Issue #22

Market Overview

As of the time of writing (Monday 5pm), the total market cap of the crypto asset market is $US833.2B, down 1.2% from last week.

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

News Headline Highlights

• $10 trillion asset manager, Fidelity, has filed three U.S. trademark applications to provide services in the metaverse and other virtual worlds in their latest crypto push.
• Fiji could become the next country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender after newly elected (and pro-bitcoin) Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka was elected.
• The Boston Fed and MIT have together completed a research project, Project Hamilton, investigating the feasibility of a central bank digital currency.
• Hidden Road, the global credit network for institutional investors, has been granted registration as a digital asset firm in the UK by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Hidden Road is now the only prime broker with both an FCA investment firm licence and digital asset firm registration. This enables Hidden Road to offer products in spot and derivatives of both FX and digital assets.
• Gemini, the US regulated crypto exchange started by the Winklevoss twins, is being sued by customers of its Gemini Earn product. Gemini Earn customers have been unable to withdraw their assets since November as the primary counterparty was Genesis, the lending desk that has halted withdrawals.
• 3Commas, a trading platform backed by SBF and Alameda Research, was hacked and the API keys of all of their users have been leaked. With reported losses of $22m thus far from compromised API keys, the FBI has opened an investigation.
• The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has charged and arrested Avi Eisenberg, the man behind the Mango Markets market manipulation / oracle exploit. A deposition signed by FBI Special Agent Brandon Racz alleges Eisenberg “willfully and knowingly” manipulated the sale of a commodity – namely futures contracts on Mango Markets.
  • Magnet Quick Take - time and time again criminals think operating in crypto circumnavigates the legal system. However, every transaction leaves bread crumbs on a publicly available and immutable ledger, which in many cases has been used as evidence and helped convict wrongdoers.
• MicroStrategy purchased an additional 2,500 bitcoins for $45m. They also sold 704 BTC for ~$12m, citing tax purposes (to offset capital gains) as the reason.

 Crypto Asset Project Updates

• Yuga Labs released the first two teasers for the ‘Trial of Jimmy the Monkey’. This is the next stage of development of the lore for the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). The teasers are weird in nature (fitting for this weird club!) and don’t give away much for what is to come other than there will be some kind of battle and an interactive mint for holders of BAYC and BAYC related assets.
• Decentralised futures protocol, Gains Network, has successfully deployed contracts and launched trading on Arbitrum, an Ethereum Layer 2. After having lived on Polygon since inception in Oct 2021, Gains has now expanded its footprint in an attempt to attract traders that operate in the fast growing Arbitrum ecosystem.

The Weekly Deal Room

The week between end-of-year holidays and new year is often a quiet period with little activity and few significant company announcements made. We expect this to persist through to mid-January when most workplaces are back from the break.

• Financially troubled bitcoin miner, Argo Blockchain, announced it has entered into definitive agreements with Galaxy Digital Holdings to sell its Helios mining facility in Dickens County, Texas for $65m.

Metric of the Week

By removing likely change outputs (i.e. self sends), Coin Metrics estimate that over $8T was transferred via the Bitcoin blockchain in 2022, averaging $260,000 per second.