LBank Labs Weekly Digest
1 Macro Market Overview
U.S. Stocks End August Higher After Head-Spinning Swings. According to WSJ, major U.S. Stock indexes closed the books on a tumultuous August with monthly gains, riding a string of encouraging economic data to overcome concerns about the health of the labor market. For all the intervening volatility, stocks rallied Friday to finish the month not far from where they started. The S&P 500 climbed 2.3% from the end of July, leaving it just shy of its record close. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.8% for the month, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite ticked up 0.6%.
The U.S. Department of Labor announced last Thursday that the number of initial jobless claims for the week ending August 24th decreased by 2,000 to a seasonally adjusted 231,000, slightly better than the market expectation of 232,000. The drop in initial jobless claims somewhat eased market concerns about an economic recession. Other data showed that the revised annualized quarter-on-quarter growth rate of the U.S. real GDP for the second quarter was 3%, up by 0.2 percentage points from the initial estimate of 2.8%. The growth rate for the first quarter was 1.4%. The GDP deflator’s revised annualized quarter-on-quarter growth rate for the second quarter was 2.5%, compared to the expected and initial estimates of 2.3%. The upward revision of the second quarter’s real GDP growth rate from 2.8% to 3% exceeded economists’ expectations of 2.8%, indicating that the U.S. economy is more resilient. After the data was released, futures on the three major U.S. stock indices edged higher, U.S. Treasury yields rose in the short term, with the 10-year Treasury yield climbing by over 2 basis points, and the U.S. dollar index increased by 0.34% intraday.
Last week, Raphael Bostic, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and a voting member of the FOMC in 2024, stated in a speech that they are still waiting for data to ensure that it is the right time for the FOMC to cut rates. Another FOMC voting member in 2024, Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin, noted that while inflation is coming down, it hasn’t yet reached the desired level but is making progress. Additionally, the final reading of the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index for August, released last Friday, was 67.9, compared to expectations of 68 and a previous value of 67.8.
Over the past seven days, the performance of the three major U.S. stock indices has been mixed. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index fell by 0.7%, while the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose by 0.5% and 1.2%, respectively. On the other hand, Web3-related stocks experienced declines last week, with COIN dropping by 13.4%, MARA down by 10.4%, and MSTR falling by 11.7%.
Left: Three Indexes, Right: Nasdaq, COIN & MARA & MSTR (Source: Yahoo Finance)
Macro indexes
Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 3.0 percent in the second quarter of 2024, according to the "second" estimate released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP increased 1.4 percent.
The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the "advance" estimate issued last month. In the advance estimate, the increase in real GDP was 2.8 percent. The update primarily reflected an upward revision to consumer spending.
(Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis)
Personal income increased $50.4 billion (0.2 percent at a monthly rate) in June, according to estimates released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Disposable personal income (DPI), personal income less personal current taxes, increased $37.7 billion (0.2 percent) and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $57.6 billion (0.3 percent).
The PCE price index increased 0.1 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 0.2 percent. Real DPI increased 0.1 percent in June and real PCE increased 0.2 percent; goods increased 0.2 percent and services increased 0.2 percent.
(Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis)
Last week, driven by stronger-than-expected U.S. GDP data for the second quarter, the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) showed a significant upward trend, closing at 101.732 on Friday, higher than 100.677 from seven days earlier.
DXY (Source: TradingView)
According to the latest data from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), as of the time of writing this article, nearly 70% of investors believe that rates will be adjusted to the 500-525 range at the next FOMC meeting in September, while 30% of investors expect the rates to drop to the 475-500 range. This data shows that, compared to seven days ago, more investors are betting on a double-range rate cut at the next meeting.
Left: EFFR, Right: Target Rate Probabilities for September 2024 Fed Meeting (Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York, CME FedWatch Tool)
Similarly, the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note (US10Y) displayed a volatile upward trend last week, closing at 3.907% on Friday, up from 3.801% seven days earlier.
US10Y (Source: TradingView)
Web3 can transform the internet, says Japan's PM Fumio Kishida: CoinPost. Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said web3 has the potential to transform the traditional internet framework and contribute to social change, speaking at the WebX web3 conference in Tokyo last week via a video message. Kishida said the government was dedicated to creating an environment conducive to the promotion of web3 as part of his administration’s “new capitalism” economic policy designed to solve social issues by driving growth and innovation, CoinPost reported. “Web3 is part of the new form of capitalism,” he said. Japan’s leader hoped the conference would serve as a platform where major Japanese companies announce significant projects aimed at creating valuable economic zones within the metaverse, he added.
