2024-09-10 11:00

The company will also become one of the first validators on the Berachain mainnet. Nansen bought StakeWithUs to add token staking in its first foray outside the provision of data for cryptocurrency traders. The purchase of the platform backed by the Singapore government's SGinnovate program cost more than $1 million. Blockchain data provider Nansen said it bought staking platform StakeWithUs as CEO Alex Svanevik looks to expand beyond data provision into offering investment services for institutions and retail traders. While the purchase price was not disclosed, a spokesperson for the company said it was a seven figure sum. StakeWithUs, which is backed by the Singapore government's innovation project SGinnovate, provides staking across multiple blockchains. Following its integration, Nansen will offer non-custodial staking for over 20 assets, including SOL, SUI, OSMO and ATOM, according to an emailed announcement on Tuesday. Staking is one method used by blockchains to select honest participants and verify new blocks of data being added to the network. Stakers lock away their tokens, participate in the verification process, and receive more tokens as a reward. "By enabling staking within Nansen, we are not only expanding our service offerings but also enhancing our support for the blockchain ecosystems we integrate with," Svanevik said in a statement. Nansen, which is based in Singapore, will also add new blockchains to its platform, including Berachain, a new layer 1 system compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Nansen will be one the first validators on Berachain's mainnet, which marks the company's first foray into supporting a blockchain by validating transactions. Read More: Bitcoin Staking Platform Babylon to Start Phased Mainnet Launch This Week https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/09/10/nansen-buys-stakewithus-expanding-beyond-data-provision-into-crypto-investment/

2024-09-10 11:00

Adoption of digital assets has remained steady in the U.S. and the U.K. in recent years, despite significant headwinds, a survey by the crypto platform showed. Crypto adoption has remained steady in the U.S. and the U.K. in the past two years, the report said. Gemini said 65% of those surveyed said they held crypto for its long-term investment potential. The majority of crypto owners said they wanted to allocate 5% or more to digital assets, the survey said. Crypto adoption has remained steady in the U.S. and the U.K. in recent years, despite some significant headwinds, and the retail market now looks ready for a rebound, crypto platform Gemini said in its '2024 Global State of Crypto' report on Tuesday. The report was based on a survey of 6,000 people in the U.S., U.K., France, Singapore and Turkey, and was carried out online from May 23 to June 28 this year. Crypto adoption was broadly unchanged in the U.S. and the U.K. from 2022 to 2024, at 21% and 18% respectively, the report said. Ownership of digital assets in France rose to 18% from 16% over the same period, while in Singapore this figure fell from 30% to 26%. Almost two-thirds of those surveyed said they held crypto for its long-term investment potential, and 38% said they held the asset class as a hedge against inflation, Gemini said. Still, lack of regularity clarity remains a barrier to ownership. In the U.S. and the U.K., 38% of people who didn't own crypto cited regulatory concerns as a reason for not investing in the asset class, the survey showed. In France, 32% of people said the same, and in Singapore almost half of respondents said regulations were a concern. Spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have brought growth to the market, with 37% of holders in the U.S. saying they held some crypto via an ETF. The majority of crypto holders said they wanted to allocate 5% or more to digital assets, the report noted. The gender gap in crypto was slightly more pronounced in 2024 than 2022, the report said, with 69% of holders identifying as male and 31% female. A large majority of 73% of crypto holders in the U.S. said they planned to consider a candidate's digital asset policies when they vote in the upcoming presidential election in November. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/09/10/crypto-retail-market-is-poised-for-a-rebound-gemini/

