Bitcoin
This past week saw Bitcoin's trading range maintained between $65,000 and $71,000, marking a 6.5% decline over the week. With the Bitcoin halving event just 17 days away, the market is closely watching to see how this news will further affect the market conditions. The Bitcoin halving is an event that happens roughly every 4 years, where the the rewards that bitcoin miners receive for verifying transactions on the blockchain is cut in half. This is a significant part of bitcoin as it means the newly minted tokens entering circulation becomes less and less until we reach 21 million tokens by the year 2140.
Furthermore in the midst of these market dynamics, El Salvador has further increased its investment in Bitcoin, now holding nearly $400 million worth of the digital asset, showcasing continued national confidence in cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin Weekly Price Chart
Sam Banked Fried Jailed
In the United States on Thursday, Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, received a 25-year prison sentence following his conviction for embezzlement and defrauding billions of dollars from customers. Although the sentence fell short of the 40-50 years sought by prosecutors and was significantly less than the maximum possible sentence of 110 years, it still signifies a pivotal moment in the cryptocurrency sector. This judgement brings increasing clarity in the regulation of digital assets and serves as a warning to other exchange CEOs about the penalty of greed and overconfidence.
Bitcoin ETF Flows
The Grayscale Bitcoin ETF (GBTC) has been facing persistent selling pressure, with total outflows surpassing $15 billion. Notably, we saw a peak outflow of $624.5 million from GBTC on March 18th, and despite expectations for a slowdown, a significant outflow of $302.6 million occurred on April 1st.The current average outflow of GBTC is at $275.5 million, however, we remain hopeful that this figure will reduce as the market absorbs the selling pressure from Grayscale investors capitalising on their gains, and as the market conditions improve.
On a contrasting positive note, the Blackrock Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) has been leading in terms of BTC inflows, accounting for $801.4 million of the total inflows during the last 7 trading days (March 22nd to April 1st), signalling new investors are still interest in gaining exposure to Bitcoin and digital assets despite the broader market's fluctuations.
Bitcoin ETF Flow Table (US$m)
Furthermore, in the last 7 trading days we saw Bitcoin ETFs reaching a trading volume of $20.25 billion. This is down from the ETF volumes peak of $9.93 billion on March 5th but we expect higher volumes closer to the bitcoin halving in the next 17 days as the market can experience higher volatility.
Ethereum
This week, Ethereum also experienced a price drop, falling 8.36% from $3,607 to $3,300. Despite this downturn, financial giants such as BlackRock's CEO Larry Fink and Fidelity maintain a bullish stance on the prospects of a spot Ether ETF, even despite discussions that the SEC may categorise the cryptocurrency as a security.
Ethereum Weekly Price Chart
Additionally, Ethereum's circulating supply is on a downtrend, while the amount of Ethereum staked has reached an all-time high of 31.4 million, representing 26.11% of the total supply. This tightening of supply, coupled with increased staking, is expected to create a favourable supply-to-demand ratio for Ethereum, which should drive its price higher.
Staked Ethereum
Ethereum Circulating Supply
Solana & Airdrops
Solana experienced another week of fluctuations, with its price swinging between $177 and $203. The situation remains largely unchanged, with the volatility continuing to be influenced by the ongoing memecoin trend and the airdrop opportunities within the Solana ecosystem.
Airdrops are essentially when a project or company sends free tokens to the wallets of their active users to promote their new token, reward loyal customers, and distribute their token in a fair and decentralised manner. This drives and incentives users to actively use the applications that are likely to airdrop users and consequently this drives activity on the blockchain itself. Thus as Solanas network becomes busier and more Solana is being used within these applications, the value of Solana increases.
Solana Weekly Price Chart
Base & Degen
Empowered by Coinbase, Base is a Layer 2 solution for Ethereum, designed to enhance the network by offering a fast, secure, and cost-effective ecosystem. Essentially, a Layer 2 solution scales Ethereum's capabilities by offloading congestion from the main blockchain, aiming to improve transaction speed and reduce costs without compromising security. Its developer friendly characteristics makes it easy to create decentralised apps by leveraging Coinbase's products, user base, and developer tools making it an enticing network for developers.
Base Ecosystem TVL
This week, Base emerged as the top-performing Layer 2 solution. Similar to Solana's experience, memecoins have also started trending within the Base ecosystem. Despite not having a native token, Base's ecosystem has seen remarkable growth, with the Total Value Locked (TVL) reaching nearly $1.2 billion USD. This rapid expansion demonstrates the ecosystem's attractiveness to developers and users who are keen on engaging and developing within its network
Furthermore, The DEGEN chain, an innovative Layer 3 blockchain tailored for the memecoin community, has quickly ascended in popularity within the digital asset sector. This new ecosystem built on top of Base, offers a dedicated ecosystem for memecoins and this unique market. With its own native currency, the $DEGEN token acting as the network's gas token, its value has seen a remarkable surge of 356% this week fluctuating between $0.01355 and $0.0618 from its local low to local high. This reflects DEGEN's potential as a significant investment within the memecoin market.
In the first few days of operation, DEGEN chain has demonstrated impressive growth, with over 7,500 contracts and 2,300 tokens already launched on its platform. Its market capitalisation is currently $500 million, with a fully diluted valuation of $1.5 billion, positioning it as a strong contender in the memecoin space. Moreover, the network has seen daily trading volume exceeding $100 million and has efficiently processed over 553,000 transactions.
Degen Weekly Price Chart
Thinking About Trading
Talk To A Broker