Market Summary

PBOC Signals Support, dYdX Flips Coinbase

• Macro and regulatory overhangs continue to linger as most of the market has been in the red today.
• The PBOC signaled support by injecting net 100B Yuan (~$16B) into market operations as Evergrande fears continue. Events like these tend to make markets more confident, however, given the lack of a strong bounce, it seems improving debt liquidity hasn’t had the full desired impact.
• Crypto markets dipped on Friday following news that China banned crypto…..again, before recovering slightly heading into Monday.
• Unless a clear catalyst or shift in market structure takes place, ETH is likely to continue trading within this broad range.
• Despite a solid bout of mean reversion over the weekend, it appears that markets are still gripped by fear as price action stalls out. The Fear & Greed index has been hovering around ~25 (a state of fear) for the past few days.
• While dYdX continues to dominate the DeFi perps market, it also recently achieved another significant milestone – eclipsing Coinbase’s 24H trading volume. This is the first time a derivatives DEX has been able to outperform a major centralized exchange in terms of volume.

Immutable X raises $12.5 million in under an hour through CoinList token sale

• The company behind Immutable X, an NFT-focused Layer 2 scaling protocol, announced Monday that it raised $12.5 million in under an hour from its $IMX token sale. 
• According to a tweet, Immutable X received over 720,000 unique token registrations but only gained 25,000 new $IMX token holders. Still, the startup raised $12.5 million in less than an hour in a sale that occurred on Coi+
• Immutable X was created by Immutable, an Australian startup that aims to reduce transaction fees down to zero and provide instantaneous trading on Ethereum.

Facebook Is Spending $50 Million to Build Metaverse—’Responsibly’

• Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in June that the social media giant is on a path to become “a metaverse company.” Now the firm is putting its money where its mouth is, revealing plans to spend $50 million over the next two years to help bring the metaverse to life.
• Today, Facebook announced the XR Programs and Research Fund, a two-year initiative to fund both its own projects and external research as the firm explores the future of online social interactions. It’s a “starting point” for Facebook, per the announcement, as it attempts to co-create the future online metaverse.

Law Decoded: China FUD and false dichotomies, Sept. 20–27

• In the wake of yet another iteration of China’s enduring crackdown on cryptocurrency, a particularly influential narrative on Crypto Twitter suggests that by banning Bitcoin (BTC), China has definitively put itself on the dark side of the struggle, while the collective West must now resolutely throw its weight on the opposite side by embracing crypto.
• The Friday statement by the People’s Bank of China that caused a short-lived crypto market crash is at least the 19th instance of a noticeable FUD wave that could be traced back to the Asian superpower in the last 12 years. Not only do the hostile moves historically fail to deter the global growth of the crypto space — sometimes they spell massive advancements for Bitcoin and co. in the medium term.

Alibaba says it will block sales of cryptocurrency mining equipment starting next month

• Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba said Monday that, beginning on October 8, it will halt the sales of cryptocurrency mining equipment on its platform.
• Per a rule announcement, Alibaba cited recent pronouncements from China’s central bank and other oversight bodies in the country that amounted to a renewed crackdown on cryptocurrency activities. 

Bearish Bitcoin fractal with 78% success rate flashes as BTC drops below $43.5K

• Independent market analyst Nunya Bizniz highlighted a bearish fractal on Bitcoin’s weekly charts concerning its 21-week exponential moving average (EMA).
• In detail, the cryptocurrency has closed below the said support zone 18 times to date but only retained its previous bullish bias four times out of all

Coinbase Launches ‘Get Paid in Crypto’ Direct Deposit

• On Monday, Coinbase announced “Get paid in crypto,” a new service that will let nearly anyone in the U.S. who gets paid by direct deposit receive all or part of their wages in Bitcoin, Ethereum or various other cryptocurrencies.

China-based Ethereum mining pool Sparkpool shuts down all services

• Hangzhou-based Sparkpool, which was launched in 2016, is discontinuing both its domestic and international Ethereum mining pool services.
• The firm, currently the second largest Ethereum mining pool, said in an announcement on Monday that in response to regulatory changes, it has already suspended the services for new China-based mining customers following its statement last Friday.
• In addition, Sparkpool said it will now suspend the mining pool services for all of its existing China-based — as well as international — customers by the end of this month. 

Bitcoin Miners Go Nuclear in Search of Clean Energy

• Bitcoin miners are pivoting to nuclear energy.
• The new trend has come amidst a growing concern about the industry’s adverse impact on the environment.

Binance to restrict crypto offerings to Singapore users on its main platform

• Crypto exchange Binance announced Monday that it will no longer offer certain services to Singapore users on its main platform, Binance.com.
• The services include fiat deposit, spot trading of crypto, and the purchase of crypto through fiat channels and the Liquid Swap application. These are “regulated payments services” and will no longer be provided from October 26 to comply with local regulation, said Binance.

Decentralized Exchange Tokens Boom as Chinese Investors Look for Alternatives

• The price of DYDX, the governance token of decentralized exchange (DEX) dYdX, has skyrocketed by 35.9% over the day, hitting a new all-time high of $22.17, according to data from CoinGecko.
• Trading volumes facilitated by the protocol have also surpassed those on America’s largest centralized exchange, Coinbase.
• Unlike centralized exchanges, DEXes rely on smart contracts, which are bits of code that auto-execute at predetermined circumstances. In doing so, DEXes allow people to trade cryptocurrencies without intermediaries.