Bitget Hot Takes (August 01 - August 07)
Bitget Hot Takes is the exclusive weekly newsletter series by Bitget Academy, the 360-degree onboarding guide for all crypto enthusiasts.
Bitget Hot Takes last week can be found here.
Central Themes
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BGB beat Bitcoin, Ethereum and most exchange tokens in 7-day return.
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A new wave of big names is coming to the crypto space.
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Around US$200 million was stolen in three attacks; data shows the vulnerability of bridge protocols.
BGB’s Stemina
Surprisingly, Bitcoin and Ethereum closed the first week of August with a loss. Meanwhile, BGB was going strong, having achieved an 8.11% growth in the last seven days. That puts BGB in the second place of the exchange token category. Bitget users’ trading activities over the same period were remarkable with US$1.183 trillion in aggregated futures volume and US$305 million in spot volume.
Historical data proves that BGB tends to perform exceptionally well in uncertain times and sideways markets, while maintaining a steady performance in the uptrend.
Need to check on BGB’s self-sustained growth? Here are our BGB Report for the last three months:
Big Names Join The Space
Crypto’s Staples
As seen above, Bitcoin cumulative returns have decreased by 2.83% at the end of August’s first week. BTC was trading between US$22,400 and US$23,600, seeing considerably less volatility than the week before.
The hype for Bitcoin remains high as firms propose new hedging solutions using the largest cryptocurrency. Galoy, a banking software company that closed a US$4 million fundraise on August 3, has launched a Bitcoin-backed stablecoin called Stablesats shortly later.
Meanwhile, the number of perpetual futures contracts with a negative funding rate has been on the way down, and so has Bitcoin risk signal. A reduction in negative funding rates means short sellers are less dominant; we could really consider this a positive sign for the following weeks.
Source: Glassnode
LVMH, Gucci, Tiffany, BlackRock and More
Luxury brands are deepening their crypto involvements. If you don’t know about Aglaé Ventures yet, now is the time to do some research. The venture capital firm backed by Arnault, the controlling shareholder of LVMH, has launched a €100 million investment fund for Web3 projects at all stages. Former executives at CoinFund and Aave are leading the expansion of the VC from Web2 to Web3.
Another lux giant, Gucci, now accepts ApeCoin payments through BitPay, becoming the first major brand to add APE to their payment options. Luxury jeweller Tiffany Co. explored another approach to the NFT space with their NFTiff collection. CryptoPunk owners would purchase a NFTiff pass, choose the punk of their preference, and wait for their bespoke pendant to be delivered around February 2023. All 250 NFTiffs were sold out for US$12,500 each, earning Tiffany Co. US$12.5 million in just 20 minutes.
Within the same week, the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, entered into a partnership with Coinbase (COIN) to offer institutional investors direct access to crypto. The news immediately pushed COIN’s share price to go up by 31% to open last Thursday at US$106 - roughly one week after Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest dumped 1.41 million COIN at US$53.
Even pension funds are eyeing the digital space. Fairfax County Retirement Systems, a $6.8 billion Virginia pension fund, has turned to yield farming for lucrative earnings.
The iconic Starbucks and Meta decided to expand their business with the help of NFTs. After Meta successfully integrates Coinbase’s Wallet and DApp into the platform, the firm will release cross-platform NFTs across 100 countries. Starbucks, on the other hand, will incorporate NFTs in their customer loyalty program, allowing Starbucks lovers to earn digital collectibles through their everyday purchase. That could be the ultimate solution the NFT industry is looking for.
Other crypto investments include:
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US$1 billion for Brevan Howard’s crypto fund
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US$20 million in Series A funding for NFT counterfeit detector MarqVision
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US$6.7 million in seed funding for Cosmos’ liquid staking protocol Stride
Security Concerns Amplified
On the first days of the new month, US$190 million was syphoned out of the Nomad cross-chain token bridge. A white-hacker who tried to protect Nomad’s funds at the time of attack has returned US$9 million to the protocol; and Nomad is offering a 10% bounty on any funds returned.
An estimation by Chainalysis, which was released around the same time shows that cross-chain bridges appear to be the Achilles’ heel of the digital space: 13 hacks targeting this protocol type has resulted in a US$2 billion loss so far this year. The data platform also calls for ‘extremely rigorous code audits’ and ‘timely countermeasures’ to improve the security of cross-chain bridges.
Source: Chainalysis
Solana was the next victim of hackers. Nearly 8,000 wallets were compromised, mostly those provided by Phantom and Slope and US$5.2 million was stolen. Another Layer 1, Near Protocol, also notified its users of a wallet data breach that took place in June. Although the situation did not lead to any unfortunate consequences and the team had fixed the bug, it still adds to the concerns of blockchain security.
ZB.com is a middle-tier crypto exchange that halted withdrawal only one day due to ‘sudden failure of some core applications’ before losing US$4.8 million.
The Latest Bitget News
Determined to bring our users the best crypto experience, Bitget constantly adds new trading pairs each week alongside the interesting, bountiful events. Don’t forget to register your Bitget account here to join the weekly, exclusive Live Trader AMA in our community group!
Moreover, as pressure mounts on crypto firms, many exchanges have shut down or are about to, and you know that millions were drained from crypto wallets over the last seven days. That is to say how timely the launch of Bitget Investor Protection Fund is; with more than US$200 million available for any emergency compensation, Bitget is showing that nothing can stop us from providing an impeccably safe and reliable environment for crypto traders! To find out more about Bitget's Protection Fund, please visit here.
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