Category: Markets

Categories
Crypto News Investing Markets Surveys

Gemini Report Reveals 80% of Aussie Crypto Investors are HODLers

The first global state of crypto report from cryptocurrency exchange Gemini has found that over 80 percent of Australian crypto investors opt to hold their assets long-term. 

The high percentage of committed HODLers in Australia is similar to figures found in other parts of the world – from 72 percent in the Middle East to 85 percent in the US.

The survey, which was conducted online between November 23, 2021, and February 4, 2022,  asked 30,000 people from 20 countries about their attitudes and behaviour relating to cryptocurrency investments in an effort to uncover trends and characterise the current state of the market.

Percentage of investors who buy and hold, and actively trade, by region. Source: Gemini 2022 Global State of Crypto report

2021 a Huge Year for Adoption in Australia and Globally

Another of the major takeaways from the report was just how big a year it was for crypto adoption – 43 percent of Australians surveyed said they first invested in crypto in 2021. Curiously, this finding contrasts sharply with a survey from Saxo Markets released late last year that found only one in 10 Australians had any idea what crypto is.

Globally, the Gemini survey found the 2021 adoption numbers were even higher – 44 percent of Americans surveyed said 2021 was the year they got into crypto, and over half of all respondents from Brazil (51%), Hong Kong (51%) and India (54%) said 2021 was the first time they’d bought crypto.

Future Looks Bright

Based on the findings from its survey, the Gemini report is bullish about the future of crypto, stating:

In 2021, cryptocurrency reached a tipping point, evolving from what many considered a niche investment into a global, established asset class.

2022 Gemini Global State of Crypto report

The report also points out that the overall crypto market capitalisation topped out at almost US$3 trillion in 2021, making crypto the best performing asset class of the past decade.

Another report released late last year by digital asset management firm Mawson was similarly positive, finding that the crypto market in Australia could grow to over A$68 billion by 2030.

Categories
Blockchain Crypto News Markets Tokens Waves

WAVES Protocol is Making Waves, Surging 70% Amid News of US Launch

The price of the Waves blockchain’s token (WAVES) has surged over 70 percent following the March 28 launch of Waves Labs, a US-based organisation tasked with supercharging Waves ecosystem’s growth globally.

According to CoinGecko, WAVES’ value jumped from US$31.80 to US$54 in the 24 hours following the announcement. Since then it’s continued to increase, at the time of writing sitting at US$57.14 – a new all-time high.

Waves Labs to Boost Awareness and Adoption

Waves Labs, which will be headquartered in Miami, US, will spearhead expansion of the Waves ecosystem by pursuing aggressive marketing and hiring strategies and by supporting Waves-based projects with mentoring and funding grants.

Waves founder Sasha Ivanov was optimistic that Waves Labs would further boost the ecosystem despite the network having recently seen record growth, stating:

Waves Labs is a key component of the Waves plan to grow exponentially in 2022. Despite a period of record growth of our ecosystem, Waves remains relatively unknown in the US crypto space. With the founding of Waves Labs, the ecosystem fund, and the extremely talented team in place, I do not doubt that Waves will reach mass adoption in 2022 and beyond. 

Sasha Ivanov, founder, Waves

New Team Brings Crypto Experience

Waves Labs also announced its newly hired senior leadership team, which includes:

  • Aleks Rubin as head of US Operations;
  • Coleman Maher, who previously led business development at Origin Protocol, as head of Ecosystem;
  • Jack Booth, former product marketing lead at Oasis Protocol, as Marketing Lead; and
  • Tiffany Phan as VP of Finance and Operations. 

US head Rubin said: “I am excited to lead this dynamic team as we expand visibility and enhance the utilisation of Waves protocol in the North American market.”

US Launch Follows Bullish Period 

The launch of Waves Labs follows a recent run of bullish news for the network, starting in February of this year: the migration to Waves 2.0; the launch of a US$150 million fund to support Waves-based dApps; and its partnership with Allbridge to facilitate cross-chain interoperability. 

