This week in The Flippening, TL;DR
- Solend’s Whale Liquidation Crisis Prompts Second Vote to Reverse ‘Emergency Powers’
- eBay acquires leading NFT marketplace KnownOrigin, expanding its foray into NFTs and blockchain.
- The Solana network will soon have its own smartphone, the “Saga,” an Android phone created by Solana Labs.
🔊 Top Highlights of the Week
Solana Labs is building a web3-focused mobile phone
Solana Labs is attempting to barge into the telecom market with the release of an Android phone and a new subsidiary dedicated to web3 mobile apps.
The upcoming device – a modified handset with specialty crypto wallet functions and the “Solana Mobile Stack (SMS)” software development kit for Web3 programs – was announced Thursday in a New York City event. It will cost around $1,000 and begin delivery in early 2023.
Solana Foundation pledged $10 million toward spurring development of mobile apps on its SMS.
eBay acquires leading NFT marketplace called KnownOrigin
The e-commerce giant, eBay, has announced the acquisition KnownOrigin, one of the most recognised NFT marketplaces. The platform, which offers artists and creators a space to sell, resell and collect NFTs.
According to a press release on Wednesday, Manchester-based KnownOrigin has been purchased for an undisclosed amount. The move signals eBay’s continued interest in leveraging cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to improve its operations.
Solana Lending Platform ‘Solend’ Reconsiders ‘Takeover’ Of Whale Account
On Sunday, users of Solend, a decentralized lending protocol on Solana, voted overwhelmingly in favor of a proposal aimed at mitigating risk imposed by a specific user with a big margin position on Solend.
The user in question accounts for around 95% of the SOL deposits on the platform and has borrowed around 88% of the USDC available on the platform. This means that users are unable to withdraw their USDC deposits and that the SOL if liquidated would be too large for the market to absorb, potentially leaving the platform with bad debt.
The proposal passed to remedy the situation grants Solend Labs “emergency powers” to “takeover” the whale account and liquidate its vulnerable assets (around $20 million in SOL) via over-the-counter (OTC) trades instead of decentralized exchanges.
📰 Other Highlights:
- Binance scores Cristiano Ronaldo as partner for NFT push
- Immutable launches its $500M Fund to Boost Web3.0 Gaming Adoption
- Crypto platform FalconX’s valuation reaches $8 billion after the latest funding round, where it secured another $150 million. Crypto winter, you say?
- Tether Launches GBP₮ Token Pegged to British Pound Sterling
The crypto market witnessed a steady turn-around over the past couple of days. All of the top cryptos are decently up. However, it is time to hold your horses before jumping in right now. Dollar cost averaging is the best move forward in such tricky market conditions.
Almost all of the sectors closed the week on a handsomely high note. Decentralized exchanges remained the star performer.
Coin of the week🤑💸
Uniswap: $UNI
Our focus for the week has been decentralized exchanges. And Uniswap remained a clear pick after showing signs of a potentially strong move and considering its current momentum.
– On a price action level, traded volumes have risen tremendously, and the price has moved higher in tandem with the volume.
– The token seems to be on a traditional uptrend with the sector bouncing higher.
The week in numbers
$2.25 Billion
Worth of Bitcoin options expiring this Friday. The market is bound to be volatile. It is prudent to watch out for any sudden massive moves across the crypto spectrum.
$150 Million
This is the latest amount of funding raised by the cryptocurrency platform, FalconX. With this latest funding round, the platform reaches a mammoth valuation of $8 Billion. Did anyone crypto winter was here?
20,594
This is the total amount of ETH burnt this week. The EIP-1559 protocol reformed the Ethereum fee market, modifying the limit for gas fees and introducing a burn feature that takes a portion of transaction fees on the blockchain out of circulation, to be canceled permanently.
Crypto simplified
The crypto winter has started, and it’s giving everybody chills. Year-long profits have been wiped off, and HODLers are having a tough time. There is only one question on everybody’s mind. It is when will the ‘bear market’ end and the sunny days of rally begin.
But before we decode that, let us establish what is a crypto bear market. No straight answers here.
Generally, a 20% drop from all-time highs is considered the start of a bear market in stock markets. However, having the same benchmarks for cryptocurrencies wouldn’t be fair. We can instead look at the long-term price trend of the crypto.
However, this also should be taken with a pinch of salt because there have been instances of Bitcoin resuming a bullish trend despite making multiple lower lows.
That is where the crypto market is at today, where Bitcoin has hit multiple lower lows. So, can we expect a reversal again? Maybe, but various other bearish market indicators hint otherwise.
So assuming that we have entered a bear market, let’s look at some historical data to understand how long will it last. The crypto market follows a 4-year cycle, directed by Bitcoin’s halving schedule. Halving refers to the phenomenon wherein the rewards given to the miners for adding a block to the Bitcoin blockchain get cut in half. This happens after every 2,10,000 blocks, which is roughly every four years. Every halving essentially reduces the supply of new Bitcoins by half.
With simple economics at play here, as the supply of Bitcoin reduces while the demand for it remains the same or increases, its price goes up.
The last Bitcoin halving happened in 2020, followed by a bull run. If you look at the historical data, the bull markets after a Bitcoin halving have lasted for 2.5 – 3 years, before 1 or 1.5 years of the bear market.
So to understand when this bear market will end, we must pinpoint precisely where it started.
- Assuming that the bear market started after Terra collapsed last month, we may have another year or year and a half of the bear market.
- It might also be that the bear market started after Bitcoin hit the top in November 2021. In that case, we may have another 6-10 months of the bear market.
However, this again assumes that the 4-year cycle of crypto markets is still valid. Many experts have called out that it may not hold.
Another factor that may influence the duration of this bull market is the correlation of equity markets with Bitcoin. The last bull run drew a ton of institutional money into crypto, making it highly correlated to the stock markets.
P.S – We talk about the S&P 500 when we say the stock markets.
Institutional demand and adoption would play a critical role in shaping up the market direction. It will be an interesting show from here. In any case, it is a suitable time to diversify across sectors and keep on investing small amounts at regular intervals.
P.P.S – None of this is to be taken as financial advice; please DYOR before making any investment decision.
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