BTC is currently trading around $20,100 and ETH around $1,500. Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are CEL, HT, and LDO. The global crypto market cap is $1.01T, up 0.5% over the last day. DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$76b and BTC dominance is around 41%.
Markets sold off broadly on Friday following Jay Powell’s speech that reiterated the Fed’s intent to bring down inflation even if it inflicts some pain on households and businesses in the near term. Powell signaled that a more extended period of higher interest rates is to come, dismissing a common bull market narrative that central bank officials will ease policy in the coming months as inflation peaks. Crypto’s weakness continued through the weekend, and equities and bonds are moving downward this morning as they continue Friday’s downward slide. It’s a slow start to the week with minimal new data and a U.K. bank holiday today. The nonfarm payrolls release on Friday will be a closely watched data point as investors attempt to gauge the magnitude of the expected rate hike in September.
Notable news includes: a U.S. Senate committee is expected to hear a bill mid-September that if passed would establish a mandatory regime for crypto exchanges to report to the CFTC; the bulk of agency responses to President Biden’s crypto executive order are due next week; Singapore’s central bank wants to foster digital asset innovation while restricting crypto speculation; South Korea’s central bank called for an end to the ICO ban; Dubai issued crypto marketing rules to better protect investors; the SEC contacted Grayscale for info about three of its crypto trusts; Ava Labs’ CEO rejected an allegation that it conspired with a law firm to harm competitors with class-action lawsuits and to divert regulators’ attention elsewhere; Ripple’s CEO also commented on the Ava Labs report, denying a statement that he personally funded the law firm in question; cloud provider Hetzner reiterated that its terms of service prohibit crypto activities despite currently hosting ~16% of Ethereum nodes; Mt. Gox creditors dismissed rumors that bitcoin would be imminently distributed from the defunct exchange; MakerDAO’s co-founder reiterated his DAI-USDC depegging recommendation to further decentralize the stablecoin, but critics have noted it would almost certainly lead to DAI breaking its peg with the U.S. dollar; the majority of Acala’s services are reportedly still offline two weeks after its native stablecoin was exploited; the Synthetix founder published a proposal that advocated for a hard supply cap at 300m tokens in ~2.5 months; SushiSwap reduced its salary proposal for its ‘Head Chef’ after community backlash; a GameFi investor survey revealed investors are beginning to prioritize a ‘fun factor’ over money; OpenSea volumed plunged 99% in the last three months; an F1 trademark filing has paved the way for NFTs; and, BarrelDAO sold out its NFT-linked Solana Summer Shandy beer that is redeemable for a limited edition Solana-themed beer.
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