CMC Market Pulse delivers actionable market insights, giving you all the key narratives and developments you need in under 5 minutes.
Market Overview 📉
Crypto markets drifted lower this week after a positive reaction last Friday to Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole speech. The Fed chair announced that the “time has come” for a rate cut in September. The move culminated in a selloff on Tuesday evening, seeing Bitcoin (BTC) fall just over 6% from $62K to $58K, while Ethereum (ETH) fell 10% from $2,690 to $2,421. While the markets recovered after the dip, both assets ended the week lower, with BTC down 2.73% and ETH down 4.38% over the week.
As expected, liquidations spiked on the selloff, crossing $300M in cumulative liquidations, while liquidations stayed relatively muted for the rest of the week. Funding rates climbed slightly this week, with BTC funding still in the low negative range and ETH in the low positive range.
📌 Nasdaq has filed with the US SEC to list and trade options tracking the Nasdaq Bitcoin Index. If successful, this would make Bitcoin the first cryptocurrency to have listed options on the Nasdaq — Link
📌 ETH spot ETFs finally see a day of positive inflows, carried by BlackRock’s ETHA, after two weeks of consecutive outflows — Link
Why does it matter?
Despite a positive outlook from Jackson Hole on the upcoming September rate cuts, crypto markets can’t seem to catch a sustained bid.
Furthermore, despite the positive results of Nvidia’s earnings, NVDA fell 6.3%, dragging down the equities index and weakening the markets further. Some investors also speculate that the current market movement could also be a symptom of the illiquid nature of summer markets, expecting a reversion upwards as liquidity returns. Despite this, the S&P 500, Dow Jones and Gold all remain strong, trading close to their all-time highs, unlike their digital asset counterparts.
Altcoins weakened against BTC this week, with TOTAL3/BTC losing over 2.07% this week. Among altcoins, selected Tron ecosystem coins continue to do well, with Sundog (SUNDOG) and Sun (SUN) ranking among the week’s top performers. Other strong performers include AI tokens, Nosana (NOS) and the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (FET).
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Narrative of the Week 📰
Ethereum founder, Vitalik Buterin, sparks a debate over the sustainability and importance of the current Ethereum DeFi ecosystem.
📌 Vitalik makes a comment on the lack of sustainability of the DeFi ecosystem, stating that he doesn’t ‘respect’ projects where the yield sources are unsustainable in nature — Link
📌 Andre Cronje releases a new Medium article titled “Why defi?”, discussing why building DeFi is so important for a decentralized society — Link
📌 0xMert weighs in on the debate, agreeing with Vitalik’s sentiment that DeFi cannot exist in isolation, requiring other value-generating inputs to keep the entire ecosystem sustainable — Link
Why does it matter?
DeFi has long been an integral part of the blockchain ecosystem, with DeFi driving much of the bull market in 2020 during DeFi Summer. As the crypto market matures together with new use cases, the DeFi market must adapt as well to support the larger ecosystem and to keep building towards a sustainable future.
Nevertheless, there are also many who question Vitalik’s comments on the need for yield that is “rooted in something external”, with many assuming this to refer to real-world assets, which often tend to be inherently centralized. Moreover, many compare this to the current state of traditional finance, stating that this is not too different from banks, whose main business is credit.
Major Project Updates 🗓️
📌 Ethereum NFT marketplace, Opensea, receives a Wells Notice from the SEC, alleging that NFTs on Opensea are securities — Link
📌 IP-focused chain, Story Protocol, opens up their testnet, Iliad, enabling users to mint an IP Asset on the testnet. The mint was open for 48 hours, which saw 600K mints completed in the time — Link
📌 Sony-backed Ethereum L2, Soneium, launches the Minato Testnet for builders. Alongside the launch, they also announced Soneium Spark, a builder-focused program to support builders on the chain — Link
📌 Polygon releases a summary for the upcoming migration of the MATIC token to POL, their new governance token, on September 4th which enables POL as a gas token for the Polygon ecosystem — Link
📌 Consumer crypto chain, Abstract Chain, announces the Abstract Global Wallet, enabling signing-in with socials, seamless funding and app interaction, without needing to install an extension — Link
📌 NFT marketplace Magic Eden introduces Mint Terminal, an NFT mint aggregator, where users can see all NFT mints, current and upcoming, all in one place — Link
📌 Binance introduces BNSOL, their own SOL liquid staking token, alongside Bybit with bbSOL, and BitGet with BGSOL — Link
Why does it matter?