2024-09-10 10:56

Options tied to bitcoin and ether show a bias for puts, according to QCP Capital. Options data show a bias for short-term puts, or bearish positions, in bitcoin and ether. Cautious sentiment persists as a Federal Reserve interest-rate cut nears. SOL is likely to remain more resilient than ether. Prices for the two biggest cryptocurrencies, bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH), have bounced almost 10% from Friday's lows amid bullish signals from key order book metrics and expectations for a Federal Reserve interest-rate cut next week. Still, traders remain concerned that prices are set to show weakness in the short term. That's the message from options-based risk reversals tied to bitcoin and ether. A positive risk reversal suggests that call options are more expensive than puts, indicating bullish sentiment in the market, while a negative figure suggests the opposite. Call options allow the buyer to profit from or hedge against price rallies; puts offer downside protection. According to Singapore-based QCP Capital, options trading on Deribit shows a bias for puts. "Given the velocity of last week's dip, the market is still very cautious about downside risk," QCP's market insights team said in a Telegram broadcast. "Risk reversals until October are still skewed towards puts in both BTC and ETH." Traders turned to put options on Friday after a weak U.S. nonfarm payrolls (NFP) print revived recession concerns, triggering risk aversion in financial markets. "NFP failed to reassure markets. Fast money continued to add to Puts buying 1week $49-$53k Puts when BTC <$55k," Deribit Insight's Tony Stewart said in a market update. According to Stewart, recent options market flows point to concern that BTC will drop to $50,000 or even $40,000. At press time, the biggest cryptocurrency by market value was priced around $57,000, CoinDesk data show. The cautious sentiment perhaps stems from historical data, which shows recessions and risk aversion tend to follow the start of a Fed rate-cutting cycle. The central bank is widely expected to cut rates by 25 basis points next week. Price rallies could be fleeting until the Fed meeting, according to Alex Kuptsikevich, the senior analyst at The FxPro. "In our view, caution and a tendency to sell growth will prevail in the market, at least until the release of U.S. inflation data on Wednesday. This could continue until the Fed's interest rate decision on September 18th," Kuptsikevich said in an email. SOL seen as relatively resilient Market participants expect Solana's sol (SOL) to remain relatively resilient, outperforming ether in the near-term. SOL's one-month options skew, another measure of demand for calls relative to puts, crossed above zero early Tuesday, according to Amberdata. Meanwhile, ether's one-month skew hovered near -2%, exhibiting a bias for put options. "Traders are making significant moves to protect downside risk in Ethereum, while simultaneously showing appetite for upside potential in Solana. This divergence paints a picture of a market hedging its bets," Kristian Haralampiev, structured products lead at Nexo, told CoinDesk in an email. "Adding to the intrigue, Ethereum's volatility index remains notably elevated compared to Bitcoin's, hinting at potential turbulence ahead for ETH," Haralampiev said. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/09/10/crypto-traders-remain-cautious-about-downside-risks-in-bitcoin-ether-sol-stands-out/

2024-09-10 10:16

We are certainly going to commence enforcement actions on anyone who wants to operate in this market and does not have the intention of being regulated, Emomotimi Agama, the SEC's Director General said. Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission plans to take enforcement action against unlicensed crypto firms. The country recently started issuing licenses to crypto firms. Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) plans on taking enforcement action against un-regulated crypto firms. The SEC wants to send a clear message to those who are not trying to operate by the books, that they will not be allowed to target citizens in the country Emomotimi Agama, agency Director General said in a statement on Sunday, local media outlets reported. “We are certainly going to commence enforcement actions on anyone who wants to operate in this market and does not have the intention of being regulated," Agama said. The nations approach to crypto has been rather strict despite granting licenses to crypto firms. The country said it would start issuing licenses to crypto firms last month and awarded licenses to cryptocurrency exchange Quidax and Busha shortly after. However, in the past the country has reportedly blocked exchanges, though at the time Coinbase hit back at reports saying it was still accessible in Nigeria. The country also released guidance in March to prevent criminals from registering as operators. Nigeria is currently in an on-going trial against the Binance exchange and two of its executives, plus one of the executives is severely ill after being detained for over 6 months and is seeking bail as a result. "All this we seek to do without hindering innovation because part of our primary responsibility as the SEC is market development," Agama added, talking about enforcement action. CoinDesk reached out to Nigeria's SEC for a comment. https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/09/10/nigeria-sec-to-commence-enforcement-action-on-unlicensed-crypto-firms-reports/

2024-09-10 06:54

The rise in crypto volatility has been accompanied by increased market participation in the bitcoin market, Kaiko said. BTC's cumulative volume in the first eight months amounts to $2.87 trillion. It's a sign of increased market participation due to crypto and macro-specific uncertainty. The bitcoin (BTC) market reached unprecedented activity in the first eight months of 2024, surpassing the record notional trading volume seen during the bull market of 2021. The cumulative trading volume or the dollar value of the number of BTC bought and sold on centralized exchanges amounted to $2.874 trillion in the first eight months, according to Paris-based data provider Kaiko. That's nearly 20% higher than the volume of $2.424 billion registered in the first eight months of 2021 and the highest since 2012. "The rise in crypto volatility has been accompanied by increased market participation, at least in the bitcoin market," Kaiko said in the weekly report, discussing the record-setting trading volume. Data from charting platform TradingView show bitcoin's 10-day realized or historical volatility surged to an annualized 100% in April as strong inflows into the U.S.-listed spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and expectations for Fed rate cuts drove the cryptocurrency's price to record highs above $70,000. The volatility picked up again early last month as concerns about the U.S. economy and the unwinding of the yen carry trade destabilized risk assets, including cryptocurrencies. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/09/10/bitcoin-trading-volume-surged-to-28t-in-january-to-august-period/