(Source: CoinPost)
Former U.S. President Donald Trump Releases Video Promoting His DeFi Project World Liberty. On Thursday, former U.S. President Donald Trump released a video promoting his DeFi project, World Liberty. In the video, he stated, “Today, I have a plan to make America the crypto capital of the planet. Some people are trying to strangle you and bankrupt you, but we will never let that happen.” Previously, Trump’s second son announced the new DeFi project’s Telegram channel, which has since been renamed World Liberty Financial.
(Source: Twitter@realDonaldTrump)
As of last week, the cumulative total net inflow for U.S. Bitcoin spot ETFs stood at $17.6 billion, with a net outflow of over $300 million in the past seven days. Currently, the total net assets of these ETFs amount to $53.8 billion, accounting for 4.6% of Bitcoin's market value. Last week, BTC spot ETFs experienced net outflows for four consecutive days. Grayscale's GBTC has seen cumulative total net outflows of $19.9 billion, while BlackRock's IBTC has experienced cumulative total net inflows of $20.9 billion.
In addition, as of now, the cumulative total net inflow for ETH spot ETFs stands at -$477.3 million, with a net outflow of over $13 million in the past seven days. Currently, the total net assets of these ETFs amount to $7.0 billion, accounting for 2.3% of Ethereum's market value. Last week, ETH spot ETFs experienced net outflows for three days. Grayscale's ETHE and ETH have seen cumulative total net outflows of $2.6 billion and net inflows of $239 million, respectively, while BlackRock's ETHA has experienced cumulative total net inflows of $1 billion.
Left: Bitcoin Spot ETF Overview, Right: Ethereum Spot ETF Overview (Source: SoSo Value)
2 Crypto Market Pulse
Market Data
ast week, the total market value of the cryptocurrency market experienced a net outflow, currently standing at $2.08 trillion, with $160 billion flowing out over seven days. Since August 27, Bitcoin and Ethereum saw a brief, sharp decline, each dropping by over 10 percentage points in a short period. Despite the release of better-than-expected economic data and easing unemployment figures last week, the primary cause of this round of crypto asset selling pressure stems partly from the market digesting the clearest interest rate cut signal given by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. As of the early hours of September 1, the spot price of Bitcoin was $59,135, down 8% over the past seven days. Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, was priced at $2,524, down about 9% over the same period. Additionally, the market capitalizations of Bitcoin and Ethereum were approximately $1.17 trillion and $303.8 billion, respectively, accounting for about 56% and 15% of the total market value. The market share gap between Bitcoin and Ethereum is currently at its largest in recent months.
Left: Market Cap, Right: BTCÐ Price (Data: CoinMarketCap)
$HNT and $IMX emerged as the only 2 gainers, while $NOT, $1000SATS, and $DYDX were the top losers. Reviewing the top 100 cryptocurrency projects by market capitalization last week, most projects experienced negative growth in their market value, except for $HNT and $IMX. This decline is in line with the overall market outflow observed last week. Helium ($HNT), a decentralized blockchain-powered network for Internet of Things (IoT) device, emerged as the biggest winner with a modest 5% gain, maintaining its recent upward trend. Ranked second, Immutable X ($IMX), developed by StarkWare using STARK verifiers and rollup technology, is a layer-2 (L2) scaling solution for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Ethereum. With a slight 1% increase, it became one of the only two projects with positive market cap growth last week.
Top 10 Gainers & Losers (Data: CoinMarketCap, LBank Labs)
Last week, the growth rate of the total supply of stablecoins continued to be rapid, reaching a two-year high of around $158.5 billion. Over the past seven days, the net change in stablecoin holdings continued to show a positive growth trend, with the growth rate continuing to climb. The stablecoin market value has now reached a new high in the past two years. Furthermore, observing the net holdings of stablecoins on exchanges over the past week, the overall trend of net outflows has started to shift to steady net inflows, indicating that selling pressure on crypto assets is decreasing.
Stablecoins Market Cap (Data: Glassnode)
In the derivatives market, the open interest in Bitcoin and Ethereum perpetual contracts over the past seven days did not show significant growth. The capital in the perpetual contracts market was largely liquidated during a sharp decline on August 27, and it has remained low since then. Liquidation data aligns with the actual cryptocurrency price trend, showing that the liquidation of positions last week was mainly concentrated in long positions, indicating that the crypto market just went through a brief downturn and remains in a period of volatility.
