Tuesday, 13 December 2022

Market Summary

Market Summary 13 December 2022

Bitcoin Price: US$ 17,209.83 (+0.73%)
Ethereum Price: US$ 1,275.40 (+0.98%)

GMX Outperforms As It Approaches An All-Time High

Despite bearish market conditions, GMX has significantly outperformed its peers. The token is up 59% in the last 30 days.
In the same period, GNS (+5%), PERP (-9%), DYDX (-24%), and FST (-34%) have underperformed considerably. Currently, GMX is just 8% away from an all-time high. The token is approaching an all-time high for the third time in the last year.
While some of this can be attributed to the erosion of trust in centralized exchanges after the FTX collapse, GMX has continued to attract unique users and increase volume and open interest.
The GMX token has a strong value accrual mechanism where staked GMX holders earn 30% of protocol fees as well as multiplier points that boost APRs when staked. Users who stake on Arbitrum ETH while those on Avalanche earn AVAX.

The FTX Saga: 20 Things You Need To Know – Delphi Digital in Youtube

In November 2022, the crypto exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy. In the aftermath, there are accusations of fraud, ongoing contagion and $10 billion dollars missing. In this video, we break down the 20 things about the FTX saga, so you can know exactly What Happened.

SBF Charged with Conspiracy, Wire Fraud, Money Laundering by Justice Department, Securities Violations by SEC

After weeks of speculation, the U.S. Department of Justice has officially filed criminal charges against Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO and founder of FTX. Bankman-Fried was arrested on Monday in the Bahamas related to charges by U.S. officials.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams posted on Twitter that the indictment would be unsealed Tuesday morning. Citing a person with knowledge of the matter, the New York Times reports that prosecutors for the Southern District of New York have charged Bankman-Fried with wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy, and money laundering.
Bankman-Fried was the only member of the FTX inner circle—which included Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research and SBF’s former girlfriend, and FTX co-founder Gary Wang—named in the indictment.

Binance Withdrawals Surge as Concerns About Its Reserve Report Spook Traders

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, endured a wave of withdrawals on Monday amid concerns about its proof of reserve report.
Net outflows, the difference between the value of assets arriving and leaving the exchange, hit $902 million in the past 24 hours, according to data by blockchain intelligence platform Nansen.
Binance’s net outflow has surpassed those of all other centralized exchanges’ in the last 24 hours, and is almost nine times larger than the second largest outflow.
The outflow was the highest for Binance since Nov. 13, two days after FTX filed for bankruptcy protection, according to data provided by blockchain data platform Arkham Intelligence.
However, the outflow “doesn’t seem notably anomalous,” Henry Fisher, an Arkham analyst, wrote in a Telegram chat, given that there are ostensibly $64 billions of assets on Binance.
Withdrawals rose following a string of concerning news reports about Binance, and as investors have become increasingly cautious about their funds on centralized exchange. The swift collapse of rival exchange FTX, piled on other industry debacles, has prompted other exchanges to prove that they are safeguarding customers’ assets.

Sam Bankman-Fried arrested in the Bahamas on eve of congressional testimony

Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of the FTX crypto exchange, was detained in the Bahamas just one day before he was scheduled to testify virtually before the U.S. House Financial Services Committee for its first hearing on the collapse of the company.
The surprise arrest followed receipt of formal notification from the U.S. that it filed criminal charges against Bankman-Fried and is likely to request his extradition.
“The Bahamas and the United States have a shared interest in holding accountable all individuals associated with FTX who may have betrayed the public trust and broken the law,” Prime Minister Philip Davis said a statement distributed by local press. “While the United States is pursuing criminal charges against SBF individually, the Bahamas will continue its own regulatory and criminal investigations into the collapse of FTX.”
The news was confirmed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

Polygon’s NFT Market Demonstrates Signs of Significant Increased Adoption, but Not Growth in Sale Volume, Nansen Data Shows

Polygon’s NFT market is currently experiencing significant increased adoption, thanks to its collaborations with name-brand companies such as Reddit.
Despite crypto winter, first-time and returning buyers per day in Polygon’s non-fungible token (NFT) market reached new all-time highs during the last month of the year, per data from blockchain analytics platform Nansen. The surge comes even as NFT ecosystems on other chains such Ethereum and Solana have a decreasing number of users per week.
Solana’s NFT users per week dropped from over 160,000 users in late September to less than 60,000 users today, while Ethereum’ users per week dropped roughly 250,000 users to some 183,000 users in the same time period.

