Bitget Hot Takes (January 23 - January 29)
Bitget Hot Takes is the exclusive weekly newsletter series by Bitget Academy, the 360-degree onboarding guide for all crypto enthusiasts.
Bitget Hot Takes the week before can be found here.
Central Themes
• ETH sliding, BTC hovering above US$23,000 with hashrate hitting new all-time high levels.
• DeFi blue chips are actively building and expanding to different chains.
• New insights from Genesis’ bankruptcy filing; SBF attempted to influence witnesses.
• Moody’s is in the early stage of developing a stablecoin scoring system.
BGB Hit A New High For 2023
While Bitcoin managed to hold the US$23,000 mark throughout the weekend, BGB saw a small contraction of 0.07% in returns and Ethereum 3.25%.
That could be a lil’ bit concerning for BGB diamond hands, but check out the chart below:
Source: TradingView
BGB reached 2023’s new high this week, following the bullish sentiment of general markets. The U.S. 2022 GDP numbers published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis seemed to have given BGB the momentum it needed to cross US$0.21
Check the analyses of BGB price trend in 2022 here:
If you are completely new to the token, we are delighted to give you the full guide to BGB - the golden ticket to the Bitget Ecosystem here: Why BGB Is Your Bluechip Exchange Token.
Markets Got Busy Again
Ethereum prices saw quite a shrinking over the last seven days compared to Bitcoin and other altcoins. That could be a result of the unclear definition of the PoS Ethereum, which is discussed in the first volume of The Crypto Burrito. Of course ETH holders are looking for a reason to expect price soaring, and they have it: The Shanghai upgrade is set to take place in March. Developers have been working on it; a fork devoted to the purpose of upgrade rehearsal, called ‘shadow fork’, was finalised on January 23. As we are already in the last few days of January, there are less than 60 days until the Shanghai upgrade as well as the enabling of withdrawals on the Ethereum network. Under direct influence of this event are LSD protocols (again, check out The Crypto Burrito (Volume I): Ethereum Merge to learn more about liquid staking derivatives or LSDs). The biggest validator on the Beacon Chain (also the most popular LSD protocol per se), Lido, has published their design proposal for the ETH unstaking on the community forum and asked for feedback. The proposal needs to undergo a voting process by Lido DAO before any changes are implemented on the protocol. On a side note, we are seeing more L1s embracing LSD, with Marinade Finance introducing a reward programme worth around US$10 million for liquid staking on Solana.
Last year, the U.S. announced the blacklisting of crypto-mixing service Tornado Cash, saying ‘Tornado Cash has repeatedly failed to impose effective controls designed to stop it from laundering funds for malicious cyber actors on a regular basis and without basic measures to address its risks’. That severely impacted the decentralised state of crypto, as Tornado Cash allows for easy, non-custodial, anonymous on-chain transactions. Now there’s a way out for Tornado Cash users: Web3 builder venture Chainway recently launched a Proof-Of-Innocence protocol, through which Tornado Cash users can prove that their funds do not come from hacker addresses while preserving their privacy.
DeFi and NFT blue chips are building non-stop
We can agree that many crypto blue chips are Ethereum-native protocols. But Ethereum’ congestion and high gas fees remain a firm entry barrier for new users, which understandably explains the rise of BNB Chain and most recently Polygon in terms of daily active users. Therefore, the biggest names are looking to expand their services to other chains:
• Uniswap to deploy on BNB Chain: Proposal by 0xPlasmaLabs, preliminary polls see 80% saying yes;
• Sushiswap to launch a perpetual DEX on Sei Network (per Sushiswap Head Chef), after the Head Chef proposed a change to the SUSHI tokenomics, following a temporary change to replenish the Treasury.
Still putting the focus on Ethereum are MakerDAO, whose community is backing a proposal to yield interests for their Treasury from an earning vault by Yearn Finance, and Aave, which will soon launch a ‘fresh’ Aave v3 with the initial listings consisting of WBTC, WETH, wstETH, USDC, DAI, LINK, and AAVE.
Three major news regarding the NFT/Metaverse space last week include:
• Decentraland partners with Pedigree to bring canine adoption to the metaverse;
• Bored Ape NFT game Dookey Dash registered over US$40 million (27,090 ETH) in 10-day trading as players are excited about the mystery rewards
• The German carmaker Porsche releases the official Terms and Conditions (TC) for their Porsche NFT collection, which gives buyers the opportunity to withdraw from the purchase within 14 days.
In the Wild West of NFT, Porsche is one of the first to honour consumer rights with this TC and may have set the example for future NFT projects so as to prevent rug pulls and scams.
Trouble, trouble, trouble
Crypto saw a new week of layoffs, half from the troubled actors: Gemini (10% of staff), DCG’s Luno (35%), CoinTracker (20%) and Moralis (numbers undisclosed).
New from the court proceedings: Genesis’ creditor list shows not only crypto/financial firms (Gemini, Cumberland, Mirana, MoonAlpha Finance and VanEck, among others), but also government agencies - the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the U.S. as well. The creditor list of FTX appears to be even longer, with star athletes, crypto firms, tech giants, media outlets, the PM of Bahamas and public servants of both the Bahamas and the U.S.
More information on the Chapter 11 Bankruptcy can be found here: The Crypto Burrito (Volume IV): Understanding 2022’s Crypto Bankruptcy Filings
Still in the process are BlockFi and FTX. The former was granted permission to issue US$10 million in bonuses for their critical employees to keep them from fleeing to Google, Block Inc. and Walmart. Meanwhile, prosecutors are asking the judge to impose new bail conditions and FTX is seeking permission to subpoena SBF after the former FTX CEO used Signal to contact a potential witness in his criminal case.
Celsius Earn users already received the ultimatum from the bankruptcy court, but they can still expect to get some of their assets back. A representative of the bankrupt crypto lender told the court that they are ‘in the later stages’ of developing a plan to return assets to Earn customers. Eligible Celsius accounts should also receive the Flare token airdrop after Celsius won court approval for the one-time distribution of FLR to users who had XRP locked on the platform as of December 2020.
The Twitter accounts of Robinhood and Azuki were hacked last week. Hackers saw the opportunity to take advantage of their followers, thus promoting the scam token of RBH on BNB Chain and fake virtual land claims in Azuki's newly launched virtual world Hilumia. In-between these hacks was a phishing attack that resulted in the loss of US$1 million value NFTs owned by Moonbirds creator Kevin Rose.
The Latest Bitget News
Happy new year and Happy Lunar new year to our users with the upgraded 5,005 USDT Welcome Package for newbies! Register here and complete all tasks in Bitget Rewards Center to receive the gifts!
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• New Spot Margin pairs: APEUSDT and TRXUSDT
Even before the FTX demise, Bitget has already been committed to bring transparency, safety and trust to the digital space. The latest snapshot of our Proof-Of-Reserves for December 2022 was released in early January with a Total Reserve Ratio of 223% and our Bitget Protection Fund maintained at 6,500 BTC and 200,000,000 USDT. However, we are determined to forge ahead by giving users with decent holdings the opportunity to apply for the brand new Bitget Fund Custody Service, through which their assets will be better protected in a separate address.
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Good Reads
What is Stagflation and How Does It Affect the Crypto Market?
The Crypto Burrito Volume III: The Never-Ending Saga Of FTX
The Crypto Burrito Volume IV: Understanding 2022’s Crypto Bankruptcy Filings
How Bitget Became A Dark Horse And Earns Market Share And Trust From Millions In Crypto Winter
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