Crypto markets trade sideways even as mainstream adoption gains steam

Hello, and welcome to your weekly update from the world of crypto and finance. The past week was historic for crypto's mainstream adoption, but moves weren't captured in price action. The market, overall, seems to be headed toward price stability. Investors appear to be in the wait-and-see mode—read neutral—as showcased by the Fear and Greed Index.

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We promise to keep bringing you many more such investment demystifying videos, so check in next week—same time, same place. For now, let’s take a quick look at the crypto market’s fortunes.

Crypto markets remained rangebound last week, with most tokens experiencing lower price volatility and the overall crypto market capitalization remaining just above $1.2 trillion.

Market leaders BTC and ETH, remained anchored to their price levels of $29k and $1.8k respectively. This comes in the backdrop of rapidly reducing volatility in BTC prices, which has historically been followed by strong directional moves. For that to happen though, trading volumes need to bounce back, which too have trended lower in the past few weeks.

Another major issue that continued to keep broader markets on edge was the slight but persistent de-peg of the largest stablecoin Tether, as major stablecoin pools on Curve saw brisk dumping of USDT for USDC and DAI.

Although not being captured in the price action, it has been a historic week for crypto's mainstream adoption with two major announcements from the US. First was the launch of Fintech giant PayPal's US$ Stablecoin built on Ethereum and managed by Paxos, ushering in the era of private stablecoins. The other was the Mainnet launch of Ethereum Layer2 Base by Coinbase, which is built using Optimism's OP stack.

While the broader crypto markets, prices largely remained rangebound with slight downward pressure there were certain outliers that surprised with positive price action.

Popular meme token SHIB, led the charge rising more than 10% in price as its bridge to Ethereum and mainnet launch of Shibarium continued gaining interest. Another token that pumped in prices due to its planned partnerships was Hedra's HBAR, which announced it'll be working closely with automotive giants Hyundai and Kia.

• BTC $29,383 ⏫ 1.33%

• ETH $1,847 ⏫ 0.96%

• SHIB $0.00001038 ⏫ 12.12%

• HBAR $0.06483 ⏫ 17.92%

(All data here is as of 12.30 pm, 14 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.

• Aptos (APT) tokens surged as much as 15% on 10 August after the network announced a partnership with Microsoft. Just over 2% of the APT supply—worth $33 million at current prices—is set to be unlocked on August 12. Read more here.

• Credit card giant Visa Inc. thinks paying fees for transactions on the Ethereum blockchain is too complicated for most people. The company completed testing a new way to allow users to pay the fees, known as “gas fees” in fiat currency with their credit card. Read more here.

• David Rubenstein, co-founder and co-chairman of private-equity giant Carlyle Group said he believes Bitcoin (BTC) is here to stay, thanks to growing institutional interest shown by BlackRock’s application for a spot Bitcoin ETF. Read more here.

• India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology wants to enable users to use crypto tokens to digitally sign documents in a new indigenous web browser. Read more here.

• The US SEC extended its review of the Ark21Shares bitcoin exchange-traded fund application as it continues to look at applications from Trad-Fi players like BlackRock and Fidelity Investments. 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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