📈 Weekly Recap: Market Momentum Continues

Happy weekend Defiers!

Bulls continue to drive the crypto markets, with Bitcoin trading at its highest level since May 2022 on Nov. 2, despite the hype surrounding a potential spot Bitcoin ETF beginning to fall from mainstream crypto discourse. The upward price action followed the 15th anniversary of the Bitcoin whitepaper’s publication on Oct. 31.

The discount for GBTC, shares in Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust, relative to Bitcoin slumped to a two-year low this past week. GBTC has tripled year-to-date, outperforming Bitcoin by 50%.

Solana’s SOL token rallied to a 14-month high amid its Breakpoint conference. SOL is up 82% over the past month, outperforming most leading digital assets. GameFi assets also staged an impressive comeback, with nine of the sector’s 10-largest assets posting weekly gains of at least 9%.

SUSHI captured the attention of traders with a 63% gain since Oct. 31 to tag a six-month price high. However, on-chain researchers flagged unusual SUSHI trading activity on decentralized exchanges, warning someone may be seeking to manipulate the token’s price.

Amid the backdrop of bullish momentum, Andreessen Horowitz, the top crypto VC firm, is reportedly planning to raise a new $3.4B fund to support early and seed-stage investments, including web3 projects.

In other news, Tron has emerged as the leading network for stablecoin transfers by user count and volume of transactions. The highly-centralized network is making significant inroads within emerging economies thanks to its extremely low transaction fees.Ethereum is taking back throughput dominance from its Layer 2 ecosystem. Activity on L2 networks is down 32% in the past six weeks, while transaction volumes on the Ethereum mainnet are up 1.6% over the same period.

The Swiss National Bank unveiled a pilot project designed to trial a central bank digital currency (CBDC) leveraging distributed ledger technology provided by Six Digital Exchange. Six local banks will participate in the pilot as intermediaries and transaction counterparties.

EigenLayer launched a voting contest allowing liquid staking token holders to vote on which LST providers the protocol should next onboard. Users can choose between nine tokens, but only projects receiving more than 15,000 ETH will secure an integration.

The Aragon Association will soon dissolve, allowing ANT tokenholders to redeem their assets for $115M worth of Ether comprising 87% of Aragon’s treasury (excluding ANT tokens). A newly formed “Product Council” will manage Aragon’s IP, infrastructure, and operational runway moving forward.

Updated U.S. sanctions prompted WalletConnect, a web3 infrastructure team facilitating connections between user wallets and dApss, to block Russian users this week. The move follows the unprecedented sanctioning of Tornado Cash’s smart contracts last August.

PayPal received a subpoena from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over its PYUSD stablecoin. PayPal said it is cooperating with the SEC’s requests. PayPal emerged as the fifth-largest stablecoin with a $159M market cap since launching in August.And, lastly, Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted on all seven counts by a U.S. jury. The disgraced FTX co-founder and former CEO will face up to 115 years in prison.

Enjoy!

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