领英推荐
Left: BTC & ETH Open Interest, Right: BTC & ETH Total Futures Liquidations (Data: Glassnode)
In the decentralized finance (DeFi) market, the total value locked (TVL) saw a slight increase last week, reaching $82.5 billion. Over the past seven days, the trading volume on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) increased by over 9%, reaching $34.8 billion. The market share gap between DEXs and centralized exchanges (CEXs) slightly narrowed, with DEXs now accounting for about 19% of the total CEX trading volume. Among the top ten blockchain projects ranked by TVL, there was a general pullback in TVL last week, with Avalanche, which had previously seen significant TVL growth, losing over 10% of its TVL in the past seven days.
Left: TVL & Volume, Right: Top 10 chains (Data: DefiLlama)
In the Ethereum non-fungible token (NFT) market, the total market value fell by 5%, currently standing at $5.2 billion. At the same time, the total trading volume continued to decline by 28%, with a trading volume of only $35.09 million over the past seven days. Among Ethereum’s leading blue-chip NFT series, the average price in cryptocurrency terms saw a rebound. Specifically, CryptoPunks’ floor price and average price increased by 5% and 21%, respectively. The floor price of the second-ranked Bored Ape Yacht Club fell by 1%, while the average price rose by 2%. The floor price of Pudgy Penguins, currently ranked third by market value, remained unchanged, while the average price increased by 7%.
Market Cap & Volume, 7D (Data: NFTGo)
3 Major Project News
[Ethereum] Ethereum Foundation Announces 2024 Q2 Grant Recipients. The Ethereum Foundation announced that it allocated over $8.47 million in grants during the second quarter of 2024 to support global conferences, hackathons, cryptography research, developer tool development, and other projects. The grants include support for conferences like ETH Beijing, ETH Tokyo, and ETHWarsaw, research on the Anon Aadhaar protocol, tools like the Circom Language Server and MEDGA Solidity Debugger, as well as initiatives such as the Account Abstraction Core Team and the Ethereum Protocol Fellowship.
(Source: Ethereum Blog)
[Layer2] OP Chain in Superchain contributes over 14,000 ETH in revenue. Optimism tweeted that the OP Chain in Superchain has contributed over 14,000 ETH in revenue. Each OP Chain within Superchain operates under a standardized revenue-sharing model, where a portion of the revenue is returned to the Optimism Collective through a fee-sharing mechanism that the network follows. The fee share is calculated as the greater of 2.5% of the chain’s revenue or 15% of the chain’s on-chain profit, defined as fee revenue minus L1 gas fees. Notably, the OP mainnet contributed 100% of the on-chain net profit.
In addition, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin responded on Twitter to the claim that ‘all major L2 networks on the mainnet currently have the technical capability to steal user funds,’ stating that an important detail is that the Stage 1 rules require that code can only be overridden if the security council reaches a 75% voting threshold, and blocking a quorum (i.e., ≥ 26%) of members must come from outside the company. Both Optimism and Arbitrum meet this requirement. Therefore, these organizations cannot unilaterally steal funds.
(Source: Twitter@Optimism)
[Layer2] Sony is launching the first public testnet for its Optimism-based Soneium blockchain. Sony’s blockchain division, Sony Block Solutions Labs, is launching a testnet and developer incubation program for its Soneium network. “This dual initiative marks a significant milestone in Sony Group Corporation's entry in Web3, poised to catalyze ecosystem growth and accelerate adoption by leveraging its vast global reach and technological expertise across entertainment, gaming, and consumer electronics sectors,” the company wrote in a press release.
The Soneium blockchain is an Ethereum Layer 2 based on the OP Stack designed to provide a “cost-effective development environment” for building consumer-grade applications. Circle, Optimism, Alchemy, The Graph, Chainlink and the Astar Network will all be early experimenters of the network.
(Source: The Block)
[Layer2] Base hits 1M daily active addresses as Basenames takes off. Coinbase layer-2 network Base has topped 1 million daily active addresses amid a massive surge in the number of new “basenames” registered on the blockchain. Base reached a record 1.05 million daily active addresses on Aug. 24 and has fallen slightly to 1.03 million daily active users as of the time of publication.
