💡 Bitcoin is currently trading flat. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) suggests that Bitcoin is the most oversold it has been since the Covid-induced collapse. The recent crypto sell-off has resulted in a loss of $1.5 billion in open interest, causing funding rates to dip negative. In the past week, meme coins such as PEPE and SHIB have fallen by more than 20%. This week, token unlocks for Avalanche and Lido are worth over $120 million. Coinbase has taken a stake in Circle and is launching USDC on six new blockchains.
The price of Bitcoin is currently holding at $26K, and recent derivatives data suggests that the recent spike in volatility may be coming to an end. While Bitcoin traders had grown accustomed to a period of less volatility in recent months, historical data shows that significant price swings of up to 10% in just two or three days are not uncommon for the cryptocurrency.
The sudden correction of 11.4%, from $29,340 to $25,980, between August 15 and August 18 caught many by surprise and resulted in the largest liquidation since the FTX.
Bitcoin's 14-day relative strength index (RSI) has dropped well below 30, indicating oversold conditions. This is the lowest reading since the coronavirus-induced crash of March 2020. The RSI is a momentum indicator that ranges from 0 to 100 and reflects the asset's recent price movement relative to its average price movement over a specific period, typically 14 days.
A reading below 30 indicates oversold conditions, which means that the price has dropped too quickly compared to its recent average. Conversely, a reading above 70 indicates overbought conditions.
However, an oversold RSI reading simply means that prices have dropped too quickly, while an overbought reading indicates that prices have rallied too fast. In this case, the below-30 or oversold reading on the RSI suggests a strengthening bearish momentum.
Data shows that the total open interest for Bitcoin, which measures the total outstanding futures contracts, decreased by just under $1.5 billion across Bybit, Binance, OKX, and Deribit.
Rising open interest typically indicates increased interest or bullish sentiment, with new money flowing into the market. Conversely, declining interest suggests bearish sentiment, with the market becoming less interested in the underlying asset.Open interest for large-cap digital assets decreased between 2% and 25%. The sell-off led by Bitcoin caused futures open-interest-weighted funding rates to fall into negative territory, reaching their lowest point since March.
Last week, meme coins Pepe (PEPE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) were the market's biggest bulls. However, they have now turned into the market's biggest bears. According to CoinGecko, both coins have plummeted in value over the last seven days, posting losses of over 20%.
PEPE is leading the fall with a 22% drop and is currently changing hands at $0.00000111. Meanwhile, SHIB's intra-week decline is almost as severe, with the Dogecoin contender crashing 21.6% to trade at $0.00000818 on Monday morning.
Two weeks ago, PEPE rallied hard and added $150 million to its market cap, hitting 71st place on the biggest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. However, all those gains have been virtually wiped out over the last seven days, and it's now sitting at 84th place.
SHIB's disappointing price performance may have been catalyzed by an underwhelming Shibarium launch. Shibarium is the Shiba Inu network's layer-2 blockchain on Ethereum.
Layer 1 blockchain Avalanche has released 9.54 million AVAX tokens, equivalent to 2.77% of its circulating supply, worth $102.1 million, on Aug. 26. The team will receive around $48 million, strategic partners $24 million, the Avalanche Foundation $17.8 million, and $12 million will be allocated for airdrops. This is the same amount of tokens released during the last unlock in May, which caused the AVAX token to drop over 20% from $14.53 to $11.33. Currently, AVAX is trading at $10.68.
Lido, an Ethereum liquid staking solution, had the most significant unlock this week, with 8.5 million LDO tokens released on Aug. 25. All tokens will go to investors, which represents Lido's final cliff unlock. Other tokens with smaller unlocks scheduled for this week include Polkadot DeFi hub Acala's token, DeFi aggregator 1inch Network's 1INCH, and yield-trading protocol Pendle's token.
In other news, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced on Monday that it is increasing its support for stablecoins by taking an equity stake in Circle. As per the agreement, Circle will have full control over USDC issuance and governance, and the stablecoin will be launching on six new blockchains.
"The nature of the investment means that Coinbase and Circle will now have even greater strategic and economic alignment on the future of the financial system," said Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire in a joint statement. The companies stated that USDC will launch on the new blockchains sometime between September and October.
Earlier this month, Coinbase reported generating $151 million in USDC stablecoin interest income during the second quarter, down from $199 million in the previous quarter, citing a 28% decrease in USDC market cap as a contributing factor. Coinbase took to Twitter to state that buying a stake in Circle and changing the governance of USDC should not impact the financial outlook that the company reported during its second-quarter earnings.
Explore the latest investments made by prominent crypto venture capital funds.
AI services have become increasingly important in aiding decision-making and scaling the operations of organizations. In this regard, the project's use of a blockchain-based environment for executing AI computations among the nodes participating in the network has proven to be highly effective. To further enhance the project's capabilities and expand its offerings, the capital raised will be used to grow the team of developers and bring on board new organizations. It is worth noting that Jada also operates in a similar blockchain-based environment where AI computations are executed among the nodes participating in the network, which underscores the importance of this approach in driving innovation and efficiency in the field of AI services.
