Crypto Markets Look to Recapture Momentum Following Down Week_can a dog pass a coin

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  Dogecoin's Daily Transactions Reach Lifetime Highs After Introduction of DRC-20 Tokens

  Crypto traders are using the Stargate bridge in the hope of being eligible for a rumored LayerZero airdrop. Volume on the Stargate cross-chain bridge has surged by 30% in the past 24 hours, with investors attempting to meet the criteria for the airdrop. The protocol recently surpassed $1 billion in monthly volume for the first time, and the STG token has jumped by 95% in the past 24 hours. Although LayerZero hasn't announced a token, the protocol's code mentions a native token, leading to speculation of an upcoming airdrop. A number of high-profile airdrops in the past 12 months have yielded significant returns for minimal effort, and airdrop hunters are hopping on Stargate governance proposals in the hope of receiving a larger allocation of LayerZero's rumored token. More than 6.4 million STG tokens were staked for a recent proposal on whether to make decentralized exchange Velodrome an STG hub on the Optimism blockchain. LayerZero didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.Liquidity across bitcoin trading pairs has slumped and failed to recover since the collapse of FTX in November. The apparent exit or reduction in trading by Jane Street and Jump Crypto, two influential cryptocurrency market makers, has the potential to disrupt the fragile flow of liquidity across the industry. Jane Street and Jump are paring back crypto trading in the U.S., amid the regulatory clampdown that spawned out of FTX's collapse. Jump's crypto division will continue to expand globally while Jane Street will scale back on its growth plans. The news is not necessarily surprising given recent developments, but what's concerning is that liquidity has still not recovered from Alameda's collapse, and a slowdown with two of the biggest surviving market makers could weigh on liquidity even further. Market depth, a metric used to measure liquidity on exchanges, slumped by more than 50% following the collapse of FTX and has failed to recover despite a rise in crypto prices. Crypto-native market makers, unlike traditional firms such as Jane Street and Jump, aren't put off by the duo's exodus as the issue is constrained to the U.S. market. An absence of liquidity causes an increase in volatility, which has the potential to create a credit risk that could spread to all sectors of finance.

  27 December 2011
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  Klaytn Foundation to Make Changes to KLAY Tokenomics and Governance Models

  The floor price of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection has slumped to a five-month low of 55.59 ether (ETH), according to Cryptowatch data. The slide in non-fungible token (NFT) prices occurred after pseudonymous holder 'franklinisbored' said on Twitter that he sold the majority of his collection. On-chain data shows that the user sold at least 27 BAYC NFTs over a 12-hour period, securing 1439.5828 ETH ($2.8 million) in the process. Franklinisbored explained his decision was due to 'unfortunate' real-life issues that prompted him to liquidate his NFTs. He fell victim to a rug pull on a nearly 2,000 ETH investment, which appeared 'credible' due to who else had invested in it. ApeCoin (APE), the native governance token for the Bored Ape Yacht Club ecosystem, remains flat over the past 24 hours in terms of its dollar valuation despite falling against ether trading pairs.The community members of Synthetix, a liquidity and derivatives trading protocol built on Ethereum, have approved a plan to gradually increase the margin requirements on existing positions to eventually liquidate all remaining positions on the soon-to-shut version one (v1) of its perpetuals market. This move comes as v1 has been in close-only mode for months, with roughly $150,000 worth of positions remaining outstanding. The approved plan highlights Synthetix's focus on its v2 perpetuals markets, which had $22 million in volume over the past day and represent a significant upgrade from v1. The price of SNX, the native token for Synthetix, has increased 1.7% in the past 24 hours to $2.36, while the total value locked for Synthetix stands at $417.7 million, a 2% increase since May 1.

  27 December 2011
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  Investors Track Pepecoin Whales to Cash In on Meme Coin Mania as Wider Market Stagnates