In addition, the total value locked in the Waves ecosystem has boomed recently. In particular, Neutrino – a Waves-based multi-assetisation protocol – has exploded, seeing its total value locked increase over 300 percent in the past month to a new all-time high of US$4.36 billion, including inflows of almost US$450 million in a single day.

Categories
Bitcoin Crypto News Ethereum Investing Markets Solana

Crypto Sees Biggest Institutional Inflows This Year Driven By BTC, ETH and SOL

A report released by crypto asset management firm CoinShares shows that institutional crypto funds have seen their biggest capital inflows since December 2021, with over US$193 million pouring into the funds during the week ending March 25.

This new wave of interest in crypto investment products follows two weeks of outflows from crypto funds and coincides with a 15 percent increase in Bitcoin’s price over the past week.

European Funds, Bitcoin Lead the Way

Of the total inflows, European-based funds saw US$147 million, or around 76 percent, while a relatively paltry US$45 million went into US-based funds.

Bitcoin-focused funds were by far the most popular investment product, seeing US$97.8 in inflows, bringing total inflows since the start of 2022 to US$162 million.

Solana Funds Had Their Best Week, Most Altcoins Did Well

This was the single best week ever for Solana funds, with over US$87 million pouring in – representing 36 percent of assets under management, which now stand at a total of US$241 million. This makes Solana the fifth-largest investment product and the second-largest altcoin behind Ethereum.

Ethereum-focused funds were the second most popular altcoin, with US$10.2 million in inflows; Cardano-focused funds saw US$1.8 million; Polkadot-focused US$1.2 million, and ATOM-focused funds saw around US$800,000.

Flows by asset. Source: CoinShare

Multi-asset funds bucked the trend and recorded US$5.5 million in outflows, which was a surprise since they’ve been relatively popular recently – this being only the second week this year they’ve seen net outflows.

Categories
Bitcoin Cardano Dogecoin Ethereum Markets Polkadot Terra

Crypto Market Holds Firm Over $2 Trillion as BTC Reclaims $47,000 USD

Despite the digital asset market first reaching a US$2 trillion market capitalisation in April 2021, significant economic and geopolitical uncertainty has stifled the sector’s forward momentum in 2022.

However, a confluence of factors have turned things around, resulting in the market lifting above US$2 trillion for the first time in over six weeks:

Global crypto market capitalisation. Source: Coinmarketcap.com

After investors’ frustration at what felt like endless sideways price action, the sentiment across crypto Twitter was distinctly upbeat by the positive moves:

Green Candles for All

Digital assets across the board saw material gains, with the crypto economy’s total value holding above US$2 trillion for five consecutive days.

According to Coinglass data, around US$142 million in short liquidations contributed to bitcoin breaching US$47,000 for the first time since January. No doubt, Terra’s decision to buy US$10 billion in BTC is also at least partially responsible for the surge.

At the time of publication, bitcoin is trading at US$47,664, effectively erasing its losses and pushing past break-even for the year.

BTC price action over past seven days. Source: CoinMarketCap.com

Outside of BTC, altcoins similarly enjoyed a strong comeback, with a veritable feast of green candles on display. Analysts have suggested that the positive returns over the past week may be indicative of an impending bull market:

  • BTC – 12.7 percent
  • ETH – 14.5 percent
  • ADA – 30.4 percent
  • SOL – 22.7 percent
  • BNB – 7.8 percent
  • XRP – 4.8 percent
  • LUNA – 11.8 percent
  • AVAX – 6.7 percent
  • POL -15.2 percent
  • DOGE – 19.6 percent

Market Gets Greedy

It’s been said that fear and greed drive financial markets, and nowhere is that more apparent than in crypto.

Last week, the multifactorial Cryptocurrency Fear and Greed index was at 26 out of a possible 100 (a state of “fear”, one level up from “extreme fear”). Within a week, things have turned around and optimism is in the air.

The index is now tracking at 60, suggesting that investors are getting greedy, but nowhere near the extreme levels above 90 last seen in April 2021.

