The Bitbuy Brief: DeFi Taking a Bite Out Of BTC

Weekly Market Movement

Analysis: Crypto had ups and downs this week,  with the largest decrease seen in the past 24 hours which saw most coins retrace at least 5%. In the 7-day trading period, only ETH remained in the green. Up next: DeFi!

Big Story Of The Week in DeFi

Surprisingly, BTC Dominance Is Seeing Its Most Significant Decline Since Late 2017 – Is DeFi Is Acting As A Distraction To More Important Fundamental Narratives In The Space?

  • In spite of underlying bullish sentiment, BTC dominance, BTC’s percent of total crypto market cap, has seen its deepest decline in absolute terms since December 2017. From May 10, the metric has fallen from over 67% to 57%. The fall has been somewhat of a, ‘death by a thousand cuts.’ ETH has seen the largest ‘market cap share’ growth moving from 8% to 12%. Otherwise, Chainlink (LINK) has seen dominance increase from 0.55% to 1.5% and coins out of the Top 10 have, in general, seen market cap share increase by ~5%. This data may also miss some of the 500 new coins which have apparently been launched during the DeFi wave.

Takeaway: The entire crypto market is being distracted by the ridiculous price action seen in DeFi.  Meanwhile, sentiment around BTC has never been more even-keeled. Larger investors are now, more than ever, beginning to investigate the asset and some similar for its store of value potential, the infrastructure continues to develop and the coin looks technically promising (reach out for additional data). Furthermore, as the DeFi wave, in boosting ETH performance, completely ignores major scaling issues and scary transition to a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm planned for early 2021.

Other Weekly Headlines

  • Decentralized exchange Synthetix has announced it will now rely exclusively on Chainlink for price feed technology. Synthetix, which has USD 946M capital locked in its platform where users can create derivative contracts, said the integration removes, ‘centralised dependency’ for oracle needs and is a step towards ‘decentralised governance.’ – link – @Synthetix
  • The Swiss canton of Zug, which hosts a number of crypto businesses, announced today that firms and individuals can pay taxes in ETH and BTC up to USD ~110k. The Zug Department of Finance has collaborated with local crypto financial services firm Bitcoin Suisse for the effort. – link – @TheBlock
  • US Senator Mike Crapo, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, has written a letter to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, encouraging it to develop crypto and blockchain rules. ‘The US should develop clear rules of the road that protect businesses and consumers without stifling future innovation,’  the letter reads. – link – @Senate.gov
  • Decentralized options trading platform, Opyn, has introduced put options on Curve Finance’s CRV governance token. Purchasing the put option includes acquiring oTokens, which represents the contract and can be further traded on other decentralized exchanges. – link – @TheBlock
  • Chainlink has purchased Cornell University’s privacy-focused oracle solution DECO. The solution’s co-creator, Ari Juels, will join Chainlink. Juels has begun working with the Chainlink’s co-founder Sergey Nazarov on a second Chainink whitepaper. – link – @CoinDesk

Other Articles

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BetaKit: As Ethereum Turns Five, The World’s Second Biggest Crypto Platform Aims To Tackle Long-Standing Challenges

Forbes: Digital Dollar To Be ‘In Competition’ With Bitcoin

ETH Withdrawal Fees

Due to a drastic increase in the usage of the Ethereum network, gas prices are currently at all time highs. As a result, we have temporarily increased our ETH withdrawal fees. Raising the ETH withdrawal fee allows us to ensure we are paying a high enough gas price to have ETH withdrawals confirmed quickly. We will be monitoring the situation closely in hopes to lower the ETH withdrawal fee when gas prices go down.

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