Daily Market Update: Feb 15, 2023

February 15, 2023

BTC is currently trading around $22,800 and ETH around $1,600. Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are WBT, BGB, and IMX. The global crypto market cap is ~$1.10T, up ~4.0% over the last day. DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$49b and BTC dominance is around 44%.

Risk assets rallied yesterday afternoon, reversing early losses stemming from the morning’s inflation release. Riskier assets like the NASDAQ and crypto reaped the majority of yesterday’s gains while the S&P ended flat, but the return of risk appetite is mixed so far this morning. BTC and ETH are up ~3% in the last few hours, but equities are mixed, with some European markets flat to modestly higher, while U.S. markets point to a lower open. On the data front, U.K. inflation continued to fall, coming in lower than expected. Lastly, signs of a strong U.S. consumer are unlikely to impede the Fed’s hiking cycle, as retail sales meaningfully surpassed expectations this morning.

Notable news includes: Senator Warren vowed to reintroduce an AML bill that extends to DeFi and DAOs; South Korean regulators announced a comprehensive review of the staking services offered in the country; the ECB told banks to start applying caps on bitcoin holdings before new rules set by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision take effect; Circle denied rumors that it received a Wells Notice; Celsius proposed a sale to NovaWulf that would return the majority of small creditor’s funds (< $5k) while larger creditors would receive tokenized shares in the new company; Polygon announced that the beta launch of its zkEVM mainnet is planned for March 27; BLUR fell more than 85% after it airdropped ~360m tokens to the early users of its NFT marketplace; web3 notifications service Push Protocol expanded to BNB Chain; GBTC’s discount grew to its steepest of the year at ~47.5%; and, Sam Bankman-Fried was banned from using VPNs after admitting to watching the Super Bowl on a private network.

Authors:
Matt Kunke, Junior Strategist | TwitterTelegramLinkedIn
Brian Rudick, Senior Strategist | TwitterTelegramLinkedIn

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