Issue #17

Market Overview

As of the time of writing (Monday 5pm), the total market cap of the crypto asset market is $US852.9B, up 2.0% from last week.

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

News Headline Highlights

• JP Morgan continues to progress their investment in the crypto industry, filing trademark for “J.P. MORGAN WALLET”, described as offering a crypto wallet for digital currency exchange and transfers.

• BNY Mellon’s digital asset custody platform went live in the US, allowing customers to hold Bitcoin and Ether with the >150 year old financial institution. 
• Binance has allocated another $1b to its industry recovery fund, effectively increasing the size to over $2b. The purpose of the fund is to buy strong businesses that have become distressed as a result of the FTX fallout and ensuing contagion. Jump Crypto, Animoca Brands, GSR and Polygon Ventures are some entities that are financially supporting the fund.
• Singapore’s DBS Bank announced it had executed its first intraday repo transaction using JP Morgan’s Onyx Digital Assets network powered by blockchain.
• Binance.US has announced intentions to bid for the bankrupt lending platform Voyager. Voyager was left bankrupt again last week after FTX was unable to follow through with the acquisition made a month prior.
• Brazil's biggest bank, Itaú Unibanco ($435B AUM) announced intentions to start offering crypto custody services in 2023.

 Crypto Asset Project Updates

• Curve Finance have released the whitepaper for their upcoming decentralised stablecoin, crvUSD. The core design of crvUSD is what is being called by the founding team as a ‘lending-liquidating AMM algorithm’ (LLAMA). LLAMMA works by converting value between the provided collateral and the stablecoin. For example, as the ETH used as collateral drops in value, approaching its liquidation price, the protocol will convert it to US Dollars; as the price of ETH rises, the dollars are converted to ETH.
• Aave experienced an attack on the protocol which tested its asset collateralisation ratios and liquidation mechanism. Whilst the protocol performed well throughout, the attack resulted in $1.5m of bad debt (which is easily coverable by the >$200m Aave safety module). Since the protocol has adjusted risk and asset lending/borrowing parameters (AIP 121 and AIP 125) to bolster the protocols resilience to such attack vectors.
• Yuga Labs have teased the next item on the Bored Ape Yacht Club roadmap, the Trial of Jimmy the Monkey. Whilst much of the detail is unknown, speculation suggests that the Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) will play a role. The trial is set to begin at Christmas.

The Weekly Deal Room

• Web3 game publisher Fenix Games raised $150m to acquire, invest and distribute blockchain games.
• Thirdverse, a web3 and VR gaming studio, raised $15m to strengthen its global recruitment of game creators and other professionals.
• Cosmos based DeFi protocol, Onomy, raised a $10m round to create a fintech shell for retail DeFi users as well as bridge the gap between DeFi and the global Forex market. 
• Across Protocol, an insured optimistic bridging solution that relies on a decentralised series of relayers to facilitate user transactions between EVM networks, raised $10m at a $200m valuation from Hack VC, Placeholder and Blockchain Capital. 
• Multichain protocol, t3rn, raised $6.5m in a strategic funding round led by Polychain Capital.
• Tropee, an NFT utility platform that helps creators deliver various digital and physical utilities to NFT holders, raised €5m in a seed round led by Tioga Capital.
• Nucleo, the first private, non-custodial, auditable multi-sig on Ethereum, raised $4m in a seed round led by Bain Capital Crypto and  6th Man Ventures.

Metric of the Week

The Bitcoin halving is one and a half years away. Put another way, we are 64% of the way between the last Bitcoin halving and the upcoming one. Historically Bitcoin’s price has gained strength leading into its pre-programmed deflationary monetary policy event. 

During this halving, the issuance of Bitcoin will fall from 6.25 BTC approximately every 10 minutes to 3.125 BTC (or ~328,500 BTC annually to ~164,250 BTC). This will materially reduce the structural supply of Bitcoin from miners that sell to support their expensive operations.

Source: therationalroot