2024-09-10 06:00

Base’s “Onchain Summer” promotion saw participation of over 2 million unique wallets, resulting in over $5 million in mint revenue to creators, according to a blog post. As well as creating envy among other crypto exchanges, Base appears to out-gunning other secondary Ethereum networks. Base’s largest DeFi protocol, Aerodrome Finance, shows that almost all of the top markets, especially when excluding stablecoin swaps, are memecoin-linked trading pools. The ease with which users of Coinbase can onboard to Base has also been a winner, done via a smart contract wallet without the need for seed phrases and the like. Among the rapidly growing ranks of layer-2 blockchains built atop Ethereum, the U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase's own version, Base, hardly stands out as a technological pioneer. The entire project was built and launched last year using code borrowed from another team – Optimism, with its OP Stack framework for easily spinning up new layer-2 networks. That's partly why it's so remarkable that Base has shot to the No. 2 spot on the key industry leaderboard L2Beat, with an 18% market share of 74 active layer-2 networks. Top-ranked Arbitrum's Arbitrum One dominates with a 40% share, but Base has shot past older, competing projects from teams with hard-fought reputations for cutting-edge development, including Starknet, Polygon, even Optimism itself. These layer-2 networks are designed to execute transactions faster and cheaper than the base Ethereum blockchain. The layer-2 networks use what's known as a "sequencer" to bundle up transactions and then record or "settle" them on the main blockchain, not too dissimilar from inking records in a county clerk's office. Sometimes referred to as rollups, layer 2s have become a key element of the broader Ethereum ecosystem's roadmap for scaling toward a world where more, or maybe someday, most, of finance takes place on the digital rails. But it turns out that the race for blockchain supremacy, just as in broader industry, is reliant to a large extent on marketing savvy and an ample warchest to spend on attracting new customers – not just whoever has the best tech. And Coinbase has helped to fuel Base's growth through its own advertising campaigns and promotional events, including the recently concluded "Onchain Summer." The question now is whether the activity is sustainable. Are the accounts bona fide users with on-chain needs, or just a flurry of tire-kicking beta testers curious to try out the various protocols built atop Base? Are they opportunistic "degen" crypto traders taking advantage of one-time promotions and quests to collect extra riches, or racking up usage in hopes of eventually collecting tokens rewards? The company said Monday in a press release that the three-month Onchain Summer event saw participation of over 2 million unique wallets (compared to about 268,000 in 2023), resulting in over $5 million in mint revenue to creators. “The results really blew us away," a Coinbase spokesperson said in an email. "The 2.2 million unique wallets participating was about 8x what we saw last year, and more than double our internal expectations.” Base is helmed by Jesse Pollak, who joined Coinbase in 2017 as an engineering manager before moving in 2021 to oversee the company's protocols development. Independent blockchain data confirms the growth at Base. A recent chart from on-chain data provider Token Terminal shows the network accelerating in recent months while other layer 2s were experiencing a dropoff. A quick glance at Coinbase's most-recent quarterly report, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, shows that the crypto exchange spent over $165 million on sales and marketing during the three months ending June 30, more than double the amount spent during the same period a year earlier. During the first quarter of 2024, Coinbase reported "other" transaction revenues of $52.5 million, which includes so-called sequencer fees collected by Base. Memecoin madness Base has done a good job of competing with the likes of Solana – a layer-1 blockchain that competes with Ethereum but is also known for fast and cheap transactions – as well as other Ethereum layer 2s, particularly when it comes to decentralized finance (DeFi) applications like the swapping of longer-tail assets and money markets, according to Rob Hadick, general partner at VC firm Dragonfly. On daily active addresses (“DAUs”) and daily transactions, Base has overtaken other layer 2s, and for many of the other important DeFi metrics (like TVL, sequencer fees, etc), the project has moved into the top five, Hadick said. What are the specific drivers of traffic, though? A close look at Base’s largest DeFi protocol, Aerodrome Finance, shows that almost all of the top markets, especially when excluding stablecoin swaps, are memecoin-linked trading pools. Such activity is notoriously hot-and-cold, and memecoin traders notoriously fickle with their venues. “Looking at Uniswap on Base, the same thing is true, with two of the top five tokens traded being memecoins,” Hadick said via email. “Not dissimilar to Solana, they’ve competed quite well in these long-tail token-trading markets, as more young users have moved towards speculating on memecoins.” Also driving the success of Base is the ease of moving tokens over from Coinbase, which is done via a smart contract wallet without the need for seed phrases and the complexity of other wallets. “The ease of moving through that funnel from Coinbase to Base automatically onboards many of the on-chain curious retail investors who otherwise would need to go through extra steps to participate in DeFi,” Hadick said. For Oskari Tempakka, head of growth at Token Terminal, it’s down to the foundational strength of the Coinbase-Optimism duo: being a U.S.-listed crypto exchange, combined with Optimism’s scale and expertise in areas like decentralized governance. The pairing “positions Base exceptionally well by leveraging Coinbase's brand, distribution and partnerships," Tempakka said. https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/09/10/coinbase-layer-2-success-shows-power-of-marketing-over-cutting-edge-tech/