🚀Weekly Recap: BTC Stuns With New All-Time High Above $70,000

Market action continues to dominate the narrative of web3, with Bitcoin posting new all-time highs on multiple occasions this past week. BTC briefly traded above $70,000 on Friday and remains trading within 2% of the record high.

Unprecedented activity surrounding spot Bitcoin ETFs helped to propel the rally, with four funds investing in Bitcoin now populating the top 11 commodity ETFs by assets under management.

Bitcoin wasn’t alone in posting impressive gains for the week, with Ether pushing above $4,000 for the first time since December 2021. Memecoins also outperformed the broader digital asset sector, with the top six meme tokens by market cap all posting triple-digit gains over the past fortnight.

However, not every web3 segment was on fire this week, with the floor prices of many leading NFT collections posting double-digit drawdowns as collectors look to rotate in cryptocurrencies. The NFT sector’s weak performance came in spit of last week hosting the second most-expensive CryptoPunk trade on record at $16 million.

Activity on Ethereum Layer 2 is pumping, with weekly active L2 users jumping to roughly 3.5 million. The milestone coincides with Arbitrum Nova dominating Layer 2 throughput, with the network hosting 50% of the more than 100 transactions per second processed by L2s on average in recent days.

Daily active dApp users across the web3 sector also jumped to record highs during February, with the bullish market movements driving a surge in activity on decentralized exchanges.

The SEC delayed the deadline for its verdict on pending spot Ether ETF applications from BlackRock and Fidelity, with many analysts continuing to speculate that the SEC may greenlight a cohort of Ether ETFs come May. The SEC is also facing internal dissent from two commissioners regarding its aggressive campaign of regulation-by-enforcement targeting web3.

Sushi’s core team is again facing community criticism, with many onlookers decrying an alleged lack of transparency surrounding team remuneration in addition to purported efforts to ignore the will of DAO governance.

Plus, Wormhole published its airdrop eligibility criteria and tokenomics for its W token, Fantom Foundation plans to pursue the liquidation of Multichain’s foundation after notching a default judgment, active Farcaster users are down 60% as SocialFi adoption sinks, and Pantera announced plans to launch a new fund that aims to purchase undervalued SOL from the FTX bankruptcy estate.

And don't miss our podcast with Guy Young, the founder and CEO of Ethena Labs, to get the low-down on their controversial yield-bearing stablecoin, USDe.

Enjoy!

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Karpatkey is the leader in active on-chain, non-custodial asset management, having developed a strong network of DAO treasuries worth $1.7b+ with dedicated finance working groups for GnosisDAO, Balancer, ENS, COW, Lido, and Aave. We’ve also contributed to Uniswap, Spark/MakerDAO, Safe, and Arbitrum by establishing delegate platforms and conducting research.

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Friday

• Retail Investors Are Cautiously Returning To Crypto According to K33 Research, 90-day website traffic to crypto exchanges increased by 45% in the past quarter. The number of visitors to data aggregation sites such as Coingecko and CoinMarketCap is also up 66%.
• Injective Launches inEVM Compatible with Solana and Cosmos Injective Protocol has launched an EM-compatible rollup billed as driving cross-chain interoperability between Ethereum, Cosmos, and Solana.
• Bitcoin Smashes Through All-Time High, Tops $70,000 BTC has been skyrocketing off the back of spot Bitcoin ETF flows to break into new all-time highs for the second time in just a few days. ETH also broke above $4,000 for the first time since 2011 amid the bullish momentum.
• Crypto Markets Reverse Sharply After Bitcoin Tags $70,000 BTC broke its previous record high and traded above $70,000 early Friday. However, the new highs were short-lived, with Bitcoin slumping to $67,045 in a matter of minutes.
• Daily DApp Users Surges To New High In February As DEX Activity Soars Daily dApp users surged to a new all-time high for the second consecutive month with 6.7 million wallets active each day in February. DEXes enjoyed a jump in users amid the recent crypto market rally.
• Aptos Removes Bridge Limits In Cross-Chain Push Aptos removed the daily transaction limit on its Stargate bridge in a bid to bolster its cross-chain interoperability with other networks. Aptos’s TVL is up more than 800% in five months.
• Memecoins Outperform as Crypto Does its Best to Button Up After Bitcoin ETF The combined capitalization of memecoins rallied 77% in seven days, with five of the six largest meme tokens posting triple-digit gains.