Terra Validators Grant $900K to Security Auditor SCV

Terra validators voted Monday to expand its security measures with a $900,000 grant to SCV Security.
SCV will identify and monitor vulnerabilities, risks and potential threats to the second version of the protocol. The company bills itself as Terra’s “trusted security provider” and says it has conducted white-hat cybersecurity work across the Terra ecosystem and worked directly with Terraform Labs.
“We believe everything is hackable over time as technologies and attack vectors become more sophisticated too,” Vinicious Marino, CEO of SCV, wrote in the proposal.
Marino said SCV would take a “proactive approach” to securing the Terra network by actively monitoring projects to achieve a “bare minimum” of security.

Reddit Users Have Minted More Than 5 Million NFT Avatars on Polygon

Reddit’s push into tokenized avatars has been a rare bright spot amid declining NFT sales and a wider crypto market in turmoil, and now the Polygon-based initiative has marked a new milestone with more than 5 million of the collectibles minted to date.
The Reddit Collectible Avatars NFT initiative crossed the 5 million mark over the past 24 hours, according to blockchain data curated on a Dune dashboard. They’re not highly concentrated among high-value NFT collectors (or whales), either, as the project has more than 4.25 million total unique wallets. About 3.95 million of those wallets hold a single Reddit NFT.

Tron-backed USDD loses dollar parity as stablecoin dips below $0.97

Tron’s algorithmic stablecoin called Decentralized USD, known by its ticker USDD, slipped further from its supposed parity with the US dollar earlier today.
USDD dropped to slightly below 0.97 earlier today before recovering to around $0.98. This marks the second time the stablecoin has slipped out of dollar parity since it was first founded earlier this year. In June, the stablecoin dipped all the way to $0.96 before bouncing back to its intended value.
The drop in USDD’s price comes as liquidity for the stablecoin has shrunk on Curve – an Ethereum-based decentralized platform where traders can trade USDD against three other stablecoins within a liquidity pool. Currently, more than 80% of all funds in the liquidity pool are held in USDD alone, indicating that traders are preferring other stablecoins: USDT, USDC and DAI.

US Prosecutors Look to Charge Binance, Executives on Possible Money Laundering Violations: Reuters

U.S prosecutors are considering criminal charges against crypto exchange Binance and individual executives, including founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao, Reuters reported, citing two people.
The Department of Justice has also discussed possible plea deals with Binance’s lawyers, the report added.
Prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle began investigating Binance in 2018 after a spate of cases that saw criminals use Binance to transfer illicit funds, according to Reuters.
Other prosecutors believe that more evidence needs to be gathered before a criminal case can be filed, causing a split within the Department of Justice.

Tron’s Justin Sun ‘Deploying More Capital’ to Stop Stablecoin USDD’s Slide

On Monday morning, Justin Sun took to Twitter to announce that he had swapped roughly $773,000 worth of Tron’s native stablecoin USDD.
“Deploying more capital—steady lads,” tweeted the Tron founder, mimicking a tweet from Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon just prior to Terra’s collapse in May.
Sun included transaction data that showed him swapping more than $203,000 in USDC and $570,000 in USDT for the USDD stablecoin.

Glassnode 2022 The Year On-chain

After what has been a truly chaotic year, the Bitcoin market has turned very quiet coming into December. Short-term realized volatility for BTC is currently at multi-year lows of 22% (1-week), and 28% (2-weeks), making for the lowest volatility regime since Oct 2020.

Futures volumes are similarly depressed, now probing multi-year lows. Both BTC and ETH markets are currently trading similar volumes between $9.5B and $10.5B per day. This shows the massive impact of tightening liquidity, widespread deleveraging, and the impairment of many lending and trading desks in the space.