🦍Weekly Recap: Crypto Roars Back On ETF Hopes

Happy weekend Defiers!

It was an extremely bullish week for cryptocurrencies, with the combined crypto capitalization growing 11% in the past seven days.

Bitcoin led the market, rising to a 17-month high with a 15% gain. Investors piled into BTC after updated BlackRock filings revealed the world’s largest asset manager may move to seed its highly anticipated spot Bitcoin ETF in October.

DeFi tokens outperformed most crypto asset classes, with the sector’s combined market cap and total value locked tagging three-month highs.

However, Arthur Hayes, the co-founder of BitMEX, believes the reported ETF hype is overblown. Instead, Hayes attributes the bullish market action to investors hedging their exposure to the U.S. economy amid swelling expenses associated with supporting the ongoing military campaigns of both Ukraine and Israel.

Elliptic, an on-chain research firm, sought to combat misinformation relating to the conflict in the Middle East this week. While a Wall Street Journal Report cited by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren claimed Hamas raised more than $100M from crypto donations, Elliptic says the report mischaracterized transactions executed by third-party crypto service providers in the region as flowing through Hamas-controlled wallets. Chainalysis similarly estimates Hamas only received $450,000 in donations.

LayerZero ruffled feathers across the web3 community by enabling stETH bridging to the Avalanche, BNB Chain, and Scroll networks. However, the deployment came despite Lido still contemplating whether it will support the bridge, with some onlookers accusing LayerZero of intentionally trying to front-run Lido DAO’s governance.

Polygon launched its new token, POL, paving the way for a revamped staking layer. The upcoming layer will support restaking, meaning validators can simultaneously perform multiple tasks for various Polygon chains to earn additional rewards.

DYDX is rallying after the decentralized perpetuals exchange completed its migration from an Ethereum Layer 2 to a Cosmos-based appchain. DYDX will now serve as the network token for the new appchain.

Friend Tech appears to be falling from grace, with prominent users offloading their keys and heading to rival platforms, such as New Bitcoin City. NBC added $1M to its TVL over the past week, while Friend Tech retraced by $4M or 10%.

Liquity's LQTY token rallied 26% amid a spike in protocol fee revenue. However, the increase in revenue comes as arbitrage traders are redeeming Liquity’s LUSD stablecoin in large volumes to exploit a spread between it and sDAI, driving down the supply of LUSD.

And in this week’s podcast, Rocket Pool general manager, Darren Langley, walks us through the current state of Ethereum’s liquid staking sector.

Enjoy!

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