The United States December nonfarm payrolls report showed a growth of 223,000 jobs, above the market’s expectation of an increase of 200,000 jobs. While this shows that the economy remains strong, market observers shifted their focus to the slower wage growth of 0.3% for the month, below economists’ expectation of 0.4%. In addition, the euro zone’s headline inflation dropped from 10.1% in November to 9.2% in December. Both economic data boosted hopes that the central bank’s aggressive rate tightening may slow down. This triggered a rally in the U.S. and European stock markets. Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 However, the reaction in the cryptocurrency space remains muted, with Bitcoin (BTC) continuing to trade inside a narrow range. The crypto investors...
Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. The end of 2022 saw the least value of stolen funds from DeFi, with $62 million worth of exploits in December. While the figure might seem a relief given the multiple bridge hacks and hundreds of millions of dollars stolen this year, cybersecurity experts have warned that the ecosystem would see no decrease in exploits, flash loans or exit scams in 2023. Lido protocol overtook MakerDAO to have the highest total value locked (TVL) in the DeFi ecosystem. In other news, Mango Markets hacker Avraham Eisenberg was detained pending trial. The start of the new year saw a GMX whale hacked for $3.5 million worth of GMX tok...
Investors have faced a tumultuous year in 2022 as stocks, bonds, and the cryptocurrency sector have all witnessed sharp declines. As of Nov. 30, the performance of a traditional portfolio comprising 60% stocks and 40% bonds has been the worst since 1932, according to a report by Financial Times. The next big question troubling crypto investors is whether the pain in Bitcoin (BTC) is over or will the downtrend continue in 2023. Analysts seem to be divided in their opinion for the first quarter of the new year. While some expect a drop to $10,000 others anticipate a rally to $22,000. Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 While the near-term remains uncertain, research and trading firm Capriole Investments said in its latest edition of the Capriole Newsletter that Bitcoin c...
Gold has been an outperformer in 2022 compared to the United States equities markets and Bitcoin (BTC). The yellow metal is almost flat for the year while the S&P 500 is down more than 19% and Bitcoin has plunged roughly 64%. The sharp fall in Bitcoin’s price has hurt both short-term and long-term investors alike. According to Glassnode data, 1,889,585 Bitcoin held by short-term holders was at a loss as of Dec. 26 while the loss-making tally of long-term holders was 6,057,858 Bitcoin. Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 In spite of gold’s good showing and Bitcoin’s dismal performance in 2022, billionaire investor Mark Cuban continues to favor Bitcoin over gold. While speaking on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast, Cuban told Maher, “If you have gold, you’re dum...
Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. Uniswap, one of the leading decentralized exchange platforms, is integrating debit and credit card support for its users. It will allow Uniswap users to buy cryptocurrency directly with their cards. An ex-employee caused Ankr protocol’s recent $5 million hack. The DeFi protocol alerted relevant authorities and is seeking to prosecute the attacker while shoring up its security practices. A Web3 developer has claimed that many crypto ecosystem projects would rather get hacked than pay bounties. After reporting and helping patch a smart contract vulnerability, the developer claims that the projects he helped started ...
Bitcoin (BTC) is on track to end the year with a loss of about 65%. This would mark the third negative year for Bitcoin with the other two being 2014 and 2018. In comparison, the S&P 500 has fared much better but that is also down close to 20% in 2022. Although cryptocurrency prices have seen deep cuts this year, traders have continued to plow money into the space. An online survey conducted by Blockchain.com shows that 41% of the respondents bought crypto this year and 40% plan to purchase crypto in the next year. Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 However, a sustained recovery in risk-assets may happen only after inflation shows signs of cooling. That would raise expectations of a pivot by the United States Federal Reserve from its aggressive monetary ...
As the year comes to an end, investors will be keenly watching for a Santa Claus rally on Wall Street as many believe that if the rally does not happen, the next year may either remain flat or turn negative. Jurrien Timmer, director of global macro at asset management giant Fidelity Investments, tweeted on Dec. 19 that the United States equities markets may remain “sideways” and choppy in 2023. He expects “one or more retests of the 2022 low, but not necessarily much worse than that.” Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 The cryptocurrency market has been largely correlated with the S&P 500 in 2022. Unless both markets decouple, the sideways or negative action in the equities markets may not bode well for the cryptocurrency market. Analysts remain divided on t...
Non-farm payrolls in the United States rose by 263,000 in November, exceeding economists’ expectations of an increase of 200,000. Analysts believe that the numbers remain hot and do not allow much scope for the Federal Reserve to slow down its aggressive rate hikes. This is contrary to Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s remarks delivered at the Brookings Institution where he said that the central bank could reduce the pace of rate hikes “as soon as December.” That triggered a sharp rally in risk assets. After the latest jobs report, the market participants will closely watch the Fed’s comments and decision in its Dec. 13 and Dec.14 meeting. Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 The Fed’s decision may also affect Bitcoin (BTC), which remains in a firm bear grip. Co...
The price of GMX rallied to its second-highest level in history on Dec. 1 as traders assessed the decentralized exchange’s ability to evolve as a serious competitor to its top rival Uniswap (UNI). GMX established an intraday high of $54.50 in a recovery that started on Nov. 29 from $40.50. Its rally’s beginning coincided with crypto research firm Delphi Digital’s tweet on the GMX decentralized exchange, as shown below. GMX/USD four-hour price chart. Source: TradingView GMX beats Uniswap in fees for the first time Notably, GMX had earned about $1.15 million in daily trading fees on Nov. 28, which surpassed Uniswap’s $1.06 million trading fees on the same day. GMX Flipped Uniswap in Daily Fees on Nov. 28. Source: Delphi Digital This seemingly renewed buyin...
According to a new post on November 30, decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap announced that users can now trade nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, on its native protocol. As told by Uniswap, the function will initially feature NFT collections for sale on platforms including OpenSea, X2Y2, LooksRare, Sudoswap, Larva Labs, X2Y2, Foundation, NFT20, and NFTX. “To bring users the first-rate experience they’ve come to expect with Uniswap, we built the aggregator to deliver better prices, faster indexing, more unassailable smart contracts, and efficient execution.” Uniswap developers claim that users can save up to 15% on gas costs compared to other NFT aggregators when using Uniswap NFT. unifies ERC20 and NFT swapping into a single swap router. Integrated with Permit2, users can swap...
The world is quick to blame inflation for the rising prices at grocery stores and retailers. This was the #1 political issue for recent Election Day voters in the United States. For example, media sources recently reported poll data that 85% of Americans could not afford to spend $200 on a Thanksgiving meal in November 2022, and only 25% could afford $100. However, few recognize inflation is only part of the problem. Higher costs for products and services are also directly attributable to settlement fees paid by transportation providers who are forced to take out the equivalent of payday loans against their freight invoices. Shipper payment terms in the transportation industry are known to be egregious, and most transportation carriers cannot afford to wait 30–180 days to get paid. Wh...
FTX’s collapse dealt a major blow to the already fragile sentiment among cryptocurrency investors. Although a quick recovery is unlikely, Blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis said that the crypto universe could emerge stronger from this crisis. Chainalysis’ research lead Eric Jardine arrived at the conclusion after comparing FTX’s fall to that of Mt. Gox. Another calming statement came from Bloomberg Intelligence exchange-traded fund analyst James Seyffart, who said that there was a “99.9% chance” that the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) held the Bitcoin (BTC) it claimed. He added that GBTC was “unlikely” to be liquidated. Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 The negative events of the past few days do not seem to have scared away the small investors who remain on an acc...