Author: TechFlow

Yesterday's market dynamics

Yesterday, 10 Bitcoin ETFs had a net outflow of 5,514 BTC, and 9 Ethereum ETFs had a net outflow of 4,551 ETH

According to Lookonchain data, 10 Bitcoin ETFs had a net outflow of 5,514 BTC (about $317.82 million) on the day. Among them, Fidelity outflowed 2,835 BTC (about $163.38 million) and currently holds 175,515 BTC (about $10.12 billion).

On the same day, 9 Ethereum ETFs had a net outflow of 4,551 ETH (about $11.11 million). Among them, Grayscale (ETHE) had an outflow of 6,412 ETH (about $15.65 million) and currently holds 1,800,954 ETH (about $4.4 billion).

Tiger Brokers Launches AVAX, LINK, APT and TON Cryptocurrency Trading

According to the Economic Times, Tiger Brokers (Hong Kong) announced that it will open trading of Avalanche (AVAX) and Chainlink (LINK) to retail investors from now on, while opening trading of Aptos (APT) and Toncoin (TON) to professional investors. According to Tiger Brokers’ disclosure, since virtual asset trading was fully opened to retail investors on July 1, 2024, trading activity has increased significantly. Data from its investment platform Tiger Trade shows that the number of cryptocurrency trading orders and the number of traders in Hong Kong users increased more than twice in August 2024 compared with July.

Solana Ecosystem DePin Project Grass has launched an airdrop inspection page, with the first airdrop accounting for 10% of the total

According to official news, Grass announced the launch of the airdrop inspection page. Currently, the inspection page only reflects the allocation of Closed Alpha and Epochs 1-7, and does not include the ongoing Bonus Epoch or To Be Announced allocation. The total supply will be 1 billion GRASS tokens, of which 10% is reserved for the first airdrop.

CFTC settles lawsuit against Uniswap Labs

According to official CFTC news, the CFTC found that Uniswap Labs illegally provided leveraged or margin retail commodity trading of digital assets through a decentralized digital asset trading protocol. Uniswap Labs was required to pay a civil penalty of $175,000 and stop violating the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA). The CFTC acknowledged that Uniswap Labs actively cooperated with the law enforcement investigation into the matter and reduced the civil penalty.

Outlier Ventures: Bitcoin's poor performance after halving may have ended the four-year cycle theory

According to The Block, Jasper De Maere, director of research at Web3 accelerator Outlier Ventures, issued a report saying that Bitcoin’s price performance after the latest halving event was the worst in history and investors should abandon the concept of a four-year cycle. Data shows that the price of Bitcoin fell by about 8% within 125 days after this halving, while it rose by 739% (2012), 10% (2016) and 22% (2020) in the same period after previous halvings. De Maere believes that 2016 was the last time a halving had a significant impact on Bitcoin’s price, after which miner block rewards became insignificant in an increasingly mature and diverse crypto market. Although Bitcoin hit a new high of $73,836 on March 14 this year, De Maere said this was mainly driven by factors such as spot ETF approval and had nothing to do with the halving.

Web3 game Dimensionals abandons blockchain functionality and fully switches to Web2 mode

According to NFT Plazas, game developer Mino Games announced that its roguelike card building game Dimensionals will fully switch to the Web2 model, completely abandoning the previously integrated blockchain technology and NFT functions. According to Mino Games CEO Sash MacKinnon, Dimensionals originally launched the Genesis Stone NFT series in March 2023, aiming to attract mainstream players for the upcoming game. However, the project faced many challenges from the beginning: whitelist giveaways were attacked by a large number of robots, the project suffered multiple DDoS attacks, and changes in the NFT market landscape caused royalty income to plummet to zero. Although Mino Games launched a non-blockchain version on the Steam platform in March 2024, MacKinnon admitted that the Web3 project ultimately caused huge financial losses. "We chose the wrong track," he said. The company then decided to fully switch to the Web2 game model to attract a wider audience.

Ripple CEO: Stablecoin RLUSD is expected to be released in a few weeks, not interested in US IPO

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse revealed at the Seoul Blockchain Week event in South Korea that the company is about to launch a stablecoin RLUSD pegged to the US dollar. It is currently in a "private closed testing phase" and is expected to be officially released in "weeks, not months." Garlinghouse said that Ripple saw an opportunity to enter the stablecoin market after the USDC decoupling incident 18 months ago. In addition, Garlinghouse expressed "no interest" in an IPO in the United States, mainly because of the SEC's "hostile attitude" towards cryptocurrencies. He predicted that no matter who wins the upcoming presidential election, the US SEC will usher in new leadership, believing that the current chairman Gary Gensler has lost bipartisan support. Regarding the legal dispute with the SEC, Ripple was fined $125 million last month, far less than the $2 billion proposed by the SEC. Garlinghouse believes this is a victory for the company and the industry. He also expressed regret over the SEC's recent enforcement action against the NFT market OpenSea, believing that the SEC's position that NFTs are securities is wrong. Despite this, Garlinghouse is optimistic about the development of cryptocurrencies in the next five years and looks forward to getting clearer regulatory guidance from lawmakers rather than the SEC.

Grayscale August Research Report: The market will retest historical highs at the end of the year, and pessimism about Ethereum is unfounded

Grayscale Research released its August market research report: The overall stability of global markets in August 2024 masked the sharp fluctuations during the month. On August 23, Federal Reserve Chairman Powell said in a speech at the Jackson Hole annual meeting that the "time has come" to cut interest rates, partly reflecting the fact that "downside risks to employment have increased." Interest rate futures now suggest that the central bank will reduce the policy rate by 100 basis points in the remaining three Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings this year.

Grayscale Research believes that a weaker dollar and lower interest rates, if sustained, will be good for Bitcoin's valuation. Lower U.S. interest rates will weaken the dollar's competitive advantage and could benefit Bitcoin. Ethereum performed significantly poorly in the early August decline, and an excess of speculative positions led to a sharp correction in Ethereum prices and limited the price recovery since then. More fundamentally, the Ethereum network is undergoing a major transition, bringing uncertainty to some investors about its future. Ethereum intends to achieve greater scale by moving more transactions to the Layer 2 network, which will then be settled regularly to the Layer 1 mainnet. Grayscale Research believes that the current market pessimism about Ethereum is unfounded, given that the expansion strategy is clearly working. But it may take some time for the market consensus to become more positive.

Market dynamics

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