Despite his equating Bitcoin to rat poison, Warren Buffett’s cautionary words are perhaps worth noting, especially when the market is seemingly on the up:

Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.

Warren Buffett, investor and philanthropist
Categories
Bitcoin Markets Stablecoins Terra

Terra’s Stablecoin UST Market Cap Rises 700% in Past 6 Months

The market capitalisation of the algorithmic stablecoin Terra (UST) has soared in comparison to its longer-running counterpart DAI. Year-to-date, UST’s market cap has increased 700 percent, while DAI’s is up 5.7 percent.

Market capitalisation of UT vs DAI. Source: Galaxy Digital Research

What is Terra?

Terra is a blockchain protocol underpinned by a suite of decentralised stablecoins, the most popular being TerraUSD, or UST, an algorithmic stablecoin that runs on its own Tendermint blockchain. The stablecoins maintain their peg via a coin called LUNA, a volatile cryptocurrency whose elasticity of supply keeps the price of the stablecoin in check.

Voted to Burn

UST trended upwards sharply over the November-December period, starting at under US$3 billion in November. The reason for the major uptake in gains came in mid-November after the Terra community voted to burn 89 million LUNA that had been accumulated in the Terra treasury in exchange for UST. According to the founder of Terra Do Kwon, US$2.7 billion had been minted in this way.

UST Now Interacts With BTC Directly

To understand how Bitcoin links with UST, the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) announced last week that it would be buying US$10 billion worth of Bitcoin, stating that:

As an algorithmic stablecoin, UST’s peg is maintained by a series of open market operations, arbitrage incentives, and countercyclical levers within the Terra protocol to offset market forces pushing the UST peg above or below one USD. LUNA, Terra’s reserve, staking and governance asset, retains an elastic supply to help neutralise directional market pressures impacting the peg.

LFG announcement

Simply put, Bitcoin is used to restore the UST’s peg parity to the US dollar at times when there are market sell-offs.

Categories
Data DeFi Markets Ocean Protocol

OCEAN Surges 70% Amid Protocol Upgrade and Growing Partnership Base

Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) has seen its price soar this month on the back of its anticipated Ocean v4 update, as well as a growing partner list and a thriving grant program.

With many industry leaders claiming that data is becoming the new oil, Ocean Protocol is building infrastructure that enables individuals and businesses to monetise and exchange data on the blockchain.

The protocol has seen its token make some considerable gains this month. According to CoinMarketCap, OCEAN has rallied nearly 70 per cent in March. The coin was trading at a low of US$0.40 on March 7 and from March 18 the price started to rally to a high of around US$0.69. The coin has since stabilised at around US$0.59. On March 21, the cryptocurrency saw a massive 562 percent surge in its 24-hour trading volume, which was responsible for the price spike.

OCEAN/USD price. Source: CoinMarketCap

Upgrades to Ocean Protocol

Some of the main reasons for the rally have been pinned to a few key events happening for Ocean this month. The launch of Ocean v4 is a major upgrade to the protocol and is expected to go into production in Q2 2022:

According to the project, Ocean v4 will include several upgrades including a mechanism that aims to solve rug pulls, one of the NFT industry’s biggest problems. The new protocol upgrade will also see the introduction of data NFTs, which add non-fungible token capabilities to base intellectual property (IP) as a way to help increase revenue streams, as well as providing new means for the community to monetise data.

OceanDAO Breeds TalentDAO

The second factor making OCEAN look more attractive to investors can be the OceanDAO, which serves as a launchpad for new projects. The US$140 million reserve announced in late 2021 was earmarked for grants and is now starting to see some of the fruits. A month ago, the Ocean Shipyard grants program was launched, giving builders their allocation of US$2 million to develop crypto and AI solutions.

More recently, though, TalentDAO has emerged as the winner of OceanDAO’s 15th round of grant rewards. The 16th round of OceanDAO is now under way, offering a pool of 200,000 OCEAN tokens for funding:

Real World Partners

Ocean Protocol has also raised awareness of its mission by having its data power a real-world use case that positively affects those in the food production industry:

In this partnership, Ocean’s Web3 capabilities will be employed to enable data sharing and monetisation so that small farmers can benefit from an extra layer of revenue.

