Weekly recap: whales accumulate ETH amid Ethereum upgrade

Crypto market in numbers

According to CoinMarketCap, the cryptocurrency market cap topped a six-week high of $1.7 trillion. This is still 34% lower than the ATH seen in May 2021.

Since 27th July, daily trading volumes have declined but are currently estimated at above $70 billion. Last year, after an early June decline, trading volumes were at their lowest annual levels from June to July. In late July, they started growing gradually. A similar trend has been observed in 2021.

The Fear and Greed Index was in the “Greed” zone on 31st July and 1st August, for the first time since 12th May. On 4th August, it moved back to the “Fear” zone, dropping from 60 to 42 points. Nevertheless, the index shows that the market sentiment is now more positive than it has been during the last three months.

The Bitcoin volatility index has not changed significantly over the past week, despite the fact that its price had first grown to $42,500 and then pulled back to $38,000. According to Buy Bitcoin Worldwide, ​​the 30-day estimate for Bitcoin’s volatility index is around 3.12%.

Bitcoin’s dominance of the crypto market fell by almost 2.5% over the week and is now 45.85%. According to CoinMarketCap, Ethereum’s share has increased by 1.4% – to 18.74%.

All Time High

Gainers of the week (29th July – 4th August 2021)

Losers of the week (29th July – 4th August 2021)

Easily track gainers and losers within the Simple trade section on EXMO. Check real-time updates in the last 24 hours, week and month.

Segmentation of cryptocurrencies based on trading results (29th July – 4th August 2021)

Most traded coins (28th July – 3rd August 2021)

Top crypto market driving factors

Bitcoin (BTC) and the overall crypto market

▲ 29.07.2021 – Glassnode: On 28th July 2021, 70,З28 bitcoins were withdrawn from crypto exchanges – the highest number since 2016.

▲ 31.07.2021 – Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, is reportedly planning to mine Bitcoin.

▲ 30.07.2021 – Glassnode: Over the past week, the total number of active Bitcoin addresses has jumped by nearly 30% – from 250k to 325k.

▲ 01.08.2021 – Santiment: Bitcoin supply held by addresses containing from 100 to 10,000 BTC hits 9.23 million (equivalent to $364 billion). This is almost half of all BTC mined to date.

▼ 02.08.2021 – Saudi Aramco denies reports on Bitcoin mining activity.

▲ 02.08.2021 – Square payment company made $55 million gross profit from bitcoin sales in Q2 2021.

▲ 02.08.2021 – Glassnode: Bitcoin outflows from the centralised exchanges reached 100,000 BTC in July, the highest level since November 2020. Only 13.2% of BTC in circulation is currently held on centralised exchanges – a new low for 2021.

▼ 02.08.2021 – CoinShares: Bitcoin investment products saw outflows of $19.7 million over the past week, with total outflows in July reaching $67.8 million.

▲ 03.08.2021 – Google allows crypto exchanges and wallets to use its ad services again.

Ethereum (ETH)

▲▼ 02.08.2021 – Santiment: Ethereum supply held by whale entities exceeded 7.3 million ETH (equivalent to~ $19 billion), approaching the level of May 2021 highs. As a result, Ethereum whales now own 39% of the asset’s total supply.

▼ 02.08.2021 – Ethereum saw outflows totalling US$9.5 million in a second consecutive week. Over the course of July, ETH saw $1.9 million in outflows.

XRP (XRP)

▲ 28.07.2021 – Ripple has partnered with SBI Remit to launch its first on-demand liquidity service between Japan and the Philippines.

▲ 30.07.2021 – Attorney James K. Filan stated that a settlement between Ripple and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is unlikely to happen soon. Filan is confident that Ripple will not yield to the regulator.

▼ 01.08.2021 – ​​Ripple has unlocked another billion XRP and sent a 182-million XRP portion to the wallet that belongs to its former CTO, Jed McCaleb.

Cardano (ADA)

▲ 27.07.2021 – Morningstar: Cardano is expected to join Bitcoin and Ether to form a “big three” of mainstream cryptocurrencies.

