Markets continue to show positive momentum on little news.
Bitcoin is up 10% since last Friday morning, and is now trading just above USD 23,000. ETH is lagging and only trading 2% higher; market participants still seem to be trying to figure out how to position themselves for the upcoming Shanghai upgrade. As a consequence, ETHBTC reached 0.0676 and is coming closer to the lows we saw last October. BTC dominance also continued its upward trend and increased one percentage point from 43.3% to 44.4%. This marks an impressive increase from the 1-year low we saw last September at 38.8%, especially considering all of the bad press proof-of-work was getting in the recent past.
DYDX rallied a stunning 67% over the week on account of the news that the planned unlock of its token for investors will be delayed. Originally, an unlock of 150 million tokens, which would have doubled the current circulating supply, was planned for February 3rd. Under the new schedule, the unlock will now take place on December 1st. The announcement squeezed all short sellers who were betting on falling markets around the unlock out of the market.
In other news, Coinbase was fined 3.3 million euros by the Dutch central bank for offering services in the Netherlands without obtaining registration. Certainly, Coinbase can afford the fine. Having said this, though, this is not the first fee: Coinbase just recently was fined USD 100 million in New York (half of the fine they were required to invest into their internal compliance). If this is just the beginning, and fines will become a part of “normal business” (much like in TradeFi), it would be worrisome for many crypto institutions who often neglect proper compliance and governance.
Signature Bank seems to continue pulling back from their crypto business. Last weekend, Binance said that their banking partner, Signature Bank, will no longer be handling SWIFT transactions below USD 100k. Although it is not clear yet, this move might mark the beginning of Signature Bank pulling completely out of crypto. Unlike Silvergate their crypto deposits only account for less than a quarter of total deposits, and their CEO already stated last December “We are not just a crypto bank”.