The combined positive sentiment and creation of real value are factors that have contributed to the token’s rally. Recently, crypto companies have been branching out with projects such as IoTeX and Avalanche making various partnerships.

Categories
Blockchain Crypto News Markets OriginTrail

OriginTrail (TRAC) Soars 150% After Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Deal

TRAC, the native token for the OriginTrail network, has soared 150 percent following the rollout of its AidTrust pharmaceutical supply chain tracking system in more than 80 Indian treatment centres, and the launch of an upgrade on its testnet.

According to CoinGecko, the price of TRAC surged from a recent low of US$0.37 on March 16 to a high of US$0.90 on March 23. Over the same timeframe, 24-hour trading volume exploded from just over US$1 million to around US$30 million.

Supply Chain Tracking System Drives Price Action

The launch of AidTrust, a pharmaceutical supply chain tracking and tracing system developed in partnership with British-based BSI Group, has been a major driver of TRAC’s current price action:

The project aims to bring transparency and trust to medicine and vaccine supply chains. It is being rolled out in hospitals and treatment centres in India with plans to bring the system to more than 40 additional countries.

What is OriginTrail?

OriginTrail isn’t actually a blockchain – it’s a set of protocols run on a decentralised network of nodes that can augment blockchain functionality by enabling trusted data sharing between organisations and blockchains. 

Using OriginTrail, information from disparate sources – including different blockchains and oracles – can be shared and secured in what is known as a decentralised knowledge graph, which is searchable. It’s like a Google for blockchains.

The TRAC token functions as both collateral to ensure the accuracy and immutability of data and as a form of payment to compensate data holders for the use of their resources.

Origin Trail v6 Launched on Testnet

A second important driver of the price increases was the testnet launch on March 10 of OriginTrail v6, the latest version of the decentralised knowledge graph protocol. This update introduces a range of new features which aim to bring enhanced ‘Google-like’ capabilities to Web3:

The latest upgrade also significantly improves the scalability and performance of OriginalTrail. Following a thorough testing phase, OriginTrail v6 will launch on mainnet later in the year:

Blockchain-based supply chain tracking systems similar to OriginTrail, such as the Australian-based Security Matters, saw significant interest earlier in the Covid pandemic as transparency and trust within vaccine handling supply chains became a major point of concern.

Categories
Bitcoin Crypto News Economics Markets

US Inflation Hits Four Decade High of 7.9%

US inflation has hit a new 40-year high of 7.9 percent, driven by a surge in gas, food and housing costs, all of which are expected to increase further as geopolitical conflict intensifies in Ukraine.

From Bad to Worse

For the 12 months ending December 2021, US consumer price inflation (CPI) hit 7 percent, which at the time was the highest in four decades.

While Bitcoiners and other hard money advocates warned that more pain was potentially on the horizon, many mainstream commentators remained committed to the “inflation is transitory” narrative, citing Covid-related supply chain bottlenecks. They also referred to so-called “base effects”, a distortion in monthly inflation figures resulting from abnormally high or low levels of inflation in the year-ago month.

Turns out that inflation is stickier than anticipated, as the latest figures represent the highest CPI print since July 1981:

Latest CPI figures. Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics

Costs are up across the board, but some segments are clearly increasing at a faster clip than others. Energy, fuel, transport and housing have experienced the most dramatic increases, as illustrated below:

Image
Illustration of CPI increase line by line. Source: Yahoo Finance

All of this assumes that you take the official CPI statistics at face value, which those in the Bitcoin world don’t:

Bitcoin Offers No Short-Term Relief, More Pain on the Horizon?

Bitcoin held steady on the news at US$39,300, confirming what most market participants believe – namely that in the short-run, it remains a risk-on asset. Interestingly, this trend was recently reversed amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but the point remains.