  DeFi is rapidly emerging as the biggest loser in the ongoing cryptocurrency bear market. The total amount of capital locked on DeFi protocols dropped to its lowest point since February 2021 on Thursday as traders pull liquidity to secure higher yields that come with less risk. When DeFi burst onto the scene in 2020, many believed that the ability to borrow and lend without an intermediary was groundbreaking and that DeFi firms were about to dislodge traditional finance (TradFi) counterparts. However, DeFi's 'future of finance' narrative was soon knocked over as the wider crypto market succumbed to a bearish cycle in 2022. Interest rates continued to spike across the globe as central banks scrambled for a way to fight inflation, leading to increased yields across money market funds and mortgage funds, leaving the DeFi sector without any incentives for new capital. TradFi competition Now, Vanguard's money market fund is offering clients a yield of 5.28%, while the returns for staking Ethereum on Lido stand at just 3.3%, leaving a minimal risk to reward ratio compared to traditional finance products. This caused DeFi's fragile liquidity to run for the exits, with total value locked (TVL) across all protocols dropping from $163.5 billion in April 2022 to today's figure of $36 billion. There has been a few emerging narratives like liquid staking, tokenization of real world assets (RWAs), on-chain derivatives, and new blockchains, but none of these have been able to capture the level of appetite last seen in the summer of 2020. In that summer, it was not uncommon to see DeFi yields soar to between 18% and 35%. This yield, of course, came with a risk as hackers honed in on the sector with a series of complex exploits to part investors with their money. DeFi hacks proliferated in 2022 and 2023, with a report earlier this month describing how $212.5 million had recently been stolen in a three-week period. In 2023, there have been 297 crypto hacks, resulting in a loss of $1.89 billion, according to Money Monger's crypto heist report.Crypto traders are turning to over-the-counter (OTC) markets to source elusive liquidity following a regulatory crackdown that has resulted in a substantial decrease in market depth on centralized exchanges. OTC demand has been steadily on the rise since the collapse of FTX in November, with subsequent spikes being attributed to the collapse of several crypto lenders last year and more recently the SEC's decision to sue Binance. Market depth is a metric that measures liquidity by assessing how much capital would be required to move an asset in either direction, typically measured at a spread of 2%. Last month, Jane Street and Jump, two prominent market makers, announced that they were at very least reducing their trading activity, compounding the liquidity woes that had been felt since FTX's collapse. As a result, the OTC market, which allows traders to conduct large transactions without needing to go to an exchange, looks to be becoming more prevalent. We've been receiving a lot more [OTC] demand, spreads are tight due to daily recurring flow we have on both sides from payment providers, brokers and algorithmic traders. This trend is eerily reminiscent of the time after Mt Gox, the largest crypto exchange at the time, got hacked and subsequently ceased operations in 2014. Despite the largest exchange falling, the demand for digital assets continued, with peer-to-peer markets on exchanges like LocalBitcoins emerging as the champions of the 2014 bear market. But as crypto continued to thrust itself into the world of traditional finance, the stature of firms getting involved in the industry began to notably increase. By 2020, counterparties would no longer be an arbitrage trader on LocalBitcoins, and publicly-listed companies like MicroStrategy dealt directly with Nasdaq-listed exchange Coinbase. This week the world's largest asset manager, BlackRock, filed for a spot bitcoin ETF as it attempts to create a secure investment vehicle for funds and trading firms to gain crypto exposure. But until that is approved by the increasingly combative SEC, traders will have to turn back to OTC deals.

  27 December 2011

• South Korean Traders Flock to SXP and ICX Tokens, Trading Volumes and Prices Surge

  DeFi is rapidly emerging as the biggest loser in the ongoing cryptocurrency bear market. The total amount of capital locked on DeFi protocols dropped to its lowest point since February 2021 on Thursday as traders pull liquidity to secure higher yields that come with less risk. When DeFi burst onto the scene in 2020, many believed that the ability to borrow and lend without an intermediary was groundbreaking and that DeFi firms were about to dislodge traditional finance (TradFi) counterparts. However, DeFi's 'future of finance' narrative was soon knocked over as the wider crypto market succumbed to a bearish cycle in 2022. Interest rates continued to spike across the globe as central banks scrambled for a way to fight inflation, leading to increased yields across money market funds and mortgage funds, leaving the DeFi sector without any incentives for new capital. TradFi competition Now, Vanguard's money market fund is offering clients a yield of 5.28%, while the returns for staking Ethereum on Lido stand at just 3.3%, leaving a minimal risk to reward ratio compared to traditional finance products. This caused DeFi's fragile liquidity to run for the exits, with total value locked (TVL) across all protocols dropping from $163.5 billion in April 2022 to today's figure of $36 billion. There has been a few emerging narratives like liquid staking, tokenization of real world assets (RWAs), on-chain derivatives, and new blockchains, but none of these have been able to capture the level of appetite last seen in the summer of 2020. In that summer, it was not uncommon to see DeFi yields soar to between 18% and 35%. This yield, of course, came with a risk as hackers honed in on the sector with a series of complex exploits to part investors with their money. DeFi hacks proliferated in 2022 and 2023, with a report earlier this month describing how $212.5 million had recently been stolen in a three-week period. In 2023, there have been 297 crypto hacks, resulting in a loss of $1.89 billion, according to Money Monger's crypto heist report.Exactly Protocol, a decentralized credit market on the Optimism network, has been targeted by a bridge exploit worth as much as $12 million. The hacker used an exploiter contract on Ethereum that transferred deposits to Optimism before ultimately bridging stolen funds back to Ethereum, blockchain security firm De.Fi said in a tweet. The protocol's native governance token (EXA) slumped by more than 12% following the exploit as it currently trades at $5.51, per CoinMarketCap. The hack coincides with a significant downturn across the wider cryptocurrency market, with several assets including XRP, LTC and BCH leading double-digit declines as roughly $1 billion in positions were liquidated in a 24-hour period. Cross-chain bridges have become a common attack vector for hackers due to the relatively novel technology. Last year it was estimated that over $2 billion was lost to bridge hacks, according to Chainalysis.

