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This Week in Crypto: Partying Into a Bear Market

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Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies continued their slump, with the world’s largest cryptocurrency spending the past week flitting between US$18,000 and US$19,000.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at US$19,391.07 (-4.46%) while Ethereum (ETH) is trading at US$1,325.14 (-1.06%). Major altcoins such as Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX), and Polkadot (DOT) have also been trading in red within the same period.

BTC 7-Day Chart. Data:CoinMarketCap

Excitement for Ethereum’s merge, which spurred sporadic mini bull-runs in the markets over the past two months, has seemingly vanished into thin air, as investors are growing increasingly skittish about Jerome Powell’s recent hawkish narrative. Last Wednesday’s 75 bps rate hike also marked a turning point for the broader financial markets, with the S&P500 closing at its lowest level of 2022 on Monday.

Read more: After Two Days of TOKEN2049, Here’s What We’ve Learned

However, the crypto community is evidently still bullish about the “long-term”, with the now completed TOKEN2049 event bringing together 7,000+ investors, developers, previously unknown “celebrities”, and dodgy degens from all over the world to Singapore in the week leading up to the much-anticipated F1 night race. From shamelessly begging for investments at taxi stands in the city to throwing ultra-extravagant parties on rooftops (seriously, where does the money come from?), the industry continues to celebrate its milestones despite the market downturn.

Stay tuned for more content from our coverage of TOKEN2049.

Celsius creditors make their move

Creditors of bankrupt crypto lending platform Celsius have subpoenaed Equities First, a lending firm in involved in the Celsius saga.

The move comes after Celsius’s former CEO Alex Mashinsky claimed that the company had borrowed money from Equities First, which could not return Celsius’ collateral whenthey attempted to repay the loans. According to Mashinsky, Equities First still owes US$439 million to Celsius.

On Tuesday, Mashinsky resigned from Celsius, stating that his continued role as CEO has become an “increasing distraction”.

Tyler Hobbs NFT project leapfrogs BAYC

QQL, a collaborative generative art experiment between Tyler Hobbs and Dandelion Wist, has raised nearly US$17 million in a successful mint on Wednesday afternoon.

The project, which sold out all of its 900 mint passes for 14ETH, allows NFT collectors to act as co-creators of artwork through the QQL algorithm

Data from Nansen indicates that the project quickly surpassed blue chip NFT projects like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club in terms of trading volume in secondary sales, raising over 15,176 ETH (approximately US$20.3 million) within hours of minting.

Trading Volume

According to data from CoinMarketCap, the global crypto market cap stands at US$942.12 billion, a 0.14% increase since yesterday. The total crypto market volume over the last 24 hours is US$69.85 billion, a 15.39% decrease.

Fear & Greed Index

Risk appetites are sapped – the Crypto Fear and Greed Index currently stands at 21 indicating extreme 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.

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