Bitcoin Price: $56,950.56 (-1.43%)
Ethereum Price: $4,630.26 (+4.18%)
ETH/BTC Break Out, A Fearful Market, & Loopring’s L2 Growth
- ETH/BTC is testing the upper trend line for the third time in the past year. ETH/BTC has shown considerable strength as of late, having mostly stayed around the upper bound of its established range. The last time it tested the lower trend line was in Dec 2020.
- ETH generally outperforms BTC when market sentiment is positive, which has been the case for the past 1.5 years. A fresh leg higher could spell more upside for ETH/USD and ETH/BTC.
- Crypto markets have been ravaged by fear in the past month, but futures traders seem to be unfazed by it. With BTC retracing the past week, open interest dipped from ~$23B to ~$19B. At the same time, the Fear & Greed Index nearly hit a state of extreme fear. However, open interest bounced back hard within a few days to levels seen prior to the drawdown. However, sentiment in the market continued to be fearful.
- Over the past 3 months, wallets containing POAPs grew exponentially from ~200K to nearly 600K, with thousands more being added daily. Given Ethereum transaction fees are expensive, the vast majority of POAP minting occurs on the xDAI network.
- Loopring is a ZK-rollup, purpose-built for AMM swaps and orderbook trades. Loopring’s activity has been trending upwards alongside volumes since October. Trades on Loopring are gas-free, which helped the L2 gain traction and surpass $3B in cumulative volume recently.
- Loopring recently deployed Counterfactual Wallet, which enables a gas-free experience on Loopring without paying any wallet deployment cost on L1. As Ethereum scaling wars heat up and gas fees continue to frustrate newcomers, ZK-rollups are definitely a technology people should be learning about.
Ethereum approaches a new ATH, but derivatives data reflects mixed emotions
- Today Ether (ETH) price briefly touched $4,760, exciting investors and reminding the world that the altcoin is a mere 2.2% below the $4,870 all-time high reached 20 days ago.
- Despite Ether’s 17% rally over the past four days, top traders at Huobi and OKEx decreased their longs. This move was even more evident at OKEx because the indicator made a drastic move from favoring bulls by 120% on Nov. 25 to a meager 30% advantage three days later.
- Currently, data indicates that whales and arbitrage desks have reduced their long exposure, while retail traders remain suspicious of the recent bull run.
Solana price eyes $300 as Grayscale launches SOL-backed trust
- Solana (SOL) held onto its intraday gains on Nov. 30 as Grayscale Investments, the largest cryptocurrency fund in the world, announced that it would add SOL to its product line.
- Grayscale’s decision to add Solana into its service portfolio promised to make SOL visible across more high-net-worth and institutional investors.
- That is primarily because of Solana’s incredible growth as a blockchain project in 2021. The layer-one protocol emerged as a rival to fellow smart contracts platform Ethereum after providing users with one of the lowest-costing and fastest public ledgers.
- Now valued at over $70 billion, Solana is still the fourth-largest blockchain by market capitalization, with Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein noting that there is already a “continued appetite” among investors to gain exposure in the blockchain project.
Crypto.com and Silvergate enable institutions to buy and sell crypto with USD
- Major cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com continues expanding its crypto on-ram and off-ramp solutions with a new partnership with the California state-chartered bank Silvergate.
- Crypto.com announced on Tuesday that it is working with Silvergate to allow institutional clients to deposit and withdraw from the exchange using the U.S. dollar (USD).
- According to the announcement, bank transfers to and from the Crypto.com exchange are now available for institutional investors. With the help of Silvergate, institutional clients can transfer USD between their bank accounts and Crypto.com with no fees.
Hedera and Korea’s Shinhan Bank partner on KRW stablecoin pilot
- South Korea’s Shinhan Bank and Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR) have completed a proof of concept that is designed to conduct international remittances using stablecoins on the Hedera Network.
- The new proof of concept by South Korea’s Shinhan Bank for remittances can send money internationally within seconds for a fraction of a cent on the Hedera Network.
- Hedera claims that the average fee per transaction on its network is $0.0001, and the average transaction time is 3–5 seconds, both vast improvements from what is currently available from traditional remittances.