Uniswap (UNI)

▲ 28.07.2021 – Ashleigh Schap, Uniswap’s growth lead, said the team behind the trading protocol is in talks with PayPal, Robinhood, Stripe and E-Trade.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

▲ 01.08.2021 –The Smart Bitcoin Cash team has successfully launched the smartBCH sidechain with three nodes as the genesis validators.

Cosmos (ATOM)

▲ 03.08.2021 – The Cosmos Network plans to launch Emeris, the cross-chain portal to all crypto apps, in mid-August.

Tron (TRX)

▲ 29.07.2021 – The number of daily transactions on the TRON network reached 9,298,611 on 28th July, hitting a new record high.

Zcash (ZEC)

▲▼ 03.08.2021 – Zcash creator, Zooko Wilcox, says ZEC should switch to Proof-of-Stake.

The Open Network (TON)

▲03.08.2021 – The Telegram team has agreed to transfer the ton.org domain and the GitHub repository to TON Foundation.

Crypto market trends

Regulation

? Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said that bitcoin cannot be classified as money, adding that it needs to be “very broadly” accepted in order to become a currency, noting that it is far from reaching that goal.

? The People’s Bank of China said it will keep applying high regulatory pressure on crypto trading in the second half of 2021. The PBOC has asked banks and other payment institutions such as AliPay, not to be involved in cryptocurrency operations. The central bank also intends to promote sustainable financial services while minimising carbon emissions.

? A new bill introduced by United States Representative, Don Beyer of Virginia, has proposed a far-reaching regulatory and legal framework for digital assets across the board. It calls for the U.S. Treasury Secretary to have the power to either permit or prohibit U.S. dollar and other fiat-based stablecoins.

? The Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure bill proposal features detailed plans to impose stricter rules regarding tax collection on digital assets. According to Bloomberg, it would raise an additional $28 billion from cryptocurrency transactions and impose more rules on crypto brokers to report transactions of virtual currencies to the IRS. It would also require businesses to report crypto transactions of more than $10,000.

? The chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, called on Congress to give the agency more power to oversee crypto lending, and platforms like peer-to-peer decentralised finance (DeFi) sites that allow lenders and borrowers to transact in cryptocurrencies without the involvement of traditional banks.

Acceptance of cryptocurrencies

? Google’s updated financial products and services policy went into effect on 3rd August 2021, lifting the ban on crypto ads. Registered advertisers offering cryptocurrency exchange and wallet services are once again allowed to market their products.

? Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded the Government of El Salvador’s long-term foreign-currency issuer and senior unsecured ratings to Caa1. The outlook remains negative. Analysts noticed that El Salvador’s Bitcoin law may jeopardise its deal with the International Monetary Fund.

? Analysts at Bank of America say there are a number of potential benefits to El Salvador’s adoption of bitcoin. Among them are the decline in transaction costs on remittances that account for almost a quarter of El Salvador’s GDP, democratisation of financial services as well as prospects for the crypto industry development.

? PayPal intends to launch its own cryptocurrency wallet in the USA over the next few months. The company has also decided to hire more than 100 crypto experts as the company prepares to expand and offer its crypto services to U.K. residents.

? Mastercard’s CEO, Michael Miebach, has outlined the company’s plans to continue developing products and services around cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). One of Mastercard’s previously developed products is the CBDC testing platform.

? European Investment Fund, European Union’s venture capital arm that provides guarantees for small and medium-sized enterprises, has put $30 million in Fabric Ventures’ new digital assets fund. This makes it the first EIF-backed fund mandated to invest in digital assets and blockchain technology.

CBDC and stablecoins

? The IMF plans to “step up” its monitoring of digital currencies. “The Fund has a critical role to play to help its members harness the benefits and manage the risks of digital money,” the regulator states in a recent report.

? IMF chief, Kristalina Georgieva, is convinced that central bank digital currencies will be the safest form of payment. In her opinion, the IMF has to step forward to provide a platform for countries that will enable interoperability for numerous CBDCs in the future.

