🌀 Weekly Recap: Market Turmoil Returns

Happy weekend Defiers!

Markets abruptly took a turn to the downside this week after newly-published Federal Reserve minutes forecast that a new round of interest rate hikes could be around the corner.

ETH dropped to its lowest level since March while Bitcoin erased two months of gains on Aug. 17. By the time the dust had settled, more than $1B worth of leveraged digital asset positions had been liquidated amid the volatility.

But while most digital assets suffered, Parallel’s PRIME token is up 100% in two weeks after completing its beta launch. THORChain also bucked the trend with a 40% weekly gain amid the launch of its new Streaming Swaps feature.

The crypto market slump overshadowed bullish news for Coinbase, with the exchange receiving approval from the National Futures Association to offer digital asset futures contracts to eligible U.S.-based customers. The approval came as Coinbase is engaged in legal disputes with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

In other regulatory news, Singapore updated its guidance for local stablecoin issuers, incorporating feedback it received during a public consultation last October. The news follows Hong Kong introducing stablecoin regulations for the first time in June, with the two jurisdictions competing for regional web3 dominance.

Consensys completed the rollout of its highly-anticipated Layer 2 network, Linea, on Aug. 15. The milestone was marked by the activation of its ERC-20 token bridge, unlocking the network’s DeFi ecosystem. Linea enters Ethereum’s increasingly competitive Layer 2 ecosystem.

Binance also announced that BNB Chain’s first L2, opBNB, will launch on mainnet this month. OpBNB is based on Optimism’s open-source OP Stack, with Binance hoping Layer 2 scaling will reverse BNB Chain’s declining TVL and position the network to compete as Ethereum’s L2s flourish.

And in this week’s podcast, Jesse Pollak, the creator of Coinbase’s Layer 2, Base, joins us to discuss the freshly-launched network’s past, present, and future.

Enjoy!