Crypto market afflicted by banking stress 🤯

At the start of last week, the decoupling between crypto and traditional finance continued. Crypto prices rose higher as US regional banks were crushed and European giant Credit Suisse saved itself by merging with multinational investment bank UBS. Then a Fed interest rate hike of another 25 bps changed things temporarily.

The prices of top crypto assets, including BTC, ETH, BNB, ADA, and MATIC, dropped sharply. Much of this price action was due to risks lingering in the banking system and an intensification of the US regulatory crackdown on crypto. For instance, crypto exchange Coinbase received a Wells notice from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Their staking and asset listing services were said to be in violation of the securities law.

However, despite everything, the top cryptos recovered in a short while. BTC is trading sideways between $27,200 and $28,500 for now. And the Ripple vs. SEC case was the silver lining. Ripple’s XRP token was not declared security, giving the Ripple community a confidence boost. As a result, XRP saw a 25% hike.

The release of key economic data such as US Consumer Confidence numbers on Tuesday, US Initial Jobless Claims on Thursday, and the annual inflation rate for the Eurozone and month-on-month US core inflation data on Friday are expected to have an impact on the crypto market this week.

That’s all about the broader market. Now let’s zoom in on some key coins, starting with the on-chain activity of ICP.

ICP is the native token of Internet Computer. It is currently ranks at #40 in terms of market capitalization. The on-chain activity of ICP is making us wonder if it is on the verge of mass adoption this week.

On-chain analytics platform Santiment shows that the blockchain has been attracting a huge number of developers. It currently features 81 projects, and most of them are in the Web 3.0 domain. Blockchain tools and DeFi projects are also quite common now. The rising developer count is positive news as it indicates robustness and an ability to support growth.

In terms of price, ICP has shown significant growth YTD. The price rose from $4 to a high of $7.96 in this period, before correcting. Although ICP is at $4.89 at press time, the increasing developer count continues to remain promising.

Litecoin

Moving to the next coin of focus, let’s look at Litecoin (LTC), the crypto that copies Bitcoin’s code. Amid the rise in market volatility and the many sell-offs among top cryptos, LTC is witnessing some strong price action.

LTC has been holding on to the support level at ₹7,850 for four days now. If LTC manages to close above ₹8,200 today, it may reach touch the ₹8,500 level or move even higher.

The 50 Exponential Moving Average (EMA) line is likely to provide strong support to LTC. All other key technical indicators—like the Relative Strength Index (RSI) and the Moving Average Convergence-Divergence (MACD)—are also hinting at the possibility of bullish momentum.

As Litcoin’s halving event date approaches (on 5 August 2023), we may see even more activity at its counter. This, of course, could translate into positive price action. The key word is could, so as always, keep that research of your own going.

If you are new to charts, read our beginner’s guide to TradingView charts. 

SNX

Moving on to the coin that has always managed to stay in the news for its positive developments, SNX, on 17 March, the Synthetix network’s Kwenta trading platform recorded $479.8 million in trading volume for the first time, according to Dune Analytics. This brought home more than $511,000 in trading fees for the derivatives liquidity platform.

The surge could be due to traders bidding to qualify for the upcoming OP token rewards on the platform. Synthetix will be distributing $8 million of the Optimism protocol’s governance tokens to its perpetual swaps users. The network has been storing them in its treasury since Optimism Foundation gave it to them in July 2022.

In another positive development, Synthetix also managed to secure funding worth $20 million last week. The funding was the outcome of a partnership with the Web 3.0 investment and quantitative trading firm DWF Labs.

As part of the deal, DWF is expected to increase SNX tokens’ liquidity and market-making across exchanges.

Before we call it a day, let’s take a quick look at some other important news updates in the crypto world last week.

ARB token price rises, then plunges by 90%

Following the successful airdrop of ARB tokens last week, Arbitrum became one of the top 40 cryptos with a market cap of $1.6 billion. However, after the initial surge, a sell-off brought the explosive growth to a halt. ARB’s price fell 90% in value after briefly touching $8.76. It is trading at $1.30 at press time. (Source: Decrypt)

Brief outages on Avalanche

Avalanche reported a brief outage on its C and X chains on 23 March 2022. The outages were triggered by a bug in a new software. The C-chain is home to Avalanche’s DeFi community, and X-chain is the exchange chain for fund transfers. After an hour-long outage, both chains began to work again but their performance was degraded. The price of AVAX tokens dropped but has now recovered. (Source: Coindesk)

Tron founder Justin Sun sued by SEC

The US SEC on Wednesday charged Justin Sun with selling and airdropping unregistered securities, as well as fraud and market manipulation. The unregistered securities in question were BTT and TRX tokens. Sun is also charged with a wash trading scheme inflating the TRX trading volume. TRX fell by over 13% on the SEC charge. (Source: Coindesk)

UAE unveils digital Dirham strategy

Last week, the UAE unveiled its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) strategy. The first phase of the digital Dirham will be completed in the next 12–15 months.

The strategy is built on three pillars. The first is the soft launch of the ongoing project mBridge, a collaboration between the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the central banks of Hong Kong, mainland China, and Thailand, in addition to that of the UAE. The aim is to investigate cross-border and multi-CBDC payments. The second pillar consists of Proof of Concept work for a bilateral CBDC bridge with India. And the third consists of Proof of Concept work for a domestic wholesale and retail CBDC. (Source: Coindesk)

That’s it for now. Thanks for sticking around.

See you later, folks.

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