Following the recent uptick in users, Base now has more daily active addresses than the next several protocols combined. In comparison, Arbitrum boasts the second-highest number of daily active addresses with 394,000 while Linea reported 198,000 and Mantle with 69,000, according to data from Ethereum L2 data platform GrowThePie.
(CoinTelegraph - Base topped 1 million daily active users on Aug. 24. Source: Dune Analytics )
[BNB Chain] BNB Chain Launches Official Bridge to Enhance User Experience. On August 28, according to official sources, BNB Chain, in collaboration with Celer, deBridge, and Stargate, launched the BNB Chain Bridge. The goal is to enhance cross-chain connectivity, liquidity, and user experience on BNB Chain.
BNB Chain stated that integrating these advanced cross-chain protocols will improve the capital efficiency of assets on BNB Chain and promote the development of a wider range of DeFi products and services.
(Source: BNB Chain Blog)
4 Key Fundraising Data
Last week witnessed a total of 25 financing events, raising a substantial amount of over $185.2 million*. Compared to the recent weeks, financing activities remained active both in terms of transaction volume and total funding amount. The Blockchain Service sectors both leading with the highest number of financing events, totaling 8. The Blockchain Service sector also recorded the highest total funding amount, raising a total of $120.3 million, accounting for 65% of the overall financing. The largest financing event was led by Bridge, successfully raising $58 million. Bridge is building a stablecoin-powered money movement platform, offering services such as payouts, cross-border payments and exchanging foreign currencies. Its Orchestration and Issuance APIs make it possible for any company and team to offer digital dollar-based services to their end consumers or businesses. More details are as follows.
* 6 events of unknown amount are included, which have been excluded from the remaining data.
Top Left: Stats in Areas; Top Right: Stats in Rounds; Bottom: All Events
(Data: Cryptorank, Foresights, LBank Labs)
Below, we listed the most noteworthy fundraising deals for you:
The web3 payment firm Bridge has raised a total of $58 million in funding. Started by former Coinbase and Square employees, the firm has backers including Sequoia, Ribbit, Index and Haun Ventures, according to a company post on X.
Bridge is building a stablecoin-powered money movement platform, offering services such as payouts, cross-border payments and exchanging foreign currencies. It has already partnered with Bitso for business-to-business cross-border payments undergirded by stablecoins in Latin America.
Edge Matrix Chain (EMC), a multichain infrastructure, has raised $20 million in a funding round led by Polygon Ventures and Amber Group. The project said that investors, including One Comma, Kapley Judge and Associated Corporations, Cyberrock Venture Fund, Candaq Fintech Group, and Hameem Raees Chowdhury, participated in the funding round.
EMC plans to use the newly raised funds to launch its Layer 1 blockchain, which is focused on apps designed for artificial intelligence. The blockchain is “designed to scale and support GPU compute for crypto AI projects while introducing a new DeFi asset class backed by tokenized real-world GPU resources.”
Gameplay Galaxy, a web3 game development studio founded by the creators of the Trial Xtreme series — a popular bike racing game franchise with over 300 million downloads — has raised $11.17 million in a seed extension round. Blockchain Capital and Merit Circle co-led the round, Gameplay Galaxy said Tuesday. Several other smaller investors also participated in the round, preferring to remain anonymous, Gameplay Galaxy founder and CEO Doron Kagan said.
Gameplay Galaxy began raising money for the seed extension round in May and concluded last month, Kagan said. The round was structured as an equity round with token warrants and brought the firm's valuation to $71 million, Kagan added. With this seed extension round, Gameplay Galaxy's total funding now stands at $24 million, follow
double jump.tokyo Inc. is pleased to announce it has secured over $10 million in funding in its Series D first closing, with SBI Investment leading the round. Participating investors include SBI Investment, Sony Group Corporation, Taisu Ventures, Gate Ventures, TM Capital, Inc., Bing Ventures Ltd., and a high-profile entity that wished to remain anonymous. The capital will be deployed to further develop and support blockchain games, blockchain infrastructure, and related services, as well as to strengthen the company's organizational structure and talent base.
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?? Disclaimer: The weekly crypto market insights are provided for informational purposes only and should not be considered as financial advice. The cryptocurrency market is highly volatile and unpredictable. Prices and trends can change rapidly, and past performance is not indicative of future results. Always conduct thorough your own research and consult with a qualified financial professional before making any investment decisions.