BTC is currently trading around $21,400 and ETH around $1,600. Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are AAVE, GALA, and CSPR. The global crypto market cap is ~$1.04T, up ~2.4% over the last day. DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$45b and BTC dominance is around 43%.
Crypto markets continued their upward divergence from equities over the weekend, most prominently on Friday evening, as nearly $500m of short crypto positions were liquidated. Since the close of U.S. equities on Friday, Bitcoin and Ethereum are up ~10%, while the S&P 500 is slightly down. On the earnings front, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs’s earnings reinforced the challenging backdrop for deal-making and financing activities, although Morgan Stanley still managed to beat expectations behind record Wealth Management revenues. Earnings releases will pick up meaningfully next week. In other demographic trends, China’s population shrunk in 2022 for the first time in more than sixty years, a shift many expect to be resilient and not entirely attributed to Covid dynamics.
Notable news includes: The European Union postponed the vote on its MiCA crypto regulation to April; the Bank of Thailand revealed plans to allow its first virtual banks by 2025; the DoJ opposed the law firm (S&C) tasked with investigating FTX due to alleged conflicts of interest; Bulgaria’s prosecutor general insisted its investigation into Nexo isn’t political; Grayscale filed a reply brief in its appeal of the SEC’s denial of it’s filing to convert GBTC to an ETF; Justin Sun is reportedly considering spending up to $1b on DCG assets; an economist warned that a bank run on stablecoins could impact the U.S. Treasury market; the disgraced 3AC founders are attempting to raise $25m to launch a new crypto exchange; the former FTX.US president broke his silence claiming he was isolated from Bahamian decision making; Binance launched an off-exchange custodial settlement platform; Binance also burned $600m of BNB in its 22nd burn event; the Ethereum network now has more than 500,000 validators, and it recorded a record breaking weekly gas expenditure; SushiSwap revealed plans to launch a DEX aggregator and a decentralized incubator in Q1; and, a Google Ads-delivered malware drained a prominent NFT influencer’s entire crypto wallet.
Authors:
Matt Kunke, Junior Strategist | Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn
Brian Rudick, Senior Strategist | Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn
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