Despite the increasingly favorable stance towards crypto by the candidates in the upcoming US presidential elections, the SEC has not slowed down in their regulatory action against crypto companies. The latest in this line of targets being the popular NFT marketplace, Opensea.
The SEC is alleging that several collections of NFTs on Opensea are securities, with many suspecting they are referring to collections with features such as staking for rewards. Ironically, the move comes as Republican candidate, Donald Trump, launches his fourth NFT collection, America First.
DeFi Brief 🏦
Source: https://coinmarketcap.com/chain-ranking/
📌 MakerDAO officially rebrands to Sky, with their respective tokens to be upgraded to SKY to replace MKR and USDS to replace DAI. Each MKR token will be upgraded to 24,000 SKY tokens — Link
📌 Solana DEX aggregator, Jupiter Exchange, introduces Jupiter Lock, a feature to allow projects to release tokens over time, all for free — Link
📌 Institutional on-chain lending platform, Maple Finance, proposes the conversion of the MPL token to SYRUP, with a 1:100 conversion ratio as well as turning on active staking of the SYRUP token — Link
📌 Institutional crypto platform, Anchorage Digital, now offers rewards on holding Paypal’s PYUSD on Anchorage Digital or on their self-custodied wallet, Porto — Link
Why does it matter?
Token rebrands have been popular across various projects as they look to revitalize their project and drive attention to their token. The rebrand of MakerDAO and its 1:24,000 token split is just one of many such projects.
However, the move has drawn criticism from the community, with many lamenting the loss of their well-known brands, MakerDAO and DAI. Not to mention, the @MakerDAO X handle was also lost to a user on the platform during the transition, which fortunately was not used for any malicious cause.
Additionally, the introduction of a freeze function to the upgraded stablecoin, USDS, has also drawn flak from the Ethereum DeFi community at large.
Meme Coins 🚀
📌 Pump.fun introduces Stages, enabling multiple users to live stream and screen share at the same time as long as they are onstage. Developers must approve users to come onstage or invite users onstage directly — Link
📌 Football star, Kylian Mbappe’s X account was compromised this week, resulting in the launch and rug of the MBAPPE meme coin — Link
Fundraises 💰
📌 Gameplay Galaxy completes a $24M seed round after a recent $11M seed round extension led by Blockchain Capital and Merit Circle — Link
📌 AI project, Space and Time Labs raises $20M in a Series A funding round led by Framework Ventures, Faction, Arrington Capital and Hivemind, with participation from Microsoft, DCG and more — Link
📌 Solana restaking layer, Solayer, raises $12M in a round led by Polychain, with support from Hack VC, Binance Labs, Maelstrom and more — Link
📌 Stablecoin protocol Level raises $3.6M in funding co-led by Polychain Capital and Dragonfly, with participation from Robot Ventures, Global Coin Research and various angel investors — Link
📌 L1 blockchain, Quai Network, raises $5M in strategic funding with investors including Cogitent Ventures, MH Ventures and Giga Chad Ventures, among others — Link
Airdrops Abound 🎁
📌 Omnichain perpetuals DEX, Orderly Network, opens the ORDER token airdrop for claims, with 13.3% of the total supply airdropped to eligible users — Link
📌 ETH liquid restaking platform, Swell Network, announces a loyalty bonus for their airdrop, with the bonus taking into account how early the user is and their commitment over time to Swell — Link
📌 Telegram-based game, Hamster Kombat, announces their upcoming airdrop date for 26 September — Link
Tweet of the Week 📝
Source: zhusu
Here we go again.
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