GB Market Commentary 30/03/2022
by Marcus Sotiriou
Bitcoin dropped in the early hours of the morning, after the largest blockchain game Axie Infinity suffered a $625 million hack. According to the company behind Axie Infinity, Sky Mavis, “The attacker used hacked private keys in order to forge fake withdrawals.” There is clearly an issue where people are building bridges that are being secured by just one computer, hence being centralised. These bridges allow efficient transfer of value across chains but are not secure in most cases.
The dip has been bought up as Bitcoin remains above $47,000, showing great strength amongst the news of the hack. One factor for this could be the positive news of Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy, obtaining a $205 million loan from Silvergate Bank, which is collateralised by Bitcoin, in order to buy more Bitcoin. The buy pressure of MicroStrategy and Luna Foundation Guard is understandably contributing to a strong uptrend in the short term.
Institutions will have greater access to altcoins such as Polkadot, Cardano and Solana, as fund manager Wisdomtree have announced the launch of exchange-traded products (ETPs) for these assets. The three crypto ETPs will list on Euronext exchanges in Amsterdam and Paris on March 31. The Wisdomtree executive said “These need to be crypto assets which are liquid enough for institutional use, are supported by the ETP market participants and have clear use cases. As the crypto asset market evolves, so [too] will the ETP ecosystem which is needed for more institutional adoption.” I think these products will have a significant impact on the institutional investment on altcoins due to the greater ease of access.