Cryptocurrency Market Overview 24.08.2023
News block
1. Shopify: payments to USDC via Solana Pay
Solana Pay, a payment protocol built on the Solana blockchain (SOL), is now connected to the e-commerce giant Shopify, which allows users to pay for purchases in USDC stablecoins.
Thanks to the integration, users will be able to connect Solana-oriented crypto wallets, such as Phantom or Slope, and make intra-network payments using USDC.
Now USDC is the first payment method to be enabled through integration, but in the future it will be followed by other crypto assets, a representative of the Solana Foundation said.
"Thinking about this integration, we chose stablecoin because sellers and consumers "think in dollars," said Josh Fried, head of commercial business development at the Solana Foundation. "This creates a much simpler entry point when prices are set in a currency that consumers and sellers naturally understand."
According to Fried, when paying with USDC, transactions will be calculated almost instantly, unlike most credit card payments, which can take several days to process.
Shopify's market capitalization is $72 billion.
2. EU: EUROe stablecoin launch on Solana blockchain
The Finnish fintech company Membrane Finance yesterday on August 23 launched the EUROe stablecoin tied to the euro on the Solana (SOL) blockchain.
EUROe is a stablecoin that meets the European MiCA requirements, which converts paper euros into digital money with blockchain support. EUROe can be created and redeemed in a 1:1 ratio without commission by any user with a EUROe account. EUROe is secured with 100% bankruptcy protection in cash and 2% CET1 equity in European financial institutions or banks.
"MiCA provides a new level of accountability and consumer protection in the crypto asset sector and we believe that thanks to the integration of EUROe, Solana has now become an extremely competitive contender for a growing number of blockchain—based applications," said Patrick Elias Johansson, a representative of Membrane Finance.
EUROe is the only EU—based stablecoin and payment network that is regulated as an electronic money institution in the European Union.
Before launching on the Solana network, the EUROe stablecoin was previously launched on Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum One and Avalanche.
As for the Solana blockchain itself, it has often been criticized in the past due to regular technical failures. However, it is worth noting that the network has been running smoothly for the last 6 months:
3. The Mystery of the third largest BTC wallet
Over the past few months, an unknown bitcoin wallet has risen in the ranking, becoming the third largest holder of bitcoins in the world.
According to the BitInfoCharts cryptostatistics platform, BTC coins were first received to the wallet address on March 8, 2023. Over the next three months and two weeks, 118,000 BTC worth $3.08 billion were accumulated on the wallet at current prices.
Such a fast and significant accumulation of BTC on one wallet caused a fair share of guesses about who owns this address. Crypto Twitter began to express various opinions about this - from the fact that it's just a large exchange moving its assets, to suggestions that BlackRock is behind this address.
However, yesterday, Arkham Intelligence blockchain detectives established that this wallet belongs to Robinhood Markets Inc, an American company that provides financial services and is known for offering its clients the opportunity of commission-free trading in stocks and exchange—traded funds:
Officially, this information has not been confirmed. And in the last quarterly report, Robinhood did not show BTC on its balance sheet. Therefore, we observe.
Overview of the crypto market
🔸 The current capitalization of the crypto market is 1.136 trillion
🔸 Trading volume for the last day is $45.58 billion
🔸 BTC dominance 45,2%
🔸 Fear and Greed Index:
- today 41, yesterday 37, a week ago 37
where, 0 is extreme fear (may be a sign that investors are too scared - it's often a good time to buy), and 100 is extreme greed (the market needs correction).
Over the past day, the crypto market has noticeably revived. At the moment, the price of BTC rose to $26.6k, and many altcoins show a more significant increase, which is reflected in the dominance of BTC (it is falling).
The SOL coin of the Solana blockchain adds more than 5% to the news about integration with the online shopping platform Shopify. Other large altcoins - Cardano (ADA), Polkadot (DOT) and BNB show an increase of 3-5%.
However, despite today's market-wide growth, most digital assets are trading significantly lower than a week ago, when bitcoin fell below $25k. Therefore, now we need to be careful, because there is no influx of new liquidity in the crypto market.
It's getting harder to get BTC
The difficulty of mining BTC has again updated the historical maximum. As a result of another automatic recalculation, the difficulty of mining the first cryptocurrency increased by 6.17%:
The complexity is growing following the commissioning of an increasing number of mining equipment. That is, despite a difficult 2022 and a difficult 2023, more and more large miners are involved in BTC mining (only yesterday we reported the news that a second large cryptocurrency mining center was launched in Oman, and investments in both centers exceeded $700 million).
According to various estimates, the current cost of mining one BTC is about $20-23k. However, already in April 2024, it will increase by 2 times due to halving (the reward of miners for a block will fall from the current 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC). Therefore, in 2024, only a significant increase in the price of BTC can save miners from large-scale bankruptcies.
Surge of activity in Layer-2 networks
In the last few months, Ethereum scaling solutions have been gaining more and more popularity. So the second-level Base network, which was developed by the leading American crypto exchange Coinbase, quickly attracts users.
Just a few weeks after the launch, Base surpassed the Optimism (OP) network in terms of the number of daily transactions:
It is worth noting that the Optimism network itself has been gaining momentum lately. This month, transactions in Optimism reached a new record high, surpassing the Arbitrum (ARB) network by this value for the first time in 2023.
The launch of Worldcoin by Sam Altman on the Optimism platform a few weeks ago contributed to an increase in the number of transactions on this network.
It is also important to take into account that the Base network is built on the technical stack of Optimism and part of the commissions that Base earns go to the Optimism DAO, which increases the latter's income. This factor helps to support the value of the OP token, which has lost significantly less in price over the past 30 days than its competitors ARB and MATIC.
As the competition between Layer-2 networks grows, it becomes clear that Ethereum is winning - the number of transactions processed by the main Ethereum network and the leading Layer-2 networks recently reached the second largest value in history:
The previous maximum, set in March 2023, occurred on the day of the ARB airdrop distribution, which was accompanied by a certain hype.
The total number of transactions in the Ethereum ecosystem (including all Layer-2 networks) is now about 3 times higher than during the peak of the bull market, when activity occurred only in the main Ethereum network.
Interestingly, despite the growing popularity of Layer-2 solutions, the main Ethereum network retains its position, since transactions in it remain at about 1 million per day, as they were a year ago.
In general, despite the difficult years 2022-2023, the Ethereum ecosystem is developing quite well. Optimism gained strength thanks to the rapid spread of OP Stack. Base has become one of the fastest growing networks, and Arbitrum continues to dominate in the field of DeFi. At the same time, all Layer-2 networks will soon receive significant benefits from the implementation of the Dencun update, which should reduce the fees in these networks tenfold, which will eventually help push Ethereum to a wider implementation.
