- Switch Weekly
- Posts
- Bitcoin rally takes a summer break 🥵
Bitcoin rally takes a summer break 🥵
BTC loses momentum, trading sideways
Crypto market mixed bag; lots of token-specific action
At the beginning of last week, the markets were in the green—thanks to a rally led by BTC (trading above $30K) and ETH (trading over $2K). But there was a sudden change in market course mid-week. With investors turning more risk-off, the overall market cap fell just below $1.2 trillion on 19 April.
Weekly Market Data
Updated as of 24th April, 11 am
BTC saw a 7.5% week-on-week drop and is trading below $28K at press time. The second largest crypto by market cap, ETH, is down by an even larger margin of 11%. It is trading under $1.9K as of 11.30 am on 24 April. The biggest fear among investors was around Ethereum’s stakers withdrawing their ETH en masse. Were that to happen, there would be a huge spike in sell pressure. Thankfully it didn’t. ETH staking deposits have turned net positive after a just a few days of high withdrawals.
Other cryptos were a volatile mixed bag, and pockets of despair and exuberance existed in tandem! Amongst large-cap tokens, OKB, the exchange token for OKX, witnessed a massive surge of close to 30% last week. This was due, in part, to the announcement regarding the new OKBChain. (It will be a Layer-2 chain on Ethereum and will transition from a sidechain to ZK technology.)
Arbitrum’s token too witnessed a strong price rise of around 25% last week. Lido contemplating an ARB airdrop to boost Arbirtrum’s network activity was behind the surge. Another major upmove was by DOGE (up 5%). Its success continues to be linked to the fortune of its chief ambassador, Elon Musk! Musk’s SpaceX launched the world’s largest rocket ever, StarShip, sending DOGE further up.
On the other end of the spectrum, Algorand’s token witnessed heavy selling pressure after SEC’s Bittrex lawsuit classified several crypto tokens, including ALGO, as securities. ALGO went down by around 10% over the week. Another major laggard was Bitcoin’s Layer 2, Stacks (STX). STX witnessed heavy selling and the price fell by close to 15%.
BTC whales are in accumulation mode
Price surge apart, Bitcoin registered some interesting on-chain trends that warrant a closer look. After a month-long dump, BTC whales are back in accumulation mode. Earlier last week, the whale addresses acquired close to 20,000 BTC. These whales hold over 20% of the circulating supply.
Meanwhile, shrimps—meaning crypto addresses with less than 1 BTC—now hold 6.7% of the entire circulating supply. Since the LUNA crash in May 2022, shrimps have added 1.78% of the circulating supply to their holdings, according to on-chain market intelligence provider, Glassnode. And they have continued holding despite multiple market crises!
Ethereum
The success of the Shapella upgrade has spurred institutional interest in ETH staking, making it our coin of the week. Top institutional-grade staking services have recorded a three-time hike in ETH inflow in April compared to the previous month. Almost 80% of the influx occurred after 12 April 2023.
Kiln, one of these service providers, conducted a survey in February which revealed that 68% respondents intend to stake more post-Shapella. The firm even recorded 24,640 new ETH deposits since the upgrade.
Also, in another development, the developers have started work on Ethereum’s next big upgrade—Cancun-Deneb. The upgrade is expected to take place later this year. It is expected to make Ethereum cheaper and augment its scalability.
Before we close, a quick look at the news to help you do your fundamental analysis.
EU approves crypto regulations
In a historic move, last Thursday, lawmakers in the EU voted in favor of the new crypto licensing regime, MiCA, and other laws related to the transfer of funds regulation. The development makes the EU the world’s first major jurisdiction to enact comprehensive crypto legislation. The regulation will take effect in 2024. It was first proposed by the European Commission in 2020. (Source: Coindesk)
Helium completes Solana migration
The crypto-powered wireless network Helium successfully migrated to Solana on 19 April. Each physical hotspot node on the Helium network received an NFT as part of the migration. So close to 1 million NFTs were minted in the process. The transition aims to make Helium cheaper and deploy decentralized wireless infrastructure more rapidly on a global scale. (Source: Decrypt)
Unchained Capital raises $60 million
According to a press release from last Tuesday, Unchained Capital, a Bitcoin financial services firm, has completed a $60 million Series B funding round. The round was led by Valor Equity Partners and included crypto asset-management giant NYDIG. The new funds will be used to expand the client base, improve the existing product suite, and expand product offerings.
Given the severity of bearishness in the market in Q1 2023, the fundraising is rather significant. Unchained has not always remained immune to the pressures of the crypto winter, though. It cut 15% of its workforce in the middle of November 2022. (Source: Coindesk)
Societe Generale introduces Euro stablecoin
SG Forge, the crypto division of French banking giant Societe Generale, launched a euro-pegged stablecoin on 20 April. The stablecoin operates on the Ethereum blockchain. This is the first such asset deployed on the public blockchain.
The asset called EUR CoinVertible (EURCV) will be made available to institutional clients in an attempt to bridge the gap between traditional markets and digital assets. SG Forge stated that it is responding to client demand for a robust settlement asset for on-chain transactions as well as a method for on-chain liquidity funding and refinancing. (Source: Coindesk)
Trezor wallet launches privacy feature
Hardware wallet manufacturer Trezor rolled out a new privacy feature called CoinJoin for its BTC transactions on 19 April. Multiple users can now pool their BTC inputs into a single transaction and receive the same amount of BTC output while retaining different addresses. Since the move effectively makes the mixing of inputs possible, it makes it more difficult to trace individual transactions. (Source: Decrypt)
That’s it for now. Thanks for sticking around.
See you later, folks.đź‘‹
Loving Switch Weekly? Make sure to spread the love and hit share!