GB Market Commentary 02/09/2021
by Freddie Williams
The flagship cryptocurrency is now back above the $50,000 price mark after losing it back on August 23rd and hitting lows at $46,000 and $47,000 several times. Since yesterday, Bitcoin has shown an over5% growth from the $47,670 level to over $50,000 by now. Ethereum has been on a spree and has crossed the $3,700 mark, as it continues to rally and approach the psychological resistance level of $4,000.
Cardano hits $3 for the first time as Testnet now supports smart contracts. It is the biggest gainer over the past week after Solana. The native cryptocurrency of the largest proof-of-stake blockchain is up by more than 1,567% in 2021. Because of its blistering price rally, ADA is getting more and more press coverage in the mainstream media. The team says that final testing and integrations are now ahead of the mainnet launch that is slated to take place on the 12th of September. After a non-stop bull run, Solana has lost steam. Dogecoin posted double-digit gains. Binance Coins and Polkadot added 7% each.
The combined market cap of publicly listed crypto firms has roughly quadrupled this year while the number of public digital asset firms has increased by 28% over the same period. 16 digital asset firms have gone public this year, increasing the number of public crypto companies to 57, the combined capitalisation of said firms has skyrocketed to nearly $100 billion.
Former director and promoter of the notorious Bitconnect Ponzi scheme, Glenn Arcaro, has pled guilty to fraud charges related to his role in the now-defunct crypto exchange and lending platform. He has been ordered to pay back $24 million to investors. In a parallel action in the long-running saga the United States Securities and SEC has charged Bitconnect, its founder Satish Kimbhani, former director Arcaro<and Future Money Ltd. over the scheme. The defendants are accused of running a fraudulent, unregistered securities offering that netted $2 billion. What is a Ponzi scheme? It’s an investment scam that involves the payment of purported returns to existing funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme organisers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk. Stay away.
NFT’s continue to take over with the total value to smart contracts on OpenSea’s marketplace stood at450,000 Ethereum or $1.44 billion over the past week. This is a 177% increase from the one that passed. For the entire month of August, the platform generated $2.93 billion in trading volume driven by over 2million transactions from close to 190,000 users. Solana based NFT marketplace ‘Solanart’ has recently been booming with lots of NFT drops per week. This marketplace is still in its early stages. Definitely worth keeping an eye on if you are interested in NFT’s.
DeFi adoption is strongest in high-income countries that already had substantial cryptocurrency usage, especially amongst traders and institutional investors. The total value locked in DeFi protocols today hit a new all-time high of $168 billion. The vast majority of DeFi protocols, stablecoins and NFT’s operate on the Ethereum network. MetaMask, a non-custodial wallet that allows users to interact with the Ethereumblockchain and Ethereum-compatible networks such as Polygon, this week said its monthly active users surged over 1,800% in the past year to surpass 10 million in August.