? The Block: American lawmakers asked industry experts how far behind the US actually is – especially as it relates to its standing with China. According to one of the panelists, the sign of the US loss “would be wide-scale adoption of a central bank digital currency and cross-border leaps”. On the contrary, another expert said that privacy concerns and a lack of capital controls over China’s offering could make the dollar more appealing by comparison.

? President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has signed a law titled “On Payment Services”, officially enabling the country’s central bank to issue a CBDC, the digital hryvnia.

? Tether CTO, Paolo Ardoino, said that USDT is still seeing issuance, with $100 million in USDT issued on 31st July.

Big business

? PwC crypto lead, Henri Arslanian, has claimed that the crypto ecosystem continues to redefine the future of the asset class resulting in a higher market valuation of crypto businesses. This raises the bar for small investors to participate in the ongoing innovation. He has also noted that the volume of crypto mergers and acquisitions has doubled. According to Arslanian, crypto businesses managed to raise 2020’s M&A value of $3 billion in just three months.

? Vontobel’s CEO, Zeno Staub, says some of the firm’s wealthy clients are interested in allocating part of their portfolios to crypto.

? The brokerage division of UBS Group has launched a pilot project for the clearing of exchange-traded products in cryptocurrency.

? ProFunds, a premier provider of a diverse lineup of mutual funds, announced the launch of the Bitcoin Strategy ProFund (BTCFX).

? Wells Fargo, America’s third-largest bank, has started offering crypto exposure to wealthy clients.

? State Street Corporation, the second oldest bank in the U.S. is to expand its cryptocurrency, CBDC, blockchain and tokenisation services. The company is set to offer cryptocurrency reporting, reconciliation and processing services to its private-fund clients.

? Wealthfront, one of the largest robo-advisory platforms with $25 billion in assets, has added support for Grayscale’s Bitcoin and Ethereum funds.

? The $45-billion asset manager, GoldenTree, has reportedly added bitcoin to its balance sheet.

? Twitter user, Dave Lee, suggested that Tesla should be holding 42,069 Bitcoins, based on his calculations. Responding to Lee, Musk said that Tesla does not have that many Bitcoins “but it’s close.”

? MicroStrategy’s operating expenses, which included impairment losses on MicroStrategy’s digital assets, have resulted in a paper loss of $424.8 million. However, MicroStrategy CEO, Michael Saylor, said that the company will keep buying more bitcoin despite facing losses in Q2. By the end of the quarter, MicroStrategy had accumulated over 105,000BTC with an average purchase price of $26,080.

? Square Cash App’s customers have bought $2.72 billion worth of Bitcoin in Q2 2021. The company’s net profit from the sale of Bitcoin is estimated at $55 million.

? Visa crypto-related cards saw a boost in spending activity in spring 2021. However, digital assets transactions using Visa have started declining in June 2021.

Mining

? In July, Bitcoin miners’ revenue increased for the first time in four months, amounting to $972.6 million, which is 16% more than in June. Meanwhile, Ethereum miners’ revenue decreased by 2% for the same period – to $1.08 billion.

? Marathon Digital Holdings has entered into a contract with Bitmain to purchase an additional 30,000 Antminer S19j Pro (100 TH/s) miners for $120.7 million. Company’s mining operations are expected to consist of more than 133,000 Bitcoin miners, producing approximately 13.3 EH/s once all miners are fully deployed and operational.

? Canaan Inc., a bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer, announced that it has received a purchase order for 4,000 bitcoin mining machines from HIVE Blockchain Technologies.

EXMO news

EXMO will support the London hard fork of Ethereum ERC-20 that is scheduled to take place at the beginning of August 2021. The new upgrade is the next step for Ethereum on the path to Ethereum 2.0. Read more about all the upcoming changes of the London hard fork in this article “Ethereum’s London hard fork: what to expect from the new upgrade”.

That’s all for this week! Follow EXMO on YouTube, Twitter and Telegram to stay tuned to the main events and trends in the crypto market.