Some highlights from this past week:
- Uniswap became the first DeFi project to reach $2b in Total Value Locked.
- Aave launches Governance on mainnet.
- Unique Bitcoin volatility art in the form of a NFT, sold for a new record of $100,000.
- KuCoin experiences a $150m loss in exchange hack.
- Binance announced $1T in YTD trading volume.
- The total value of stablecoins has now surpassed $20B.
Market Overview
The total crypto market cap remained unchanged this week. Weekly returns were mostly negative, with LINK standing out as the top performer. Volumes were up, finishing off September strong. Long-term sentiment scores are high for 7 out of the top 10 coins. Litecoin is the only asset that has a low sentiment score. Open Interest in BTC options reached a new all-time high of $2.3B.
The Hype Continues
DeFi continues to be the most frequently discussed topic on Twitter related to Ethereum. Cryptocurrency media headlines mentioning DeFi have surpassed ETH. Coverage of non-fungible tokens is at an all-time high.
Other Trending Topics This Week
Billion Dollar Club
The race to $2B in Total Value Locked (TVL) has ended with Uniswap passing Maker for a last second win. This is a very impressive feat considering TVL in Uniswap was only at $230M on August 27th. That’s a 768% increase in 30 days. The surprise UNI token airdrop that was equivalent to the US government issued stimulus check (or more, depending on when/if you sold) had a big impact on the growth of the platform, as well as many other projects.
As the hype surrounding DeFi continues, new money has consistently flooded into these projects. The Top 5 Tokens have all seen double digit increases in TVL this week, with 4/5 sitting above $1b.
Aave Governance Released on Mainnet
The lending platform Aave has released Aave Governance on mainnet. The first Aave Improvement Proposal (AIP1) is the proposal to migrate from LEND token to AAVE token via Genesis Governance vote. The amount of ETH locked in Aave has grown by 113% this week, increasing from 212,708 to nearly 500,000.
Positive Returns Bring More Conversations
Aggregate monthly crypto tweet volume hit a YTD high of over 1.5M tweets in August. This is 200,000 more than the average monthly tweet volume of 1.3M. With only a few days left in September, that number has dropped to ~1.2M.
This may be due to September returns being mostly negative across the board. When looking at Bitcoin Returns vs. Avg Tweet Volume, we can see that tweet volume drastically increases as positive returns increase.
Aggregate trading volumes set a new 4 month high of $2.8T in September. This is still below the average monthly trading volume of $3T.
Notable News
- Binance Announces $1 Trillion in YTD Trading Volume
- Bitcoin NFT Artwork Smashes Records Sells for 100k
Contact us for a demo of our SigDev platform to view all cryptocurrency-related SEC Filings and market-moving events in real-time.
This Week’s Podcast Episodes
Ep. 14 – Crypto Dark Pools with Danny Kim (SFOX)
In our fourteenth episode, Danny Kim discusses the launch of SFOX’s dark pool, order routing, liquidity, and the institutionalization of digital assets.
Ep. 13 – Valuing a Community with Lou Kerner
In our 13th episode, Lou Kerner discusses the rise of stablecoins, his attempt to purchase Facebook in 2004, the value of communities, and crypto fundamentals.
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