All of this is happening at a time when commentators are signalling that the US stock market is due for a serious correction:

The US markets have been in a bull market since 2010 and some have been screaming for a market correction for months, if not years. It’s entirely inevitable that the party will end. The timing, of course, remains unknown.

In the interim, ordinary consumers will continue to feel the pain as inflation, regarded by some as “tax without legislation”, continues to far outpace domestic wage increases.

Categories
Blockchain Crypto News ICON Korea Markets Regulation

New South Korea President Sends ICX Token Soaring 70%

The native token of the South Korean-based ICON blockchain, ICX, has jumped 70 percent following the election of a new crypto-friendly president.

In the 24 hours following the election of Yoon Suk-yeol, the ICX token went from a low of US$0.61 to a high of US$1.06. It has since retraced some of those gains and currently sits at US$0.83 – still down some 93 percent from its all-time high of US$13.16, reached in January 2018.

Crypto Plays Important Role in Close Result

Yoon Suk-yeol, who only came to politics in 2021 having previously worked as a high profile prosecutor, was the candidate for the conservative opposition party, People Power Party. His victory was not clear-cut, with the final margin being under 1 percent, reflecting how contentious politics has become in South Korea recently.

Suk-yeol ran on a platform promising to deregulate digital asset markets, lower taxes on crypto and reimburse victims of crypto fraud, in addition to tackling the stagnating South Korean economy and soaring housing prices.

New Direction for Crypto in South Korea

The previous South Korean president, Moon Jae-In, had been relatively anti-crypto, cracking down on South Korean-based exchanges in 2021 and forcing the vast majority of them to shut down.

The new president has taken a forward-looking approach to crypto, vowing to take what he characterises as a more realistic regulatory stance:

To realise the unlimited potential of the virtual asset market, we must overhaul regulations that are far from reality and unreasonable.

Newly elected South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol

Crypto Becoming More Politically Relevant 

In a sign of its growing political significance, crypto was used by both major parties to appeal to younger demographics. In addition to offering crypto-friendly policies, the candidates from both major parties minted election-related NFTs to demonstrate their crypto bonafides during the campaign.

Following the executive order released by US President Biden this week, this election in South Korea may signal the beginning of a trend towards increased regulatory clarity and adoption for cryptocurrencies globally.

Categories
Crypto News Markets Monero Privacy Regulation Zcash

Privacy Coins XMR, ZCASH Surge Amid Political and Regulatory Uncertainty

The past 24 hours has been kind to privacy coins, with many seeing gains of over 20 percent amid concerns about the regulatory environment in the US, a crackdown by exchanges on accounts linked to Russia, and ongoing economic sanctions.

Monero, the largest privacy coin by market cap, shot up 22 percent in under three hours according to CoinGecko, peaking at almost US$206 before consolidating around the US$185-190 range.

Likewise, Zcash is up over 30 percent since March 8, having climbed from US$106 and is currently trading at close to US$145, according to CoinGecko. This rally from Zcash follows a significant bounce in November 2021 after the announcement of plans to transition to a proof-of-stake blockchain.

Smaller Privacy Coins Also Up

The surge in privacy coins hasn’t been limited to the large caps; most smaller plays are also up significantly in the past day: Oasis has gained 10.4 percent, Secret is up 14.5 percent and Horizen 17 percent.

Even low-cap and relatively unknown privacy protocols are surging: Pirate Chain is up 18 percent, Tornado Cash 32.7 percent and Verge by 25 percent, all in the past 24 hours.

What Caused the Surge?

Opinion is divided on what exactly has sparked this sudden surge in privacy coins, and there are likely several factors at play.

The release of the crypto executive order by President Biden, with its focus on consumer protection and illicit activity along with the suspension by Coinbase of over 25,000 addresses linked to Russian criminals, are thought to be important factors.

There is also some speculation that Russian oligarchs may be buying up privacy coins to help them get around economic sanctions while maintaining their anonymity:

To put the surge in privacy coins in context, according to CoinMarketCap the overall crypto market cap is up around 4 percent over the past 48 hours.