This week in The Flippening, TL;DR
DeFi TVL hit a record $157B this week. USDC reserves to be held in cash and treasuries. Visa buys a Cryptopunk NFT for $150,000. Bitcoin touches $50k for the first time since May. All market sectors were in red last week. Coin burning and how it can tackle inflation. FTX is now live on Mudrex and OnlyFans’s porn ban u-turn, a big win for crypto.
Top Highlights of the Week (ending 19th Aug)
DeFi TVL hits a record $157B; Ethereum competitors gain momentum
Interoperability-focused projects that offer cross-chain bridges and lucrative liquidity mining pools are seeing an influx of funds right as DeFi’s TVL hits a new all-time high.
Data from DeFi Llama shows that the total value locked (TVL) in all DeFi protocols reached an all-time high at $157.06 billion on 22nd Aug.
Though DeFi got its start on the Ethereum blockchain (TVL $114B), it has since grown to other blockchains with smart contracts, the biggest being Binance Smart Chain (TVL $19.3B) and Solana (TVL $2.5B).
Coinbase’s USDC stablecoin reserves to be held in cash and treasuries
Coinbase’s President and COO Emilie Choi clarified that Starting September 2021, USDC reserves will be held in cash and short-duration US government treasuries.
The reallocation of the assets backing USDC, a $27 billion stablecoin, marks a swift change from July when consortium member Circle Internet Financial Inc. said that the reserves included corporate bonds and commercial paper.
In July, Coinbase quietly changed the description for USDC on its website and dropped the wording that previously said each USDC was backed by one US dollar “in a bank account.”
Emily Choi Tweet that while the changes in the investment portfolio for USDC reserves started in May 2021, it “will not extend past September.”
Visa jumps into the NFT craze; buys a Cryptopunk NFT for $150,000
Visa has purchased a CryptoPunks NFT for 49.5 ETH—the equivalent of approximately $150,000.
“Over the last 60 years, Visa has built a collection of historic commerce artifacts – from early paper credit cards to the zip-zap machine. Today, as we enter a new era of NFT-commerce, Visa welcomes CryptoPunk #7610 to our collection.”, Visa said in a tweet.
Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa said, “We’re a company steeped in the history of commerce and payments — but with our eyes on the future. With our CryptoPunk purchase, we’re jumping in feet first. This is just the beginning of our work in this space.”
Other News and Top Reads
- Will Polkadot save decentralized finance from Ethereum’s scaling problems? Read
- Sperax USD: a Hybrid Stablecoin with a Twist. Read
- OnlyFan’s porn u-turn is a victory against banking censorship. Read
- Why domain name investors are buying up NFTs. Read
- The 15 most expensive NFTs ever sold. Read
- Coinbase users angry with customer support after funds disappear from accounts. Read
Market Performance Overview
Bitcoin has recovered the milestone price of $50,000 for the first time since May, as the crypto market continues to break out from its spring crash and summer slump.
The week ending 26th Aug saw all the major sectors in red. The most affected sector this week was DeFi, dropping 8.55% with Chainlink going down 14.31%. DeFi sector also dropped 5.34%,with Uniswap (-9.70%) and Aave (-13.24%) contributing to the decline.
Today I Learned
This week in TIL, we’re going to discuss coin burning, and can it tackle inflation?
TIL – Coin-burning is the intentional and permanent elimination of a portion of cryptocurrency coins from circulation. It is done by sending cryptocurrency tokens to an eater address, also known as a ‘blackhole.’ It is a wallet address where no one holds the private key. Without the private key, these tokens cannot be accessed by anyone and are lost forever.
Although creating an artificial supply crunch might seem like an illegal market manipulation technique, it definitely isn’t!
This act is primarily done to control the price of the particular coin. Burning a portion of the entire circulation decreases the supply, thereby increasing its relative scarcity and thus creating a deflationary effect.
After the London Hard Fork upgrade to the Ethereum network, around 3.17 ETH is being burned every minute. To put this into perspective, around half a million dollars worth of ETH is being burned every hour.
Featured – Mudrex integrates with FTX
We’re super excited to announce that FTX is live on Mudrex. Now you can simply connect your FTX API keys on Mudrex, and start investing in your favorite algos using your FTX account.
On another note, our Mudrex Wallet Deposit campaign is ending soon on 31st Aug.
Top Algos of the Week
Mudrex helps investors like you to invest in high-performing automated trading algorithms created by some of the best traders in the world. Here are 3 top performing algorithms from the last week:
- Windfarm BNB (Performance Score: 8)
- King-ETH 1 (Performance Score: 8)
- ETH-USDT Multitimeframe (Performance Score: 9)
Here we are, at the end of our 4th edition. We hope you liked reading it. Please write back with your feedback, comments, and stuff that you’d like us to include in the newsletter.
We’ll leave you with this hilarious meme that perfectly describes Onlyfan’s u-turn on banning porn.
