Crypto

• The crypto safe-haven narrative gained traction in the beginning of the year after the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.
• Both ruble and hryvnia trade volumes surged immediately after Russia’s invasion, boosted by record local currency devaluation and market disruptions.
• Interestingly, the increase was mainly driven by stablecoin volumes rather than BTC, with weekly Tether (USDT) volumes jumping more than five-fold in early March relative to the start of the year.

Is there still hope for Crypto in 2023? In the next webinar, we speak with Insight Provider Edward Wu on just that, as he shares with us the landscape of the Crypto industry in 2023. From the problems with the current crypto industry, to Ethereum Layer 2 solutions, Edward will share with us his thoughts in this next episode of our Webinar Wednesdays. Have any burning questions about Crypto, DeFi trading or Ethereum Layer 2 solutions? Get them answered in the live Q&A that will conclude the session. 

The webinar will be hosted on Wednesday, 4 January 2023, 17:00 SGT/HKT.

Edward Wu is an experienced financial professional with strong research experience in macroeconomics, credit as well as corporate banking. He is a true believer in the future of Crypto/DeFi and foresee widely adoption of tokenization of real-world assets. He is currently actively researching in the crypto field, mainly focused on DeFi, DAO governance, and tokenomic design.

• Some people think of crypto as purely an investment opportunity. A highly volatile asset class that comes with risk, but eventually the returns will be worth it.
• However, this perception is somewhat naive, as it ignores one of crypto’s biggest use cases: financial freedom.
• The concept of financial freedom is hard to grasp for the privileged of us living in Europe or the US – despite record levels of inflation, we are not financially oppressed, and we can bank on our savings being relatively intact next year.

• Price Movements: Binance’s BUSD stablecoin, BNB token, and staking token bETH have had a volatile week amid mass withdrawals.
• Market Liquidity: Throughout December, BTC market depth on Coinbase has increased 46% while on Binance, depth is down 5%.
• Derivatives: Open interest for BTC and ETH perpetual futures has nearly halved since November. 

• Aave and Compound are two of DeFi’s stalwarts: the two largest lending and borrowing protocols on Ethereum, each with a TVL over ten times larger than the third largest protocol.
• Both protocols have functioned nearly flawlessly this year while a growing number of centralized entities have been failing in often spectacular fashion.
• Aave has accumulated just $2.17mn of bad debt (most of which was generated in a recent, likely unprofitable, exploit covered here) relative to its $3.2bn TVL, while Compound has just $65,000 to its $1.5bn TVL. 

• Price Movements: BTC’s correlation with BNB has dropped significantly since FTX’s collapse, a sign that Binance’s token is diverging from wider markets. 
• Market Liquidity: Curve, the DEX optimized for stablecoin swaps, is still mostly used by whale traders. 
• Derivatives: Tron futures skew bearish after the network’s native stablecoin, USDD, depegged to $.97.

• We’ve all been there. At some point in the Christmas supper, maybe between the roast turkey and the mince pies, Aunty Hilda or Granda Joe inadvertently starts a heated debate around this “bitcoin thing.”
• There may be a tech-savvy cousin who tries to come to the rescue and explain how blockchain works or why people value jpegs on the internet, to no avail. 
• This year the Etherbridge team thought we would do a holiday special titled “Crypto At The Christmas Table” so you are fully prepared to handle any blockchain conversation that may arise. So let’s dive in.

• Chainlink provides essential data-feeding services for blockchains, providing a bridge between blockchains and real-world information and data sources for both crypto and non-crypto use cases.
• LINK token captures Chainlink’s network value, and new tokenomics 2.0 introduce staking further improve the supply & demand dynamic.
• LINK price is supported by the growing usage of Chainlink network as onchain activity continues growing despite the bear market.

• Market capitalization is one of the most commonly used metrics to legitimize the value of a cryptocurrency.
• We often hear of a token breaking into the top 10 ranking by market cap, with tokens like BNB making headlines after a move into the top 5, cementing it as a pillar in the crypto ecosystem.
• However, all it takes is a quick run through the top 20 or 30 tokens to realize not all market caps are created equal.

• Instead of going on a long rant about why this next iteration of NFTs is important more broadly – let’s contextualise this for the sports industry.
• After all, this is a newsletter called Sporting Crypto.
• The sports industry has seen some pretty amazing things when it comes to Web3.

• Price Movements: The tokens for the decentralized derivatives exchanges dYdX and GMX have surged since the collapse of FTX.
• Market Liquidity: Dollar trading volumes for BTC markets dropped to two year lows relative to Tether. 
• Derivatives: BNB funding rates dip to their most negative this year.

• Last year Etherbridge published a Web3 mini report where we reviewed some of the most significant Web3 sectors and a few up-and-coming ones. 
• The year has been challenging for all markets in general, and crypto has been no exception. Internal human errors and poorly designed token mechanics resulted in a crypto credit crisis, exacerbating the market crash further.
• Nevertheless, the underlying technology across the blockchain stack has continued to evolve and improve, with some fundamental breakthroughs happening in scaling and other critical infrastructure. 

• FTX collapsed causing the crypto market to fall into shambles.
• FUD (Fear, uncertainty, and doubt) are spreading like wildfire throughout the industry and people have every right to be scared.
• The fallout of the FTX collapse will be the battle for the soul of crypto.