Market Summary

Bitcoin Price: US$20,158.26 (-0.88%)
Ethereum Price: US$ 1,352.20 (-0.68%) 

Select Stablecoin Market Caps Decline As Binance Auto-Converts To BUSD

• NFTs owned by the bankrupt crypto fund, Three Arrows Capital were transferred to a Gnosis Safe wallet as liquidators explore an eventual sale.
• Etherscan will stop supporting Ropsten and Rinkeby testnets. The Ethereum Foundation also plans to move over to Goerli and Sepolia testnets.
• Fidelity launches a new fund to invest in ETH. The fund has already raised $5m from accredited investors.
• The EU finalizes the full legal text of its landmark crypto legislation that introduces licenses for wallets and exchanges.
• Since the start of September, the market cap of USDC is down -11%, USDP is down -5%, and TUSD is down -17%. On the other hand, the market cap of BUSD is up 10% during the same period.
• This divergence in the total supply of these stablecoins can be attributed to a move announced by Binance on Sept 5th. The exchange stated that it will auto-convert any USDC, USDP, and TUSD balances held by users to BUSD.
• Additionally, the exchange announced that it will delist spot trading pairs associated with these stablecoins and stop accepting them as margin assets for futures.
• Users can still deposit or withdraw these stablecoins, but they will be converted to BUSD for use on the exchange.
• While combining different stablecoins into one enhances liquidity and capital efficiency for traders, it also helps Binance increase the usage of its native BUSD stablecoin over others.
• The market cap of USDT, a major stablecoin that was not included in the announcement, remains unaffected during this period.
• Ethereum is currently facing its largest battle test yet. In August, the U.S. Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) sanctioned Tornado Cash and arrested its creator Alexey Pertsev.
• This caused Flashbots, Ethereum’s largest block builder, and other decentralized applications (dApps) to start censoring transactions on Ethereum, a supposedly permissionless network.
• How much power do the U.S. regulators have over Ethereum? Is Ethereum and its dApps truly decentralized? And will Ethereum survive?
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Crucial US Jobs Report Could Test Fed’s Resolve, Bitcoin’s Resilience

• Another week, another shift in tone: Traders in traditional markets are once again betting that the Federal Reserve could soon pivot to a softer stance on monetary policy.
• But a strong U.S. jobs report on Friday from the Labor Department could give policymakers a reason to not back off. Bitcoin (BTC), which often trades like a risky asset, similar to stocks, might remain under pressure If that were the case.
• Futures traders on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange now expect the federal funds rate to peak at 4.5% next year; just a week ago the expectation was for the rate to go as high as 4.7%.
• The change suggests that more traders are suddenly anticipating a more dovish approach by the Fed, which recently raised interest rates to the highest level since 2007 and continues to reiterate that it won’t cut rates next year. With inflation still elevated, the campaign is far from over, officials insist.
• Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Mary Daly said on Tuesday that there is “a lot” of room for policy makers to raise rates and that she is not worried about markets right now.

Russia Blocks Access to Crypto Exchange OKX

• Russia has blocked access to OKX—the world’s third-largest crypto exchange by volume—at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office on Tuesday.
• A search for the exchange’s domain under records from Roskomnadzor, Russia’s internet censorship agency, shows the site was blocked under article 15.3 of Russia’s law on Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection. 
• The article protects against the spread of fake information, threats to financial organizations, calls for extremist activity, among other things. However, no specific reason has been given for the website ban at this time. OKX did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.

Coinbase Expands Services in Australia, Calling Country a ‘Priority Market for Us’

• Coinbase (COIN) is boosting its services in Australia, calling the country “a priority market for us,” the company announced in a blog post this week.
• The crypto exchange said it is adding local payments platform PayID as a way for customers to transfer Australian dollars to their Coinbase accounts, offering advanced trading tools and better pricing to its local retail customers and providing 24/7 chat support to customers there.
• The exchange has also incorporated as a local entity in Australia, and registered with local regulator Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) to provide digital currency exchange services. John O’Loghlen, formerly a regional director with Ant Group, was hired in July to head up Coinbase Australia.

Interest Surges in Bitcoin Speculation, But It Might Be Bearish

• A new record has been reached in the trading of a key speculative tool in cryptocurrency markets: the bitcoin perpetual swap.
• Open interest in the “perps,” as they are known, has spiked to an all-time high of 450,000 BTC, according to data from Arcane Research. Perpetual swaps are an innovation in crypto markets that offer leverage to speculative traders – similar to futures contracts in traditional markets, but without expiration dates.
• One caveat for bitcoin bulls is that, at least in the current market, the data point might be more worrisome than something to cheer about.
• The open interest, or OI – the total outstanding amount of the trading contracts – has been on a vertical climb since the Terra blockchain’s collapse in May. Arcane Research wrote in a report that open interest in BTC perps is always evenly distributed between longs and shorts.

Block and Circle are teaming up to onboard crypto’s next billion users

• TBD, the crypto focused arm of Jack Dorsey’s Block, is partnering with Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, to unleash the power of stablecoin payments onto the next billion crypto users. 
• According to Chiu, the crypto industry is lacking a way to exchange crypto for real world items:
• “The minute you nexus upon the real world and commerce in the real world, you need to solve these really hard problems that haven’t yet been solved in the space. That’s what TBDex does, and we see USDC and stablecoins as a critical bridge for facilitating these transactions.”
• One of the first use-cases will be a remittance function that enables payments between the US and Mexico, a corridor that sees billions flow a year. 
• TBD hopes its digital identity solution will put users in control of both their identity and data as well as who they share it with. As Chiu explains, these digital identity solutions will hopefully promote global economic empowerment: 
• “Regardless of what identity you have, you can create a self-sovereign identity wallet regardless of who you are, there’s no intermediary and you need permission from in order to start transacting and engaging with the global economy.

Anchorage Adds Asian Institutional Partnerships

• Crypto lending platform Anchorage Digital said Tuesday it has decided to plow further into Asia via a partnership with five major domestic institutions.
• Antalpha, Bitkub, Dream Trade, FBG Capital, GMO-Z.com Trust Company and IOSG Ventures have lined up to take advantage of Anchorage’s regulated offerings which include integrated financial services and infrastructure solutions. 
• The lender is also home to the world’s first federally-chartered digital asset bank in the US and boasts Paradigm’s chief legal officer, Katie Biber, and Andreessen Horowitz general partner Chris Dixon as board members.
• “We appreciate Anchorage’s attention to regulatory compliance and vetting of the digital assets they support,” Antalpha’s Chief Investment Officer Will Chiu said in a statement.

Glassnode

• If we assess #Bitcoin volumes flowing in and out of exchanges by Whale sized entities (> 1k $BTC), we can estimate their cost basis (Realized Price).
• The average price of Whale Deposits/Withdrawals since Jan-2017 is currently around $15.8k.