Taking A Breather On The Way To The Moon

GM! It seems that the crypto market is currently going through a temporary cooldown, with the enthusiasm of the past few weeks starting to wane. However, this might just be a short-lived phase, as the approval of the ETF is only a few weeks away now.

Interestingly, Ethereum's ETF is also gaining momentum. It will be fascinating to monitor the market's performance as we approach the end of the year, with the looming question of whether BTC will break the $40K barrier or potentially go even higher

ICYMI

• SEC postpones rulings for Franklin Templeton and Global X spot Bitcoin ETF proposals

• Tether has allocated $500M for the development of Bitcoin mining facilities in three different nations over the next half-year

• Javier Milei wins Argentine presidency, BTC climbs

• BlackRock has submitted a formal application to the SEC for a spot Ether ETF

• Fidelity joins the spot ETH ETF trend

• The fraudulent XRP filing falsely attributed to BlackRock has been reported to the Delaware Department of Justice

• Sam Altman and Brockman, co-founders of OpenAI who were removed from their positions by the board of directors, are set to head the newly established Microsoft Artificial Intelligence team

• Tech giants such as Microsoft and Tencent are now part of the Decentralized Infura Network.

• Meta disbands its responsible AI division as part of restructuring

Catalysts Of The Week

• Monday:  Blur season 2 & big announcement, Pyth Listings on multiple exchanges, EarnTV listing on MEXC Global

• Tuesday: Loui listing on LBank, Cobak listing on HTX, JUST community vote, Nexo product roadmap AMA, Lords BIP-19 vote

• Wednesday: Zero listing on MEXC Global, Furucombo community call, NAKE game launch, Enjinstarter Web3 ticketing AMA 

• Thursday: Aragon Bitfinex delisting

• Friday: Meter governance BUSD  removal vote

State of the Market

While the market has experienced a cooldown after recent heightened activity, this appears to be a transient phase, let’s look at why

• Market Capitalization Growth: October witnessed a remarkable 19% increase in total crypto market capitalization, soaring from $1.08T to $1.28T, marking it as the second-highest monthly return this year​​

• Shift in Market Sentiment: The CMC's Fear & Greed Index transitioned from neutral to greed, fuelled by the optimism surrounding the anticipated approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF by the SEC​​ which is now just weeks away

• Surge in Trading Volume: The total crypto trade volume soared, nearly reaching $100B

• Positive Funding Rates: Futures funding rates turned notably positive towards the end of October, reflecting a strong bullish sentiment in the market​​

• Stablecoin Market Developments: The total stablecoin market capitalization grew, with Tether reaching an all-time high

• DeFi's Continued Expansion: The TVL in DeFi grew by 9.3%, indicating the sector's resilience and growth despite market fluctuations​​

• Emerging Blockchain Leaders: Wemix and Gnosis showed significant growth in market cap and TVL

• Layer-2 Progress: Arbitrum extended its TVL lead following the launch of the Odyssey and Orbit programs and is currently dominating the L2 space

• NFT Market Resurgence: The NFT market saw an 87% increase in trading volume, with collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club and The Captainz experiencing significant growth in sales volume​​. Worthy mentions include Solana collections like Mad Lads overtaking BAYC in trading volume

• VC Investment Trends: Although there was a monthly decrease, significant investments were made in Blockchain Service, DeFi, and GameFi, indicating continued interest in these sectors​​

In conclusion, the crypto market shows signs of revival and growth across various sectors, from trading volumes and market capitalization to the DeFi ecosystem and NFT marketplace. The trend seems to be up, despite the pullbacks and some key metrics not having turned bullish yet, possibly due to their lagging nature 

Industry

• FTX creditor claims are now being offered at rates as high as 65 cents on the dollar, indicating an improved recovery outlook for creditors compared to a month ago

  FTX debt claim specialist Thomas Braziel believes that the outlook for recovery could continue to improve, with potential recovery rates ranging between 80% to 90% or even higher

• Justin Sun has confirmed the identity of the hacker of Poloniex. With law enforcement agencies from China, the United States, and Russia being involved. A $10M white hat bonus is being offered for asset return before November 25

  Over $110M was stolen from Poloniex, likely by North Korean hackers, making the recovery process challenging

• Sam Altman was in the process of raising substantial funds for an AI-focused chip company aimed at competing with Nvidia before his removal from the OpenAI board

  Altman was also actively seeking funding for an AI-focused hardware device in collaboration with former Apple design director Jony Ive

• JP Morgan’s Onyx taps Avalanche for tokenized funds

• Strike has unveiled a collaboration with Checkout.com, allowing Bitcoin purchases to be conducted in over 65 countries

• Mastercard believes that the adoption of CBDCs faces challenges due to the high level of comfort customers have with the current monetary system

• Coinbase has announced a new open source on-chain payments protocol to improve its Coinbase Commerce

• Kronos Research, a trading firm based in Taipei, suffered a hack where the attacker gained access to its API keys, resulting in an estimated loss of $25M worth of ETH

• South Korea's Pension Fund bought $20M Coinbase shares in Q3 which resulted in a 40% profit

• Jump Trading part ways with Wormhole

• The chief developer of ENS has accused Unstoppable Domains of stealing

Projects

• Solana has denied the presence of a security threat to Saga phone holders following claims by CertiK of a bootloader vulnerability

  CertiK reported a bootloader vulnerability in Solana's Saga phone, raising concerns about potential data compromise, while Solana defended it as an advanced, user-initiated feature that doesn't pose an immediate threat

• Republic has chosen the Avalanche blockchain for launching Republic Note, a security token that aims to generate profits from a portfolio of over 750 private assets and has already attracted over $30M in pre-sale participation

  Republic Note, priced at $0.36 and not yet deployed to mainnet, will have a total supply of 800M tokens, designed to reward Republic community members for their engagement and contributions to the Republic ecosystem, with over $2.6B deployed into privately held ventures by Republic since its founding in 2016

• Jupiter, the largest DEX aggregator on Solana, is launching a retrospective token airdrop program to reward early users, distributing 40% of its total 10B tokens in four phases

  The first phase of the airdrop, starting next week, will distribute 1B Jupiter tokens to users with a minimum of $1K swap volume, benefiting 955K wallets identified from a November 2 snapshot

• UniSat release UniSat Developer Service

• Terraform Labs acquires Pulsar Finance

• Binance invest in Arkham token

• Trader Joe hacked

• Friendtech remove 600K accounts in effort to reduce botting

• Aave companies will be renamed to ‘Avara’ 

• Nocturne is now live on mainnet

• ENS launch EVM gateway

The Bitcoin Ordinals Token Ecosystem, primarily consisting of BRC-20 tokens, has gained significant attention and capitalization, with a 21% increase in the past 24 hours

Solana's DEX trading volume has surged in the past week, surpassing $3B, a new record high. Top DEXs like Orca and Raydium saw over 70% growth

Yearn Finance's token experienced a significant drop of over 35%, resulting in liquidations totalling more than $4.7M in the last 24 hours

Good Reads

• Alex dives into his picks of GameFi projects for the upcoming bull run 

• ASXN unpack the emission schedule of TIA and other details investors should be informed about 

• Read A16z’s State of crypto 2023: Spotlight on crypto policy

• Dovey details his thoughts on the dollar in his latest thread 

• Learn about blockchain bridge security in this great visual guide

• Alberto details how to design a lending protocol on Ethereum

• Dive into the latest issue of VeradiVerdict titled AI x Crypto

• The Kujira Encyclopedia: Issue 1

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