Market deep dive: Analysis of this week’s crypto market headlines

The overall market changed overnight. This time it is due to another potential wide ban on cryptocurrencies by a different political superpower: Russia.

The Bank of Russia announced that they would seek to outlaw mining and trading of crypto.

The market reacted promptly and took a dive down close to the important support levels of 38,000 ($BTC) and 2,850 ($ETH). Prior to the correction, the market seemed to be building up a solid foundation in order to start an upwards move again, but we have seen many examples of rapid changes in crypto in the past, so this sudden change should not come as a surprise to anyone.

The first few days of the week saw a rather quiet market. This gave the team and I the chance to discuss the news below. All of the news items figure as a puzzle piece in our domestic and international expansion plans.

The options vault protocols gained on TVL (total value locked) increased over the course of the last two weeks. Friktion, one of the largest platforms currently counts around $119m, and Katana is at $38m.

There are also other places to trade options in DeFi, e.g. Zeta Markets and Opyn are both on the rise. The purpose of these platforms is to earn passive income regardless of whether it’s a bull or a bear market.

AAVE has launched its permissioned DeFi platform (Aave Arc) for institutions, and Fireblocks, an institutional crypto custody firm, has become the first whitelister of Aave Arc. The platform is aimed at institutions that want to participate in the DeFi sector in a compliant manner. Institutions that have undergone financial due diligence are now able to borrow and lend cryptocurrencies in an automatic way. Fireblocks, as the whitelister, will run due diligence on institutions that are looking to enter the business through the platform. The following four assets are supported; ETH, WBTC (wrapped BTC), USDC (stable coin), and AAVE (its native token).

Crypto.com admitted that over $30m was stolen by hackers. The cryptocurrency exchange lost the amount in bitcoin and ether after the hack, which occurred on January 17th.

One of Reddit’s cofounders predicts play-to-earn crypto will be the only type of game people will play in five years. He also expects that most people will unknowingly participate in DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations) five years down the line.

Fusang, a blockchain-powered marketplace, plans to kick off Asia’s first securities token offering with $10m. The sale will be in the Malaysian offshore centre of Labuan. Fusang is planning to sell 2.5 million of its own tokens at $4 each, and to list them on its own digital securities exchange in early February after the new lunar year. Institutional and retail investors, including those in Hong Kong, will be able to access the securities token offering (STO) through the exchange website. The tokens will be listed in the 1st quarter, giving investors dividend rights.

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