BTC is currently trading around $22,400 and ETH around $1,550. Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are GMX, OP, and MANA. The global crypto market cap is ~$1.07T, down ~0.6% over the last day. DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$48b and BTC dominance is around 44%.
It was a calm weekend and a slow start to the week with limited price action since the sharp liquidations in crypto on Thursday evening. All eyes are on monetary policy this week, headlined by Fed Chair Powell’s semiannual congressional testimony on Tuesday and Wednesday. ECB President Lagarde also has two notable speeches on the docket, and BoJ Governor Kuroda will make his final policy decision on Thursday evening. Elsewhere in monetary policy, Canada is expected to pause interest rate hikes at its meeting this week, while Australia is expected to hike by 25 bps. Lastly, we’ll close the week with a few prominent data points, including U.S. nonfarm payrolls, U.K. GDP, and German inflation.
Notable news includes: Silvergate suspended its crypto payment network, SEN; London-based crypto banking firm BCB said it’s readying its U.S. dollar payment solution to plug the gap left by Silvergate; Kraken unveiled plans to launch its own bank despite the challenging regulatory backdrop; Coinbase acquired institutional crypto asset manager One River; The BIS developed a cross-border retail CBDC payment system; the WSJ reported that Binance attempted to hire Gary Gensler in 2018/2019; Coinbase’s new L2 rollup Base integrated Chainlink’s price feeds; Flashbots open-sourced a privacy-enhanced block builder on Ethereum’s Sepolia testnet; ConsenSys announced its zkEVM testnet would go live on March 28; Uniswap Labs introduced a new crypto wallet, launching initially with limited capacity as it has yet to receive an iOS approval from Apple; Lido’s token fell nearly ~20% after Bankless reported an unsubstantiated rumor that Lido received a Wells Notice from the SEC; Babel Finance is planning on launching a stablecoin and DeFi platform in attempt to repay creditors the ~$750m of losses from last year; Yuga Labs has been sharply criticized by the Bitcoin community for launching an Ordinals NFT series relying on a trusted auction technique requiring a pre-payment to Yuga Labs that will be refunded if the bid is unsuccessful; Multicoin Capital reportedly loss more than 91% last year as a result of the FTX fallout and the subsequent impact on the Solana ecosystem; and, Singapore Police have begun an investigation into Terraform Labs.
Authors:
Matt Kunke, Junior Strategist | Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn
Brian Rudick, Senior Strategist | Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn
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