💥Weekly Recap: Crypto Markets Brutalized Alongside Stocks
Happy weekend Defiers!
This week’s headlines were dominated by violent market volatility.
Cryptocurrencies crashed alongside global stock markets on Monday as investors raced to unwind carry trades in response to the Bank of Japan raising interest rates. Many top 100 cryptocurrencies suffered double-digit daily losses, driving more than $846 million worth of margin calls suffered by 217,000 leverage traders alongside record DeFI liquidations.
Despite the bloodshed, markets rebounded quickly after whales and institutions moved in to buy the dip. Significant inflows to spot ETFs helped to stave off further losses, with crypto markets trading sideways to end the week.
Crypto continues to influence political discourse ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
A Zoom meeting between crypto executives and Democratic Party officials was reportedly fiery, with web3 advocates lambasting the Biden administration for overseeing a stifling crackdown targeting crypto firms. Still, some of the party’s supporters believe the Harris campaign can be persuaded to support web3, giving rise to the launch of the Crypto4Harris advocacy group.
Donald Trump-themed memecoins continue to capture the imagination of daredevil traders. DJT crashed 88% as a wallet offloaded $2 million worth of tokens in a single order, prompting rug-pull accusations. RTR also posted a gain of 100x before quickly tumbling 90% after rumors of official Trump affiliation were quashed.
It was a big week for Solana, with Brazilian regulators approving the world’s first spot SOL exchange-traded fund as SOL rallied to all-time highs relative to ETH. However, Solana developers also discreetly patched a critical vulnerability this week.
Ripple’s nearly four-year battle with the SEC appeared to come to a close. Ripple Labs was fined $125 million for unlicensed securities sales to institutional investors. Crucially, the court reaffirmed that secondary XRP sales on exchanges do not comprise securities sales.
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission awarded a $1 million reward to a whistleblower for providing information that led to an enforcement action targeting improper digital asset trading.
Russia’s State Duma passed legislation green-lighting cryptocurrency mining and central bank-authorized cross-border payments using digital assets. The move came as many miners’ profitability was significantly impacted by the market downturn.
Plus, Samsung partnered with Illuvium to promote Web3 TVs, Coinbase faces accusations of campaign finance violations, PumpFun ditched fees to introduce incentives for memecoin creators, Ethena expanded USDe on Solana, and Franklin Templeton’s FOBXX fund launched on Arbitrum.
Also, check out our podcast with Tory Green, the co-founder and CEO of io.net, to learn about their mission to disrupt big tech’s dominance over the AI sector.
Enjoy!
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ALPHA INTEL
DeFi Alpha: Farming FBTC - A New Omnichain Tokenized Bitcoin
Our resident DeFi degens walk you through how to farm the DeFi ecosystem of FBTC, a new bridged Bitcoin token from Mantle.
Plus, our analysts share their technical analysis covering the latest price action and market moves.
PODCAST & INTERVIEWS
Disrupting The Status Quo: How io.net Challenges Big Tech's AI Dominance
In this week’s podcast, Cami Russo was joined by Tory Green, the co-founder and CEO of io.net, a decentralized computing network operating in the DePIN sector. The project also made headlines recently when its CEO stepped down just days before its token launch.
The conversation dives into the behind-the-scenes details of the former io.net CEO’s departure, the project’s mission to assemble more than one million GPUs and overthrow big tech’s dominance over the burgeoning AI sector, and the growing intersection between crypto and artificial intelligence.
How Karpatkey Is Building The Financial Services Layer of DeFi | Marcelo Ruiz de Olano
The Defiant sat down with Marcelo Ruiz de Olano, the co-founder of Karpatkey, a project tailoring professional treasury and risk management services for decentralized autonomous organizations.
Olana dives into token hedging, the challenges of managing its own $2.5 billion treasury reserve, and advice for web3 founders navigating treasury management.
VIDEO & TUTORIALS
PRTs: How Early Believers Own the Product's Success
Jack Dunham walks you through Product Revenue Tokens, a new on-chain incentive mechanism designed by Index Coop. PRTs are verifiable, on-chain tokens that represent a claim to a share of the revenue generated by a specific Index Coop product.
What is Bitcoin? | Crypto 101
Our Bitcoin 101 video walks you through the basics of the world’s first blockchain network and cryptocurrency.
Friday
- Pepe Unchained Raises Millions For a Memecoin-Fueled Layer 2 The ecosystem claims it's built for speed, security, low fees, and memes. It's raised almost $8 million for the presale of its PEPU token.
- Ripple Starts Testing Its RLUSD Stablecoin on XRPLedger and Ethereum Tests are conducted in private beta until the token receives regulatory clearance.
- Solana Developers Quietly Patched a Critical Vulnerability A Discord alert triggered core contributors to quickly push out a fix this week.
- Is It Too Late For The Democratic Party To Court Crypto Votes? A recent Zoom meeting between high-ranking Democrats and crypto industry execs was reportedly fiery.
- Donald Trump Jr Wants To “Take On” Banks With DeFi Platform “This notion of decentralized finance is very appealing to guys like me,” he said.
- Bitcoin Price Crosses $60,000 As ETFs Attract Substantial Inflows Crypto markets continue to hold up alongside global stock markets.
- Samsung Teams Up With Illuvium In Latest Web3 Push Samsung Web3 TVs will feature Illuvium NFTs as part of the strategic partnership between the two entities.
- CFTC Awards $1 Million to Whistleblower in Digital Asset Case Nearly half of the CFTC's cases in the last fiscal year were related to digital assets.
- Memecoins Can Now Be Created For Free on PumpFun The memecoin launchpad will also pay out 0.5 SOL to coin creators when tokens successfully migrate to Raydium.