BitGo, a U.S.-based digital asset custody firm, has raised $100 million in a Series C funding round at a valuation of $1.75 billion. The company's previous funding of $57.5 million in Series B was secured in 2017/18 with the participation of Goldman Sachs Growth, DRW, Galaxy Digital, and other investors.
BitGo has experienced a significant increase in its client base by 60% since the beginning of the year, along with a 20% rise in assets under custody. Notable customers include Nike, Swan Bitcoin, and Mysten. The company is also providing custody for FTX funds in bankruptcy.
Earlier this year, BitGo made an offer to acquire another custodian, Prime Trust. However, the deal fell through after rumors emerged of a shortfall in customer funds. Prime Trust filed for Chapter 11 this week. Belshe, the CEO of BitGo, plans to use the funds to acquire other companies, with two potential acquisitions currently in the pipeline.
Website || Twitter || Linkedin
ZetaChain, a Layer-1 network, has raised $27 million to support its chain-agnostic platform, as per an announcement made on Aug. 16. The platform, created in 2021, aims to provide standardized interoperability between networks, allowing non-smart contract chains to interact with the broader decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. This means that developers can implement smart contracts on networks that don't support the technology, such as Bitcoin and Dogecoin.
ZetaChain reports that it has witnessed over 27,000 DApp contracts being deployed on the platform by a diverse range of third-party applications, including cross-chain DeFI, nonfungible tokens, Web3 identity, and gaming protocols. The protocol claims that over 13 million transactions have been performed on its testnet by more than 1.7 million users.
Website || Twitter || Telegram
On August 21, 2023, the Friend.Tech application achieved third place in daily transaction fee volume according to the DeFiLlama ranking, surpassing Convex Finance and PancakeSwap.
In just two days, August 19 and 20, the project generated approximately $2.5 million in fees. As of this writing, the total value locked (TVL) in its smart contracts is around $7.5 million.
This protocol is launched on the second-layer Base blockchain and positioned as a Social Finance (SoFi) platform. The application enables influencers to monetize their audience by selling shares, while users gain access to private communication channels.
Each platform user can issue their own shares or trade existing assets. The latter are not tokens; their issuance and tracking are managed on friend.tech servers.
A 10% commission is charged for transactions, with 5% going to the platform itself and 5% to the share issuer. A unique feature of the service is its straightforward valuation mechanism that depends on the available supply.
This means that the price of assets increases with each subsequent purchase and decreases with each sale, making the assets available on friend.tech volatile.
The application was launched on August 11, 2023. However, DeFiLlama recorded the first capital movements on August 17, when the service's total value locked (TVL) increased from $0 to $1.3 million in a day. As of August 22, this figure has already exceeded $7 million. Correspondingly, the platform's profit is also growing.
At the time of writing this article, the total trading volume on friend.tech is 38,884 ETH, and there are an estimated 86,092 active addresses.
The fastest increase in the number of users and transactions was recorded during the period from August 18 to August 20. At its peak, the daily growth of addresses reached 17,000.
On August 18, 2023, the service hinted at its intention to attract investments from Paradigm. The size of the investment round was not disclosed, but at the time of writing this article, the partnership announcement post had garnered 1.3 million views.
Paradigm is one of the largest venture capital firms in the cryptocurrency market. It has invested in early-stage projects such as Blur, Optimism, and Cosmos. According to CryptoRank, Paradigm ranks 13th in terms of investments.
On August 19, 2023, friend.tech conducted its first point giveaway for 44,000 users. The team announced that they plan to distribute 100 million points during the beta testing period (next six months). Key features of the giveaway include:
It is currently unclear whether these points can be exchanged for tokens or other rewards. However, one user calculated that the value of one point could be around $0.6.
The data provided by Dune and DeFiLlama demonstrate that the announcement of investments from Paradigm and the subsequent points giveaway coincided with the period of most active growth in the number of users and project TVL.
The social network Friend.Tech operates on the second-layer Base blockchain. The application enables influencers to monetize their audience through share sales, while users gain access to private communication channels. Every platform visitor can issue their own shares or trade existing assets.
Conferences are a great opportunity to grab the attention of the whales in the crypto industry, spread the word about your project and win some funds! A quick line-up of the upcoming conferences below!
Coinfest Asia 2023👥 Conference🌐 Bali, Indonesia📆 Date: 24 Aug 2023
Korea Blockchain Week 2023👥 Conference🌐 Seoul, Korea📆 Date: 04 Sept 2023
Nordic Blockchain Conference 2023👥 Conference🌐 Langelinie, Denmark📆 Date: 06 Sept 2023
TradeTech FX 2023👥 Conference🌐 Paris, France📆 Date: 12 Sept 2023
MoneyLIVE Asia👥 Conference🌐 Singapore, Singapore📆 Date: 12 Sept 2023
Global InsurTech Summit USA👥 Conference🌐 New York, United States📆 Date: 26 Sept 2023
Global RegTech Summit USA👥 Conference🌐 New York, United States📆 Date: 28 Sept 2023
SmartCon 2023👥 Conference🌐 Barcelona, Spain📆 Date: 02 Oct 2023
CoinAgenda Global Conference👥 Conference🌐 Santa Monica📆 Date: 03 Oct 2023
