DeFi duo on the move
What's being bought and sold*
TOP TRENDING ASSETS
*Trading activity in the past 24 hours on the Uphold platform, as of 8 a.m. EST 26th September 2023.
The combined total of buy and sell percentages can exceed 100% due to customers who engage in both buying and selling the same asset within the 24-hour time frame.
All investments and trading are risky and may result in the loss of capital. Cryptoassets are largely unregulated and are therefore not subject to protection.
What’s up
Chainlink, Maker Go Their Own Way, Upward
Major coins shaded mildly green on Tuesday morning with Bitcoin up 0.5% and Ethereum up 1.2% in the past 24 hours as of 7:30 a.m. (EST).
One of the most impressive gainers we found: Chainlink. LINK's spot price of $7.40 is 10% higher compared to last Tuesday. Most digital assets are flat or down in that same seven-day period. LINK, the 19th-largest crypto, rose another 2% in the past 24 hours.
What gives? Last week, Chainlink's daily active address activity hit a 60-day high, Santiment said.
That nearly 4,000 unique addresses engaged with the network is said to be a reflection of greater take-up of the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) which attempts to solve cross-chain security issues. CCIP appeals to developers in the decentralized finance (DeFi) world as well as in traditional finance, or "TradFi." Over the summer, the protocol began its mainnet early access phase, bridging a number of big-time chains, including Avalanche, Ethereum, Optimism, and Polygon.
Meanwhile, MakerDAO, an “OG” of the DeFi space, surged 4.7% in the past 24 hours. Maker (40th-largest coin) is an Ethereum-run smart-contract enabled lending platform allowing users to borrow via collateral exchanged for a decentralized stablecoin, Dai. The all-time high for MKR came in May of 2021 when it hit nearly $6,300. As of today, at 7:56 a.m. (EST), MKR was $1,337, or more than 90% higher than last year at this time.
Recently, per Analytics Insight, a crypto whale known as 0xad0 had purchased 1,261 MKR tokens worth $1.62 million, pushing the price higher. At the same time, MakerDAO's "endgame plan" to reduce "governance fatigue" seems to be taking effect, setting the stage for a "subDAO" focused on DeFi.
SubDAOs are meant to divvy up MakerDAO’s governance plates. SparkDAO is Maker’s DeFi subDAO. The Spark Protocol lending platform has been bustling on the back of sDAI, a yield-bearing token juiced by rising treasury rates (Blockworks).
What's down
BTC Volume Wilts; Binance Woes Worsen
Higher treasury rates are dampening the appetite for risk assets, resulting in Bitcoin’s spot trading volume plunging to a six-year low, according to CryptoQuant.
Reduced volume can't be helping Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, besieged by regulators and in the midst of navigating a treacherous gauntlet of daily do-or-die battles, according to new reporting in the Wall Street Journal.
Binance’s woes and all possible bad-moon-rising scenarios surrounding it would certainly help extend crypto winter, further testing the mettle of long-term holders who thus far have proven unflappable.
CoinGape, citing IntoTheBlock, estimates long-term holders (sitting on 13.44 million BTC) presently account for 69% of circulating supply.
What's next
Digital Asset Management Sector Set To Balloon
The inherently long-term aspect of crypto ultimately could make it a natural asset class for institutional investors.
In fact, analysts at Bernstein now predict crypto fund managers could wind up running some $650 billion in digital funds by 2028.
In a report published yesterday, Bernstein forecast the rise of spot BTC ETFs would take place in the next five years and lure more capital into the crypto market.
Digital asset management, with its $50B in assets under management, is a mere cottage industry at the moment.
Bernstein sees demand being driven by wealth advisors and private bankers easily accessing crypto ETFs in direct broker accounts.
