocols.
🔹The new capital infusion will onboard more engineers worldwide to build the network across Noir tooling, SDK development, P2P network construction, data science, crypto, and full-stack engineering.
🔹The Aztec team has expanded to nearly 40 from seven employees and expects the figure to double soon.
Sam Bankman-Fried Heading Back to US on Wednesday: Report
After being arrested by the Royal Bahamas Police Force, SBF dropped plans to resist extradition.
📢Sam Bankman-Fried, the former boss of the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, is flying back to the United States as early as Wednesday.
📢According to a new report by NBC News, this was revealed by Doan Cleare, the acting commissioner of corrections for the Bahamas Department of Correctional Services.
⭐️Bankman-Fried was arrested by Bahamian police on December 12th and held at the notorious Fox Hill prison. He declined to waive his right to challenge extradition to the United States and signed the necessary paperwork.
⭐️Cleare did not reveal the reason behind the move but noted that fighting the extradition could take years. In a statement to the Bahamanian newspaper, he said that Bankman-Fried would prefer to spend that time in the US than the Bahamas despite the island nation being home to FTX since 2021.
⭐️The 30-year-old is accused of misappropriating billions of dollars deposited in the crypto exchange FTX that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month.
⭐️The day after his arrest, a Bahamian judge denied Bankman-Fried’s request for bail, calling the former billionaire a flight risk.
⭐️The exec is facing a litany of charges brought by three separate government agencies – the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Twitter adds BTC and ETH price indexes to the search function
👉Social media platform Twitter has added a new crypto feature that enables users to search the price of Bitcoin and Ether simply by typing their names or tickers into the search tab.
🔼The new feature is an improvement of "$Cashtags" and was announced by the Twitter Business account on Dec. 21.
💎The account noted that whenever one tweets the symbol of a major stock, exchange-traded fund, or cryptocurrency with $ in front of it, people will be able to see a clickable link that takes them to search results that now will include the pricing graphs for those symbols. It also noted that simply searching for the ticker symbol for stock or crypto will also bring up the price graph.
▶️Shortly after that, on Dec. 22, Twitter CEO Elon Musk retweeted the announcement of the new feature, stating that it is "one of many product improvements coming to financial Twitter."
💥Twitter Business expects to expand its coverage of symbols and improve user experience "in the coming weeks."
Brazilian President Signs Off on National Crypto Rules
Crypto firms have 180 days to adapt to the new regulations.
💥President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil has approved a bill of crypto industry regulations most recently passed by the nation’s Senate and Chamber of Deputies.
✔️The bill, signed into law on Thursday, will take effect in 180 days, by which time crypto companies in the region must adapt to the new rules.
✔️Having passed through Parliament in late November, the bill would make it possible for crypto firms to register in the country and establish physical offices. These include firms that offer crypto financing services or allow converting crypto assets into national currencies.
✔️It also paves the way for a new federal agency regulating digital asset firms and establishing a “virtual service provider” license.
✔️Under the law, the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission will oversee digital assets deemed securities. In contrast, others will be regulated by an entity yet to be established.
✔️Similar laws are being fast-tracked and pushed in several jurisdictions after FTX’s implosion last month.
Binance Labs Amassed 2,100% Returns on Investment Since Inception
🔸Binance Labs – the investment arm of crypto exchange Binance – reportedly made a historical return on investment, reaching as high as 2,100%.
♾As a result, the total assets under management have hit $7.5 billion, according to the latest blog post.
💎The platform also assured users its “financial status is very healthy” and added that it has sufficient capital reserves to cover day-to-day operations and ride out any challenging cycles.
Binance Breaks Silence
✔️Binance said all users’ assets in its platform are supported 1:1. Moreover, clients also have the right to withdraw coins at any given time, thereby quashing rumors about sufficient reserves for users to do so.
✔️Taking a jibe at FTX, whose founders are being accused of misappropriating user funds, Binance stated that it would not embezzle such assets for any transactions or investments. The exchange further clarified that it has no debts, nor is it on the list of creditors of any company that has recently gone bankrupt.
“A few negative cases do not represent the entire industry. Many people started to doubt and attack the encryption industry as a whole through a few negative cases, which shows that the development of the entire industry still has a long way to go.”
📣Stay tuned! The market's highlights will be updated by BSCStation 😎
About BSCStation
BSCStation - The fully decentralized protocol for launching new ideas. An all-in-one Incubation Hub with a full-stack Defi platform across all main blockchain networks. We provide exclusive services including IDO/INO Launchpad, Yield farming, NFT Auction, Marketplace, and BSCSwap
BSCStation operates on top of the all main blockchain networks and is designed to offer maximum value to consumers and institutions.
BSCStation platform uses the Sharing Economy Model for the purpose of profit-sharing, helping users to access DeFi platforms in the easiest, safest, and most cost-effective way. BSCStation is the most convenient bridge to connect users and application products on all main blockchain networks.