Issue #26

Market Overview

As of the time of writing (Monday 5pm), the total market cap of the crypto asset market is $US1.12T, up 3.3% from last week.

Below is the weekly performance of the top crypto and NFT assets. 

News Headline Highlights

• Clover, the point of sale company that boasts over 6 million merchants globally, has announced a partnership with Strike to integrate the Bitcoin  Lightning Network.
• Moody's, which provides credit ratings for publicly-traded companies, is reported to be developing a scoring system for crypto stablecoins based on the quality of reserve attestations.
• The SEC has rejected the Ark 21Shares spot bitcoin ETF application for second time. The SEC said the Cboe BZX Exchange, on which the ETF would be listed, failed to "demonstrate that its proposal is consistent with the requirements" surrounding prevention of fraud and other malevolent practices.
• Amazon is reported to be building an in-house digital assets enterprise that will be launching an NFT initiative as soon as Q2.
• Custodia Bank has been denied membership to the Federal Reserve System. Custodia, which is based in Wyoming and is chartered through the state as a special purpose depository institution, lacked a sufficient risk management framework to address the heightened risks associated with crypto, the Fed said.
• U.S. Senator Ted Cruz has introduced legislation that would encourage companies in the Capitol Hill area to accept bitcoin by working with payment processors that are open to accepting crypto.
• The District of Columbia Court of Appeals has scheduled a date for oral arguments in Grayscale’s lawsuit against the SEC regarding their continued decision to deny the conversion of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust into an ETF.
• Congressman French Hill has announced plans to make stablecoin legislation a key priority for the congressional digital asset subcommittee.

 Crypto Asset Project Updates

• Magnet Portfolio Company Update - Lyra, a decentralised options protocol, has successfully conducted their Newport upgrade, bringing about improved protocol capital efficiency, tighter bid-ask spreads and increased system modularity. In parallel, they also deployed their contracts on a second Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution, Arbitrum. 
• Ethereum developers have successfully deployed the first 'shadow fork' for Ethereum's Shanghai upgrade. In a milestone achievement, all nodes correctly synced on the shadow fork after making configuration changes to the Go Ethereum client. The Shanghai upgrade is highly anticipated as it will support withdrawals of staked ETH.
• Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a "stealth address system" to improve the ability for users to add transactional privacy on the Ethereum network. The proposal would enable users to generate cryptographically obfuscated public addresses to receive funds to their master wallet privately.
• DeFi lending protocol, AAVE, successfully deployed V3 live on Ethereum’s mainnet. The V3 upgrade focuses on mitigating user risk and improving the protocol’s capital efficiency (High Efficiency Mode) when staking or borrowing correlated assets.
• dYdX announced changes to early (private) investor vesting schedules, postponing a $180m token unlock from February 2023 to December 2023.

The Weekly Deal Room

• Crypto infrastructure firm Blockstream raised $125m in a convertible note and secured loan financing to expand its bitcoin mining services.
• Calimero Network, a privacy focused blockchain infrastructure provider, raised $8.5m in their Seed Round co-led by Khosla Ventures and Lyrik Ventures
• QuickNode, a blockchain node infrastructure service provider, raised $60m in Series B financing led by 10T Holdings.
• Spatial Labs, a web3 branding focused infrastructure and hardware company, raised $10m in a Seed Round led by Blockchain Capital.
• Senken, the world's largest climate finance trading platform of on-chain carbon credits, raised $7.5m in a funding round led by Obvious Ventures
• StoryCo, a web3 storytelling platform, raised $6m in seed funding led by Collab+Currency and Patron.
• Asset Reality, a company which purports to aid in digital asset recovery, raised $4.9m in a Seed Round led by Framework Ventures.
• Ethos Wallet, a wallet service built on the Sui blockchain, raised $4.2m in a Seed Round co-led by Boldstart Ventures and Gumi Cryptos.
• Brave Group, a multi-service provider to companies developing in the metaverse, raised $2.3m (JP¥300m) from Animoca Brands in a strategic round.
• Hatchfi, a crypto API platform, raised $1.2m in a pre-seed round co-led by Jude Gomilla, Delta Blockchain Fund and OrangeDAO.

Metric of the Week

Bitcoin rarely spends much time with an MVRV below 1. Recent market moves have pushed Bitcoin's MVRV above 1, which historically has signalled the end of bear markets.

MVRV is a relative measure of Bitcoin's market capitalisation and realised capitalisation (sum of values of each Bitcoin at the time they last moved on chain).

Check out our insights report: Measuring the 2022 Crypto Bear Market where we discuss metrics that have historically marked attractive entry levels for investors in bitcoin.

Source: Coin Metrics