BTC, ETH calm investor nerves!

Hello and welcome! It’s yet another day in the cryptosphere and the world of finance. We invite you to begin your crypto trading journey with a quick update on how the market has been trading lower last week with altcoins coming under selling pressure. But first, let’s fuel up at the “Beginner’s pit stop” as you prepare to grow your money.

Wealth creation starts with investing. We bring to you yet another video to help you in your journey to wealth creation. There is a lot of chatter around mutual fund investments. While mutual fund investments might interest you, the information overload can be confusing and might hold you back from investing in mutual funds.

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We strive to bring you fresh content on finance every week, so keep an eye on this space and follow the CoinSwitch Money channel for more! For now, let’s take a look at the markets.

Crypto markets traded lower last week, with altcoins coming under selling pressure and falling sharply in price, though the overall market cap remains just above $1.2 trillion. The overall steadiness is primarily driven by heavyweight market leaders, BTC and ETH which account for a combined share of more than 2/3rd of the total crypto market cap. Both remained rangebound in prices around levels of $29k and $1.8k respectively.

The macro backdrop in the US remains unsettling with the rise in jobless claims and more importantly, the fast-increasing yields on long-term US Treasuries, as the 30-year bond yield surged past 4% last week. Analysts worry that a "higher for longer" interest rate regime will lead to a broader sell-off in risky assets like equities and crypto. Rating agency Fitch too downgraded America’s credit rating from AAA to AA+.

The broader crypto market was a sea of red as altcoins traded lower in weekly prices. Most top-rated tokens came under brisk selling pressure, falling up to 10% in prices during the week. Even for stablecoin major Tether or USDT, there was a slight de-pegging risk as DeFi pools on Curve and Uniswap saw USDT being dumped for other stablecoins like USDC and DAI. One of the worst-performing tokens of last week was Curve's CRV, as a hacker was able to exploit their code and drain out almost $50M of liquidity from their pools.

CRV token fell by 20% during the week following an exploit where hackers darined almost $50M of liquidity from their pools. Litecoin's LTC too faced selling pressure and plunged by 10%, post its rewards halving event last week.

However, there were several token-specific outliers that bucked the trend and gave solid positive returns. SHIB prices were up as the testnet for a bridge with Ethereum went live, bringing the promise of "Shibarium" closer to reality. Optimism's OP Token was up as the OP Stack powered Coinbase's BASE Layer 2, launched their bridge to Ethereum.

But the stand-out top performer for the second week in a row was XDC, surging by almost another 20% in prices, as it continued to make strong partnership announcements, like last week's integration with the Singapore government-backed IMDA's TradeTrust.

To sum it up:

• XDC $0.0718 ⏫ 22.02%

• SHIB $0.00000916 ⏫ 9.00%

• OP $1.73 ⏫ 1.113%

• CRV $0.618 ⏬ 3.62%

• LTC $82.75 ⏬ 11.68%

(All data here is as of 3.15 pm, 7 August 2023.)

As an investor, you probably want to understand what’s causing market movements. So here’s some news to help you process all the action.

• Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy said it entered into an agreement to sell $750 million worth of Class A stock to buy more Bitcoin. Read more here.

• Coinbase’s layer-2 network ‘Base’ built with Optimism’s OP Stack, will open to the public from Wednesday. Base went live for developers in July. Read more here.

• Curve hackers responsible for draining $61 million assets have started returning the assets post a message posted on the Ethereum blockchain by the Curve founder promising a 10% bounty and no legal consequences. Read more here.

• Binance has won a license to operate in Dubai after meeting the pre-conditions since receiving a preparatory license in September 2022. Read more here.

• India, which currently heads the Group of Twenty (G20) club of nations, has released its presidency note on crypto in a bid to have its suggestions included in the framing of global crypto rules. Read more here.

Before you get on with your day, don’t forget to flex those brain muscles with our weekly crypto crossword.

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

See you later, folks!

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