ARP's Crypto Digest

General Digital Asset Market View:

On October 11, the U.S. Bitcoin ETFs recorded strong inflows, totaling $253.6 million. Leading the pack was Fidelity’s FBTC with an inflow of $117 million, followed by ARK Invest’s ARKB with $97.6 million. Last week, the 11 U.S. Bitcoin ETFs saw a net inflow of $348.5 million.

Analyzing the inflow/outflow by day reveals that buying pressure was concentrated mainly at the beginning and end of the week. The price of Bitcoin adjusted from a low of $60,582 to $62,640, representing an increase of over 3%.

More Crypto:

What are the top-performing sectors in the last 1 year?

• Ethereum Killers (which are L1s, e.g., $SUI).

• Memes (top performers since last bull run).

Worst performers:

• Defi, metaverse, l2, lsd.

Meanwhile, majors:

• Btc did 112%, eth 232% returns.

Privacy tokens like Monero (XMR) are increasingly delisted from major exchanges due to regulatory concerns, prompting a significant drop in their prices. Recently, Kraken removed Monero for European users, leading to a 9% price fall. This action is part of a broader trend, with exchanges like OKX, Binance, and Huobi also distancing themselves from these tokens. 

Consequently, trading has shifted to less regulated platforms such as Poloniex and Yobit, which now handle about 40% of the trading volume for privacy tokens, up from 18% in 2021. 

Countries like South Korea, Japan, and Australia have imposed bans or restrictions on these tokens due to fears of money laundering and consumer protection issues.

What Happened This Week:

• Uniswap has announced Unichain, an Ethereum L2 built on the OP Stack, in collaboration with Flashbots.

• The SEC charged Cumberland DRW with acting as an “unregistered dealer” in cryptocurrency trading.

• Stripe has announced that it is resuming support for crypto, launching “Pay with Crypto,” a service that enables payments in the stablecoin $USDC.

• Coinbase has opened Gold and Oil Futures markets. Coinbase users can trade GLD and OIL Futures on Coinbase Derivates.

• The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has introduced revised VAT regulations that exempt the transfer and conversion of digital assets, including crypto.

What to Look Out For:

• World Liberty Financial plans to raise $300M at a $1.5B valuation through an initial token sale next week, according to a roadmap obtained by The Block.

• Fidelity is preparing to introduce its first money market fund that will be traded on the blockchain.

• Ethena announced that it has decided to invest its $46 million reserve fund in a variety of tokenized assets. The investment will be allocated to BlackRock BUIDL, Mountain’s USDM, Superstate’s USTB, and Sky’s USDS.

• VanEck has launched VanEck Ventures, a $30M early-stage fund to invest in fintech, crypto, and AI startups.

What we enjoyed reading and listening to:

• The State of Fraud Proofs in Ethereum L2s — Link

• Money Routers: The Economic Case for Bridges — Link

• Idea to Incentivize Following Through With Commitments —  Link

• a16z Thesis: Building the AI Brain — Link

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