Market Beat

Bitcoin (BTC): $16,727 (+0.35%) 🔼

• Bitcoin (BTC) had a volatile week and ended up with a loss of 2.2% over a seven-day period.
  • On Wednesday, BTC rose to above $18,000 (+7.56%) in anticipation of a positive interest rate update from the Federal Reserve.
  • However, after the Fed’s announcement that it plans to keep raising rates into 2023, BTC fell as much as 10% by Friday EOD.
  • Since Monday, Bitcoin was down 2.29%.

Ethereum (ETH): $1,180 (+0.33%) 🔼

• Ethereum (ETH) followed the equity markets this week, but fared worse than Bitcoin, with a 6.9% loss since Monday.
  • Ethereum network fees have fallen by 38.9% in the past thirty days, contributing to the Ether sell-off amid a broader market downturn, per Token Terminal data.
  • TVL (Total Value Locked) showed $23.07B and has also been down by $1.05B since Monday, representing a loss of 4.35%.

Dogecoin (DOGE): $0.0783 (+1.71%) 🔼

• Dogecoin (DOGE) remained the top loser among the top ten cryptocurrencies by realized market cap, falling 15.9% since Monday.
  • DOGE’s value had spiked in late November on speculation that Elon Musk planned to incorporate it into Twitter as a payment method, but this week’s news cycle was less positive.
  • On Saturday, Elon Musk said he’d be willing to join the Dogecoin community on Twitter Spaces to answer some questions closer to Christmas.
  • Dogecoin enthusiasts are hoping Musk will eventually allow Dogecoin to be used as payment on his newly acquired social media platform.

The Open Network (TONCOIN): $2.61 (+5.26%) 🔼

• TonCoin continued to stand out from the crowd with a 24hr jump of 5%, pointing to an overall gain of 33% in the last seven days.
  • The significant increase in TonCoin prices appears to be due to the introduction of anonymous phone numbers for Telegram on Dec. 06 by its founder and CEO, Pavel Durov.
  • Since then, TonCoin saw cumulative gains of as much as 60% by Dec. 14 but fell back to 45% as of Dec. 19 Sunday evening, still, it was ranked first among the top twenty by realized market cap that saw the most gains in seven days.
  • In late October, Telegram launched Fragment, an Open Network-based decentralized auction platform that allows users to trade usernames, and has generated over $50 million in sales of user names since its launch.

Event of the Day

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter and CEO of Block, has donated 14 BTC to Nostr, a decentralized social network. Nostr is not a social network itself, but rather an open protocol that aims to be censorship-resistant by not using a centralized server, but rather relying on user-run clients. This allows users to send content by writing a post, signing it with their private key, and relaying it to others’ servers.

This relay network can be used by others to build social media platforms. Dorsey was reportedly impressed by Nostr and decided to fund its development within 24 hours of learning about it.

Nostr’s creator, fiatjaf, believes that the fact that Dorsey used and talked about Nostr is more important than the financial contribution itself. The open-source, decentralized nature of Nostr has drawn comparisons to Bitcoin.

Crypto Weekly Digest

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has released new guidelines for banks dealing with digital assets such as tokenized traditional assets, stablecoins, and unbacked crypto assets. The committee aims to finalize a new framework for banking standards by 2025.

In other news, Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former CEO of FTX, is reportedly planning to abandon his fight against extradition to the United States, where he faces criminal fraud charges. According to Reuters, citing an unnamed source, Bankman-Fried is expected to announce his decision in court on Monday in the Bahamas.

It has also been reported that a prosecutor from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has sent an email to a law firm representing prominent Democratic political groups requesting information about donations made by Bankman-Fried and his colleagues. Campaign organizations, large super PACs, and Representative Hakeem Jeffries are among those who have been emailed, according to the New York Times.

Meanwhile, there is industry speculation surrounding a market downturn on the portfolio assets of DCG, the parent company of troubled crypto lender Genesis Global Capital, which suspended redemptions one month ago.

In other legal news, the U.S. District Court of Central California has denied a motion in favor of Bored Ape NFT creators in their lawsuit against artists Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen.

Finally, it has been reported that crypto exchange OKX has not processed any withdrawals for almost seven hours due to a cloud failure. A spokesperson for the exchange pointed to downtime on Alibaba’s availability in Hong Kong as the cause of the issue.

Author: Gate.io Researcher Peter L.
This article represents only the researcher’s views and does not constitute any investment advice.
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