Delta-Neutral AXS Farming, LUNA Burns, Yield Generating NFTs
- The broader crypto market is seeing a slight pullback after the weekend run-up, seemingly weighed down by traditional markets, with major equity indices down on the day. Nonetheless, AXS, LUNA, and DYDX were among today’s top gainers. AXS and LUNA hit fresh ATHs today following the implementation of AXS Staking and Terra’s Colombus-5 Upgrade last week.
- AXS staking opened up opportunities for yield arbitrage via perpetual futures. This can be done by simultaneously buying spot AXS to stake, while shorting the AXS-perpetual future. The trade is delta-neutral — meaning there’s no price risk — and captures the difference.
- Terra’s highly anticipated Columbus-5 upgrade went through on Sept. 30. While there were no drastic price movements on the day, LUNA rallied considerably over the weekend, with price making new all-time highs for two consecutive days now.
- The Columbus-5 upgrade was a major boost to the Terra network. The most significant change to the token economics was the decision to burn LUNA permanently instead of transferring it to the community pool. In addition, LUNA that had previously been sent to the community pool was burned to the tune of ~23.4m LUNA (worth over $1bn at current prices).
- Attention seems to be shifting from NFT blue chips like Punks and BAYC to longer tail NFTs like CrypToadz and Creature. NBA Hall-of-Famer Shaquille O’Neal triggered a floor price surge of Creature World NFTs after changing his Twitter profile picture to a Creature.
- L1 tokens had a strong start to October, as they inched back up from the mid-September dip. EVM compatible chains such as AVAX and FTM continue their outperformance against the field. AVAX, in particular, is holding strong as the top monthly performer.
Crypto transactions surge 706% in Asia as institutional adoption grows — Chainalysis
- Emerging markets across Central and Southern Asia have registered a dramatic uptick in cryptocurrency transactions, highlighting a diverse range of motivations among locals for gaining exposure to digital assets such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).
- New research from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis finds that crypto transactions surged 706% in Central and Southern Asia and Oceania — a broad region that includes countries such as India, Pakistan and Vietnam — between July 2020 and June 2021. In dollar terms, the value of the transactions amounted to $572.5 billion, or 14% of the global transaction value.
- Institutional and large payments accounted for the highest percentage of transactions, offering further evidence of smart money adoption of cryptocurrency. This trend was most pronounced in India, where large institutional-sized transfers above $10 million represented 42% of transactions. For Vietnam and Pakistan, that figure was 29% and 28%, respectively.
Facebook, Instagram Went Down for Hours as Bitcoin Advocates Took Shots
- Facebook and related services such as Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Oculus went down for several hours today, with the social media giant citing “networking issues” behind the global, widespread outages.
- Reports suggest that the outages were tied to DNS issues, with cybersecurity reporter Brian Krebs writing that DNS records were “withdrawn this morning from the global routing tables.” Other reports suggested that Facebook attempted to manually restart servers, and that employees weren’t able to enter buildings due to widespread service disruption.
- For advocates of blockchain and decentralized networks, today’s outage is the latest prominent example of how centralized systems can fail on a massive scale. Blockchain offers a potential alternative to such centralized models, with distributed, user-run networks that lack a single point of failure and are censorship-resistant to boot.
‘Not Just Bitcoin’: Bank of America ‘Bullish’ on Ethereum, DeFi and NFTs
- Bank of America, the second-largest bank in the United States has given mixed messages on crypto in the past—including slamming Bitcoin as “slow” and “impractical” in a March research note. But now, the global research division of the banking giant is sounding very positive about the future of the wider crypto industry, even describing itself as “bullish” about the overall ecosystem.
- Calling blockchain “the most exciting new market in years,” Bank of America Global Research’s new Digital Asset Primer is widely enthusiastic about the growing industry, touching on everything from popular cryptocurrencies to decentralized apps, the burgeoning decentralized finance space, stablecoins, and even NFTs.
Axie Infinity hits a new ATH at $155 while Bitcoin bulls aim for $50K
- AXS, CVP and POLS lead altcoins higher while Bitcoin bulls search for a way to reclaim the $50,000 level.
- Despite these struggles, many altcoins managed to rally and at the time of writing, the crypto gaming and decentralized finance sectors continue to grow in popularity.
Ethereum NFT Market OpenSea Hits Best Day in a Month as CrypToadz Sales Surge
- Sales of NFT collectibles ticked up over the weekend, as leading marketplace OpenSea recorded its highest single day of trading volume in nearly a month. Leading the charge this time around are pixel-based toad avatars, which are suddenly coveted by collectors.
- OpenSea notched $136.8 million worth of NFT trading volume on Sunday, per data from Dune Analytics, marking the highest single-day tally in nearly a month—since hitting $138.5 million worth on September 5. Trading volume has been trending upward on the marketplace over the last week following wider declines throughout much of September.
