It was a terrific week for investors as virtually all of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation increased in value, despite the crypto winter that has persisted and was compounded by bankruptcy difficulties at crypto lenders Vauld and Voyager.
According to CoinMarketCap, the price of Bitcoin has increased by more than 12% over the last week, reaching $21,565. During this time, Ethereum’s price increased by more than 15% to $1,216.
Diverse major projects increased by more than 20% throughout the week: Uniswap increased by 30% to $6.33, Polygon increased by 26% to $.59, and Avalanche increased by more than 22%t to $19.94. And Solana rose almost 16% to $38.14 per share.
This week, one of the top 50 cryptocurrencies declined in value: UNUS SED LEO dipped less than 1% to $5.73.
TOP to USD Chart. Source: CoinMarket Cap
‘May not have fully disclosed.’
As prices recovered, industry news was rife with reports of Vauld and Voyager’s financial woes after 3AC filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy.
Vauld, located in Singapore, stated on Monday that it would stop all withdrawals, deposits, and trades owing to volatile market circumstances and the financial problems of our primary business partners. Since June 12, the business has had withdrawals totalling $197,7 million. Recent declines in revenue necessitated the layoff of 30% of the company’s workforce last month.
In response to the announcement on Tuesday, cryptocurrency lender Nexo stated it had signed an indicative term sheet to buy Vauld, granting Nexo a 60-day due diligence time. Nexo will acquire up to 100% of the company and restructure operations to expand its position in Asia, pending a favourable conclusion.
Cryptocurrency broker Voyager filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York on Wednesday. The announcement caused the share price of Voyager to drop by over 12%. The corporation disclosed a $661 million exposure to 3AC last month.
According to Voyager’s bankruptcy petition, Alameda Research, the company created by FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and which issued a $500 million line of credit to Voyager last month, owes the broker $377 million.
This prompted officials in Texas and Alabama to launch an investigation into Voyager’s demise. Joe Rotunda, head of enforcement at the Texas State Securities Board, told Bloomberg: “What we’re seeing now is that a lot of these crypto-lending firms may not have fully disclosed what they were doing on the backside with investors’ money.”
Elsewhere
This week, the LDO token for Ethereum staking solution Lido increased by a startling 51% as Lido’s Staked Ether (stETH) token progressively repegged. According to Nansen, Lido’s Staked Ether is a significant contributor to Celsius’s continuing liquidity issue, since the lender staked client cash on Lido and presently owns at least $487 million worth of stETH in a public wallet.
Lido issues Staked Ethereum to represent Ethereum locked up in Ethereum’s Beacon Chain — a network merged with Ethereum’s mainnet as part of an upgrade to transition the entire network to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism to make the network 99.95% more energy efficient. After the integration, stETH will be redeemable 1:1 for Ether; hence, a complete repeg is widely anticipated.
The Ethereum testnet Sepolia migrated to proof-of-stake on Wednesday. The merging has been tested on two public testnets, including Ropsten, by Ethereum engineers. Goerli is the last remaining testnet before the whole network completes “The Merge.”
During the previous week, registrations for the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) increased by 216%, with 64,000 addresses generated on Sunday and Monday alone. ENS is a decentralised domain name system on Ethereum that enables individuals to exchange their cumbersome wallet addresses for more memorable “.eth” domains.
Last week, ProShares’ Bitcoin Short ETF (BITI) increased by 306% to become the second-largest Bitcoin ETF in the United States, after ProShares’ own Bitcoin Strategy futures ETF (BITO). According to Arcane Research, BITI currently maintains a nett short exposure equal to 3,811 BTC, up from only 937 BTC on June 27; BITO controls around 32,000.