  A white hat hacker who targeted decentralized-finance (DeFi) platform Tender.fi has returned $1.6 million that was stolen on Tuesday, receiving a 62.15 ether (ETH) bug bounty worth $850,000 instead. The attack occurred after Tender.fi upgraded its price feed to relay data from a Chainlink pricing oracle as opposed to a time-weighted average price (TWAP). Tender.fi's code, which was audited by PeckShield, contained an error and returned a number with too many zeros behind it, allowing the attacker to deposit one GMX token, worth around $70, effectively tricking the system into allowing infinite borrows. The hacker left an on-chain message, 'It looks like your oracle was misconfigured. Contact me to sort this out.' Tender.fi reached out and agreed to pay the white hat hacker the bug bounty. The protocol plans to deploy a new rewritten oracle contract before unpausing borrowing and has vowed to repay any unpaid debt left behind by the hacker. The TND token, which plunged by 34% on Tuesday, was recently trading at $1.87 and has increased by 2.4% in the past 24-hours against its ethereum pair but remains down by 7.6% against its U.S. dollar pair following a crypto market rout.
• Avalanche Surges to 6-Month High in Daily Active Addresses

  The Ethereum Shanghai upgrade, set to take place late Wednesday, will allow validators to unstake and withdraw the ether (ETH) they've pledged to run the network. However, according to data from Nansen, very little ETH is poised to be withdrawn, with nearly 4,000 validators having already unstaked 141,499 ETH, representing less than 1% of Ethereum's total validators and staked ETH. Crypto exchange Huobi is waiting to remove almost 40,000 ETH, making it the largest entity in the withdrawal queue. Validators cannot withdraw at once; there's a daily limit, with eight validators able to exit per epoch, or about 1,800 per day. The Ethereum upgrade will complete the transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain, allowing stakers to withdraw their staked ETH as well as the rewards they've accrued. According to Fundstrat Global Advisors' Walter Teng, there are several possibilities for unstaking, including restaking with liquid staking derivatives, selling tokens, using tokens to lever up, or holding tokens to sell later. Teng's hunch is that restaking will be the dominant option. Edited by Nick Baker.Community members are vying for a new model to bolster revenue and sustain a peg to the U.S. dollar for Terra Classic, the original network created by Terraform Labs. The proposed model relies on token buybacks, unidirectional swaps, staking, and an 'algorithmic peg divergence fee' to address the issues with the original design. The fees retained by the protocol would be used to buy back USTC and maintain the peg, and a USTC staking tool is proposed to drive capital to the token and increase its price appreciation. The community believes that a fully-decentralized token is necessary to create a decentralized economy, and hopes to bring the project back to its glory days despite its previous implosion. Edited by Stephen Alpher.

  GMX, the largest protocol on Arbitrum, has announced its integration with Chainlink's low-latency pricing oracles to enhance its derivatives and perpetual swap exchange. The move marks a shift towards low-latency trading in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, as trading firms and hedge funds require faster platforms to execute sophisticated trading strategies without delays. The integration follows a community vote, with over 96% of votes approving the integration and 2 million GMX tokens being used to vote. The low-latency oracles will help mitigate the risks of front-running and bring the industry one step closer to the performance level currently existing outside of it. GMX contributors have been working with Chainlink Labs since last year on the specifications of the new oracles. The total value locked (TVL) on Arbitrum is at $2.1 billion, with $567 million of that value from GMX, according to DefiLlama data. The surge in GMX's native token has seen a 78% increase since the turn of the year, as capital continues to flow to Arbitrum-based protocols.
• Chainlink's LINK Surges as Whales Add to Holdings Following Protocol Release

  Synapse's native token, SYN, recovered from a 25% slump on Monday after a liquidity provider sold 9 million tokens. The protocol, which transfers data to cross-chain bridges, rebounded 17% to $0.358. The sell-off was attributed to a liquidity provider identified as Nima Capital. The protocol's total value locked (TVL) is $113 million, according to DeFiLlama. Despite the recovery, the token has lost some gains and is currently trading at $0.358. The protocol's team has stated that there was no security breach of the protocol or bridge. The sell-off was attributed to a liquidity provider identified as Nima Capital. Volume of SYN trading ballooned in the days following the sell-off, with over $25 million being recorded in the past 24-hours. The protocol has a TVL of $113 million, according to DeFiLlama. Nima Capital had not responded to an email request for comment by publication time.South Korean traders are flocking to two lesser-known cryptocurrencies, Solar (SXP) and icon (ICX), driving up trading volumes and prices on local exchanges. According to CoinGecko data, the ICX-Korean won token pair saw over $420 million in trading volume on Upbit, a prominent South Korean exchange, while the SXP-won trading pair saw over $490 million in volume, more than either bitcoin (BTC) or ether (ETH) trading pairs. The surge in interest comes as Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange by trading volume, announced it will support a token migration of SXP in the coming days. ICX is popular in South Korea for its local roots and ability to be used for staking, network governance, and collateralization on decentralized-finance platforms. However, some of the volume may be attributable to wash trading, a manipulative technique in which traders continually buy and sell the same asset to drive up volume. South Korean crypto traders have a history of pushing euphoric rallies on tokens, known as the Kimchi Premium, which can result in prices trading as much as 30% above international prices. Last week saw a similar rally in XRP, with Upbit leading global XRP trading volumes with over $790 million worth of tokens traded over a 24-hour period. Despite the surge in interest, it's important to approach these figures with caution and do your own research before investing.

  27 December 2011

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