September Blues, Arbitrum Goes Off, NFTs Aren’t Dead
- The Fear & Greed index moved into a state of “extreme greed” in August as prices rose across the board. More recently, the market moved sharply into “fear” as major coins sold off last week.
- On Friday, Arbitrum had a TVL of around $170M. That changed over the weekend though, as yield farms for speculative tokens like ArbiNyan and Carbon.fi (which is already down 99%) managed to spur FOMO and cause bridge volume to spike. Arbinyan’s ETH pool currently has over $1.45B of ETH. Meanwhile, Arbitrum’s ETH bridge custodies over ~$2b worth of ETH. It’s worth noting that a single whale wallet was responsible for ~168K ETH bridged.
- Over the weekend we saw a massive uptick in Optimism bridge activity with over 9,000 unique depositors. Notably, the Optimism Twitter handle teased a ‘big news’.
- Several NFT projects have been doing well on the back of utility token implementations. Cool Cats and CyberKongz NFTs have performed well recently despite cold feet in the NFT market.
SEC Plan for Bitcoin ETFs Is Like ‘Favoring One Child Over Another’: Grayscale CEO
- Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein says the SEC’s apparent position on ETFs tied to Bitcoin futures is inconsistent with previous comments.
- In August, Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler suggested the agency might finally open the door to a Bitcoin ETF—a move that would make it easy for investors to buy the cryptocurrency in the form of a stock, and increase overall liquidity for Bitcoin
- In plain English, this could mean that the SEC is likely to give a green light to ETF applications tied to the futures market—synthetic contracts tied to a future price rather than actual quantities of Bitcoin—rather than applications for ETFs backed directly by Bitcoin.
Ethereum, Solana NFT Market Cools Off Following Late Summer Surge
- Overall trading volume has dropped considerably amid a down crypto market, but top-dollar NFTs and new projects are still selling.
- The downturn follows an August resurgence that generated record sales for NFTs.
$2 Billion Flows Into Ethereum Project Arbitrum, Mostly to Farm Nyan Meme Token
- Crypto traders chasing 6,000% returns on NYAN are pouring billions into layer 2 scaling solution Arbitrum.
- Over $2 billion has been pumped into Ethereum scaling solution project Arbitrum in less than one week. Because of surging interest in NYAN, a meme token based on the Nyan cat viral internet sensation.
- Arbitrum is a project that aims to ease congestion on Ethereum and lower transaction fees. Launched on August 31, Arbitrum, which uses tech called “optimistic rollups” to allow Ethereum-based projects to run smoothly, is already being used by two huge projects in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space: lending protocol Aave and decentralized exchange Uniswap.
Before Senate, Chair Gensler will argue that many crypto trading platforms need to register with SEC
- Gary Gensler, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, will appear before a Senate committee Tuesday, where he plans to reiterate his belief that many major cryptocurrency exchanges need to register as securities exchanges.
- “Many platforms have dozens or hundreds of tokens on them. While each token’s legal status depends on its own facts and circumstances, the probability is quite remote that, with 50, 100, or 1,000 tokens, any given platform has zero securities. Make no mistake: To the extent that there are securities on these trading platforms, under our laws they have to register with the Commission unless they qualify for an exemption.”
Tencent mints NFTs to digitize a world heritage — on a private blockchain
- Chinese technology giants have made moves into the non-fungible token (NFT) space but in a localized way where crypto-native features are removed.
- Tencent announced Wednesday that it has partnered with the Dunhuang Academy to digitalize the landmark wall paintings of the Mogao Caves, a UNESCO world heritage site in China’s Gansu province.
- Tencent aims to issue 9,999 pieces of NFTs on its permissioned blockchain Zxinchain that each digitalizes a unique painting from the Mogao Caves.
Sell the news? ADA price drops 10% following Cardano’s long-awaited smart contracts rollout
- The Alonzo upgrade did little in protecting Cardano from falling in tandem with the rest of the cryptocurrency market, though bullish technical factors remain.
- The price of Cardano (ADA) fell on Monday in line with the other top cryptocurrencies despite the completion of its hard fork upgrade dubbed “Alonzo,” which introduced smart contract functionality.
MicroStrategy doles out $240M on additional Bitcoin purchase
- MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor announced the purchase of 5,050 BTC for about $242.9 million at an average of $48,099 per coin.
