Analytical material on cryptocurrencies 17.05.2023
News block
1. River developing Lightning Network attracts $35 million
The American company River has announced a Series B funding round worth $35 million. The round was led by the venture capital company Kingsway Capital. Other investors include PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Cygni, Goldcrest and Valor Equity Partners.
According to Alex Leishman, CEO of River, the new wave of interest in bitcoin is "largely driven by adoption in businesses and institutions."
River Company operates one of the largest Bitcoin Lightning nodes, providing payments and liquidity management:
The River Lightning API allows companies to easily integrate with the Lightning Network. The Chivo wallet in El Salvador uses River for almost instant and almost free Bitcoin payments.
Lightning Network is a second-level solution for the bitcoin blockchain. It is a network of payment channels between users that can offer faster and cheaper transactions for the first cryptocurrency. The LN transfer fee is 1 satoshi (0.00000001 BTC).
2. EU Finance Ministers supported MiCA
The Council of the European Union for Economic and Financial Affairs, which includes finance ministers of all member states, gave the green light to the long-awaited regulation of crypto asset markets (MiCA) after the vote on May 16.
Finance ministers from 27 member states voted in favor of the MiCA bill and amendments to several provisions and directives related to the new legislation.
The European Parliament officially adopted the MiCA law on April 20, paving the way for final approval by the European Council before the regulatory parameters come into force.
The legislation establishes clear regulatory principles and requirements for the use of cryptocurrencies and related services and activities in the European Union. The scope of the legislation extends to a number of cryptocurrencies, digital assets, service tokens and stablecoins.
3. Ripple's success in Court with SEC
Back on December 22, 2022, the SEC filed a motion to close internal emails, text messages and expert reports related to the speeches of former SEC director William Hinman.
On May 16, 2023, Judge Analisa Torres of the U.S. District Court ruled that these documents are "court documents" and they must be accessed.
These documents relate to a speech delivered by former SEC Finance Director William Hinman at the Yahoo Finance All Markets summit in June 2018, where he stated that ETH is not a security.
Ripple believes that this is vital evidence that will help them in the case against the US regulator. Therefore, the judge's decision was perceived as a success of Ripple and the crypto community.
Recall that the trial is already in its third year and there is a high probability of its completion in the current 2023.
XRP has been adding +6.3% over the past day.
Overview of the crypto market
Bitcoin and ether started the new trading day almost unchanged - the world's largest digital asset fell by 0.26% to $27009, and ether rose by 0.35% to $ 1820.
The 30-day rolling correlation between bitcoin and ether prices has fallen to 77% - the lowest level since 2021, indicating a possible long-term separation of the two largest cryptocurrencies. This weakening correlation can increase trading activity in bitcoin-ether pairs on major exchanges, creating new opportunities for traders without the participation of stablecoins.
🔸 The current capitalization of the crypto market is 1.18 trillion
🔸 Trading volume for the last day is $32.6 billion (-0.09%)
🔸 BTC dominance 44.5% (decrease by 0.38% per day)
🔸 Fear and Greed Index:
- today 50, yesterday 54, a week ago 52
where, 0 is extreme fear, and 100 is extreme greed.
Extreme fear may be a sign that investors are too scared. This is often a good time to buy. When investors become too greedy, it means that the market needs correction.
🔸 Leaders of growth and decline. In the TOP 100 cryptocurrencies for the last day:
- the largest growth is shown by: MANA (+10.2%), RNDR (+7.7%), SNX (+5.7%), XRP (+5.1%), SAND (+5.1%)
- the strongest drop is: HEX (-19.2%), KAVA (-7.2%), FLR (-3.2%), CFX (-3.0%), SUI (-2.7%).
Bitcoin
According to the data of the analytical platform Santiment, over the past 5 weeks, the key tier of bitcoin's "big whales" addresses has been demonstrating steady accumulation dynamics. During the stagnation of the price, the whales accumulated a total of 84897 BTC.
The previous accumulation cycle led to a 34.4% rise in the BTC price in January of this year:
On May 15, 22,880 BTC worth $627.5 million was withdrawn from the leading cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. Only three times in the last year have such large conclusions been observed. The two previous times were the collapse of Terra and the collapse of FTX:
Ethereum
Thanks to the April Shanghai update, ETH coin staking is gaining momentum. Over the past month, the number of ETH coins sent to staking increased by 4 million coins and reached the level of 20 million.
The year 2023 will probably end when 30-40% of the total ether supply will be in staking (growth by 2 times):
At the same time, 6,274,752 ETH or 29% of the total deposits are accounted for by the Lido DAO (LDO) protocol.
The decline in user confidence in centralized exchanges (affected by the collapse of FTX) and the popularity of staking led to a significant drop in the amount of ETH placed on cryptocurrency exchanges:
Today, only 16.318 million ETH coins out of a total offer of 120.3 million are placed on exchanges.