- Coinbase-Backed Vega Protocol Takes Aim at Polymarket With New Prediction Market The new feature is part of Cosmos-based Vega’s latest Colosseo II upgrade.
- Hyperliquid Tops Perpetuals Sector Rankings The perpetual futures DEX processed a record $4.3 billion in trading volume on August 5.
Thursday
- Wrapped USDT Lands On Lightning Network To Compete With Tron and Ethereum Speed Wallet introduced USDT-L on the Bitcoin Layer 2.
- BTC, ETH Rebound Even as Genesis Continues Repayments Nearly $2M in ETH and $11M in BTC moved from Genesis’ bankruptcy repayments wallet following $1.5B in transfers earlier in the week.
- Crypto Twitter Pumps and Dumps Trump Memecoin Trump-themed memecoins continue to emphatically pump and dump on rumors of official affiliation.
- Russia Legalizes Crypto Mining and Gives Central Bank Crypto-Specific Authority One law allows for mining operations and the other is an experimental regime for cross-border payments with crypto.
- Metis Integrates Chainlink CCIP For Cross-Chain Functionality Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol has hosted $198 million worth of transfers.
- Brazil Approves Spot Solana ETF SOL surged in response to the news, with the SOL/ETH ratio hitting an all-time high.
- Crypto Markets Trade Flat Ahead of U.S. Unemployment Report Ripple’s XRP token soared 20% after the settlement of a long-running SEC lawsuit.
- Franklin Templeton Expands On-Chain Treasuries Fund To Arbitrum The market cap of Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund has grown 26.7% this year.
- Court Fines Ripple Labs $125M For Securities Law Violations Judge Torres found that Ripple’s institutional sales of XRP comprised unlicensed securities sales.
- Kamala Harris Edges Out Trump on Polymarket Amid "Crypto4Harris" Campaign Some web3 proponents are hoping to pressure the Democratic Party to run on a pro-crypto policy platform.
- Bitcoin ETF Buyers Remain Stoic Amidst Market Volatility The iShares Bitcoin Trust posted net flows of $0 in spite of tumultuous market conditions.
- IMF Says It’s Willing to Overlook Bitcoin Risk in El Salvador Agreement The IMF said that many potential risks associated with Bitcoin “have not yet materialized.”
Wednesday
- Grayscale Launches Bittensor and Sui Funds The funds will be available only to accredited investors.
- Hydration Extends Dominance Over Polkadot’s DeFi Ecosystem Hydration boasts more than $40 million in TVL and is consistently hosting seven-figure daily volumes.
- Arbitrum Orbit Integrates USDC As Custom Gas Token The news comes as Arbitrum is working to expand the Orbit ecosystem.
- Ethena Expands to Solana and Adds SOL to USDe Collateral Basket The expansion is intended to reverse Ethena’s recently falling market capitalization.
- Bitcoin and Ethereum Rally as Institutions Reportedly Buy the Dip Institutional investors are driving the crypto market rebound.
- Institutional Investors Accumulate Ether ETF Shares Amid Price Decline Spot Ether ETFs hosted $147 million worth of inflows in the past two days.
- Japan’s Carry Trade Chaos Brings FTX-Level Losses To Short-term Bitcoin Holders Entities holding less than 1 BTC realized losses not seen since 2022, while whales accumulated.
- Solana’s Dominance Versus Ethereum Reaches New Highs SOL/ETH is at all-time highs in spite of the recent Ethereum ETF.
Tuesday
- Donald J Trump Memecoin Rugpulls The DJT token led by Martin Shkreli, who alleged Barron Trump was involved, plummeted 88% in one massive sell order.
- Investors Sell BlackRock’s BUIDL Fund After a Volatile Weekend The asset manager has sent nearly $9 million to Ondo Finance in 2 days for redemption payments.
- Coinbase Accused Of Campaign Finance Violations Coinbase is pushing back against allegations it violated campaign financing laws by donating to political actions committees while serving as a federal contractor.
- Xapo Enters U.K. With Dual Bitcoin and Fiat Interest Accounts The Bitcoin account yields 1% without staking, lending, or locking up assets, said the company.
- Ronin Network Paused After Upgrade Allows Attackers to Drain $12 Million So-called ‘white hat’ hackers stole 4,000 ETH and $2 million in USDC before the team took action.
- Crypto Markets Bounce After Monday Rout Bitcoin is trading at $56,000, up 13% from yesterday’s intraday low of $49,200.
Monday
- Justin Sun Wants To Save Crypto With $1 Billion Fund The fund will allegedly fight FUD, invest more, and provide liquidity.
- Here’s an ELI5 on How Japan Sent Global Markets Tumbling The Bank of Japan’s 0.25% hike surprised investors and caused a domino effect of massive proportions.
- Crypto Crash Wipes Out DeFi Borrowers As All-Time Aave v3 Liquidations Double DeFi lending protocols processed more than $341 million worth of liquidations on Aug. 5.
- Jump Crypto Appears to be Liquidating Millions in Crypto The trading firm has transferred $277 million of ETH to exchanges over the past 10 days amid a deepening selloff across crypto markets.
- Hackers Capitalize on Crypto Market Crash To Buy "Discounted" Ethereum The notorious Nomad bridge and PancakeBunny hackers are buying up cheap ETH.
- Bitcoin Miners Nurse Losses as BTC Struggles to Hold $50K The ongoing crypto selloff comes as miners are still feeling the pinch from the Bitcoin halving in April.
- Stablecoins Survive Stress-Test Amid Extreme Volatility Blast’s USDB recovered from a de-peg event and Tether dominance rose by 7%.
- Crypto Gets Obliterated Amid Global Stock Market Selloff Many major cryptocurrencies have plummeted to 6-month lows after Bitcoin cratered 11% in the past 24 hours.
