This Week in Crypto: Post-Merge Blues
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you would know that Ethereum successfully completed its transition from a Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake network yesterday.
However, despite all the hoo-ha, ETH still succumbed to the ongoing hawkish chatter and fell by nearly 10% over the past 24 hours. At the time of writing, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency is now trading at US$1,473.40 (-7.42%) while Bitcoin (BTC) slipped below US$20,000 for the first time since September 8th. Major altcoins such as Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX), and Polkadot (DOT) have also been languishing in a sea of red within the same period.
Read more: The Merge is Happening. Here’s What You Need to Know
MAS recognises potential of DLT
At an event on Thursday organised by the MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore), the central bank said that it’s actively exploring DLT (distributed ledger technology) use cases, such as asset tokenization and cross-border payments.
“There is tremendous potential for innovations like tokenization and distributed ledger technologies to reduce the reliance on central parties or intermediaries”, said Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, who is also the MAS Deputy Chairman.
The MAS is also “involved in a range of innovations that may bear fruit over the longer-term,” he said.
In May, MAS announced Project Guardian – a collaborative initiative with the financial industry that will explore the “economic potential” and “value-adding” use cases of asset tokenisation.
Read more: What is Singapore’s Vision in the Global Crypto Economy?
The first industry pilot under Project Guardian will explore potential DeFi applications in wholesale funding markets. It will be led by DBS Bank, JP Morgan and Marketnode, and involves the creation of a permissioned liquidity pool comprising tokenised bonds and deposits.
FTX set to purchase Voyager assets
Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX is in the lead to purchase the assets of embattled crypto lender Voyager Digital after an auction was held this week.
According to Coindesk, who cited someone familiar with the matter, it was a close fight between FTX exchange and Wave Financial during the final stages of the auction, which was held by Moelis & Company, Voyager’s investment bank.
FTX had previously made its offer known publicly. However, Voyager was believed to be unhappy with the terms of the proposal, with the firms lawyers labelling it as a “low-ball bid dressed up as a white knight rescue”.
While it’s unclear how much FTX agreed to pay, the winning bid or bids will be revealed in a hearing scheduled for September 29.
Voyager had frozen the funds of the customers as it went bankrupt. Its customers whose investments were withheld by the company are now hoping that this auction will help them retrieve their assets.
Coinbase wants you to vote for pro crypto politicians
Coinbase users in the US will soon be able to determine how crypto-friendly their local politicians are through Coinbase’s trading app.
In August, the US-based exchange launched a crypto policy education initiative also included a voter registration tool. This tool will now be incorporated into Coinbase’s trading app, therefore allowing its US users to see the “crypto sentiment scores” for members of Congress and register to vote directly via its app.
In a series of tweets on Wednesday, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said that the initiative is aimed at helping pro-crypto candidates “solicit donations from the crypto community”.
Trading Volume
According to data from CoinMarketCap, the global crypto market cap stands at US$959.30 billion, a 2.64% decrease since yesterday. The total crypto market volume over the last 24 hours is US$83.13 billion, a 5.54% increase.
Fear & Greed Index
Risk appetites are sapped – the Crypto Fear and Greed Index currently stands at 28 indicating fear. The index uses 5-6 measurements to assess the current sentiment of the market and then rates that level of emotion on a scale of 1-100 – 1 is extreme fear and 100 is extreme greed.