Thursday

• SOL Surges As Pantera Looks To Buy Tokens From FTX Estate Pantera aims to raise $250M for a new fund that could purchase discounted SOL held by the defunct FTX exchange.
• Sushi Community Decries Core Team Deleting Governance Forum and Ignoring Snapshots The controversial core team behind Sushi is under fire for allegedly disregarding the will of DAO-based governance and refusing to disclose team salary and bonuses.
• Floor Prices Of Top NFT Collections Crash As Cryptocurrencies Rally Many leading NFT collections are getting left behind amid the recent digital asset rally, with five of the top six collections by volume crashing between 20% and 37% against ETH in seven days.
• Astar Launches zkEVM Mainnet Boasting Ethereum Interoperability Via Polygon AggLayer The Astar zkEVM is now live on mainnet, boasting interoperability with Ethereum and Polygon thanks to a Polygon AggLayer integration.
• SEC Commissioners Criticize Regulator Over ShapeShift Securities Case Two SEC commissioners have taken aim at the agency’s settlement with the ShapeShift exchange, criticizing its term for poor transparency and describing the deal as indicative of the SEC’s “poorly conceived” digital asset policy.

Wednesday

• Farcaster Loses 60% of Users In One Month As Interest In SocialFi Wanes The number of daily active users on Farcaster is down 60% to 16,000 from a peak of over 40,000 in early February. However, February’s high followed 1,600% growth in under one month.
• Wormhole Releases Airdrop Eligibility Tool Wormhole allocated more than 600 million W tokens to community members and 397,704 wallets that interacted with Wormhole-connected applications before Feb. 6.
• Ethereum Posts New 2024 High As Bitcoin Rebounds From Violent Pullback The price of Ether tagged $3,900 for the first time since January 2021 on March 6, with investors turning their attention to the No. 2 cryptocurrency by market cap after Bitcoin briefly tumbled from a new all-time high.
• Fantom Foundation To Pursue Multichain's Liquidation After Winning Default Judgment The Fantom Foundation plans to seek the liquidation of the Multichain Foundation after winning a default judgment against the organization in Singapore.
• Arbitrum Nova Dominates L2 Throughput Amid DePIN and GameFi Surge Nova has consistently processed more than 44 transactions per second for the last 10 days straight, accounting for between 30% and 50% of the combined throughput of Layer 2 networks.
• DeFi Traders Increase Leverage As Markets Rally Stablecoin borrowing rates have climbed to double digits on major lending protocols, with outstanding loans growing 20% to $8 billion in 2024.

Tuesday

• SEC Delays Spot Ether ETF Applications From BlackRock and Fidelity The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has delayed the deadline for its verdict on the pending spot Ether ETF applications from BlackRock and Fidelity, the firms behind the two largest spot Bitcoin ETFs.
• SafeDAO Prepares To Vote On New Token Utility and Move Towards SAFE Unlocks Safe, a leading smart account infrastructure provider, is moving to introduce new utility for its SAFE token and advance the project’s roadmap towards progressive decentralization.
• Bitcoin Hovers Below All-Time High Amid Spot ETF Frenzy Bitcoin pulled back after briefly climbing above its November 2021 all-time high. The milestone marks a gain of 156.5% for BTC in almost five months, with BTC rebounding from a low of $26,729 on Oct. 12

Monday

• Rare Alien CryptoPunk Sells for $16 Million The owner of one of nine alien-themed CryptoPunks accepted an offer of 4,500 ETH from an anonymous buyer in the second-most valuable CryptoPunk trade on record.
• Memecoins Go Parabolic As Bitcoin Crosses $66,000 Memecoins are popping off, with BONK gaining 60%, PEPE gaining 50%, and SHIB jumping 33% in 24 hours.
• Active Users On Ethereum Layer 2s Surges To New Highs Roughly 3.5 million users were active on Ethereum Layer 2s over the past seven days. The number of weekly active Layer 2 users has now grown by 788% since the start of 2023.
• Bitcoin Funds Climb Commodity ETF Rankings As BlackRock’s AUM Surpasses $10B Newly launched spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds now account for four of the 11 largest spot commodity ETFs less than two months after their launch.