The SOMA.finance Weekly Wrap-up #42

In This Issue

• Cryptocurrency prices continued to trade within a narrowing range as the total market cap remained relatively unchanged over the past week.?
• The ongoing banking crisis and continued rate hikes by the Fed have taken a toll on global financial markets, but BTC has remained resilient.?
• Memecoin mania has returned with the rise of PEPE, a coin inspired by the popular internet meme that has seen its value rise 2,000% over the past two weeks.?

Market Overview

It was more sideways price action for the cryptocurrency market this week as the broader financial markets fell under pressure amid the ongoing banking crisis which saw First Republic Bank’s assets purchased for cents on the dollar in an echo of events that transpired in 2008.?

While regulators in the U.S. continue to take a hard-nosed stance against Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, they – along with global regulators – continue to prepare the public for a future of CBDCs.??

On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announced that the central bank would be raising interest rates another 25 basis points, bringing the benchmark rate above 5% for the first time since 2007, and left the door open for additional rate hikes in the future.

Bitcoin (BTC) responded to the rate hike announcement by briefly pulling back to $28,230 before surging to a daily high of $29,350. The top crypto has since traded near support at $29,000.?

At the time of writing, the total cryptocurrency market cap stands at $1.19 trillion, a decrease of 1.7% over the past week. The DeFi market cap currently stands at $53.6 billion with a 24-hour trading volume of $2.19 billion, which is 6.77% of the total crypto market volume.

Crypto News

Energy Tax - The Biden Administration’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is looking to institute a 30% Digital Asset Mining Energy (DAME) tax on cryptocurrency mining operations as part of the White House’s effort to minimize the digital asset mining industry’s impact on climate change.?

COIN Expanding - Coinbase announced that they have launched a new derivatives exchange in Bermuda dubbed ‘Coinbase International Exchange.’ The new exchange, which is operational and trading, offers BTC and ETH perpetual futures settled in USDC with up to 5x leverage to institutional clients in eligible jurisdictions outside of the U.S.?

Memecoin Mania - The frogs have overtaken the dogs in popularity for the time being as Pepe (PEPE) – a meme coin created as an homage to the popular internet ‘Pepe the Frog’ meme by Matt Furie – has stormed up the charts and excited the crypto Twitter faithful with a gain of 2,000% in just two weeks.?

And in the World of NFTs and ‘Killer Whales’…

NFT Utility - Sports Illustrated has announced the launch of “Box Office,” a self-service event management and primary ticketing solution developed and released by SI Tickets, a fan-first ticketing site that offers a secure, NFT-based ticketing marketplace. At launch, SI Tickets will offer access to a wide variety of venues from youth football, basketball, hockey, cheer and dance competitions to fashion shows and live music bars.

Cornering the Market - Art auction house Sotheby’s has expanded on its Sotheby’s Metaverse with the launch of its own secondary marketplace for fine art NFTs. The integrated sales system for the secondary marketplace will be fully on-chain via the Ethereum and Polygon networks, and users can pay using the native ETH or MATIC token.?

Sink or Swim - The cryptocurrency ecosystem is set to get its own version of the popular reality TV show Shark Tank as crypto aggregator CoinMarketCap has revealed its intention to launch ‘Killer Whales,’ “the world’s first globally broadcasted Web3 television show.” Similar to Shark Tank, contestants will pitch their crypto and NFT projects to a panel of industry expert judges – referred to as “Whales.”?

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