Trading Desk Market Update: 6/21

June 21, 2022

BTC is currently trading around $21,300 and ETH around $1,150. Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are CEL, WAVES, and TITAN. The global crypto market cap is $0.98T, up 3.6% over the last day. DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$74b and BTC dominance is around 44%.

It looks to be a strong day for risk assets as global equities are rising and the 10Yr Treasury yield is pushing back up towards 3.3% following the S&P 500’s worst week since March 2020. Crypto markets are up slightly in the past day, but they have rallied meaningfully since finding a local bottom Saturday afternoon. Inflation and monetary policy continue to sit front and center on investor’s minds. Fed Chair Powell’s semi-annual address to Congress on Wednesday and Thursday will attract the attention of investors looking to glean further economic insights later in the week. 

Other notable news includes: China’s WeChat banned crypto and NFT-related accounts; the UK rescinded its requirement for crypto companies to require KYC for unhosted wallets; Huobi received crypto licenses in Dubai and New Zealand; Bitpanda received a crypto license in Spain; Asian crypto custodian Hex Trust received provisional approval for a crypto license in Dubai; the BIS stated that CBDCs, not crypto, will be the cornerstone of future monetary systems; the Iranian government revealed plans to cut power to Bitcoin miners citing an anticipated electricity deficit in peak summer; South Korean prosecutors banned Terraform Labs employees from exiting the country; BlockFi secured a $250m credit facility from FTX; Cloudflare suffered an outage leaving multiple crypto exchanges down; Solend put forward a third proposal in an an attempt to mitigate the threat of whales being liquidated; ProShares launched the first short Bitcoin futures ETF; Lido proposed a dual-governance structure that would give stETH holders veto power over proposed protocol changes; Babel Finance reached a counterparty debt agreement; Voyager obtained loans from Alameda to safeguard assets; MoonPay launched a utility NFT minting service dubbed HyperMint; Ethereum’s Sepolia testnet Beacon Chain was launched in advance of the next testnet merge; the Magic Internet Money token depegged; Bancor paused its impermanent loss protection mechanism citing hostile market conditions; Cardano developers delayed the ‘Vasil’ upgrade citing a few non-severe bugs; Celsius’ token jumped ~65% as the #CELShortSqueeze hashtag circulated on Twitter; Solana-based NFT platform Magic Eden raised $130m; the ex-Sushi CTO raised $8m for NFT lending platform Astaria; Elon Musk reiterated his support for Dogecoin; and, Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov auctioned off his Nobel Peace Prize medal, shattering previous records and raising nearly $104m to help refugees from the war in Ukraine. 

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