CMC Market Pulse delivers actionable market insights, giving you all the key narratives and developments you need in under 5 minutes.
Market Overview 📉
Markets mostly traded sideways this week, with little to shake things up. While traditional equities rocked the boat slightly, crypto markets ended the week slightly up from the week before, continuing the multi-week long consolidation since the sell-off in early February. Total crypto market cap rose by 1.30% from $3.319T to $3.362T.
Bitcoin (BTC) ended the week up 1.54%, while Ethereum (ETH) did slightly better, closing at 2.32% up from the prior week.
Daily liquidations on both sides stayed largely flat throughout the week, likely indicating a low level of leverage across the board. Total liquidations per day barely climbed above $300M, with the majority of days returning less than $250M in liquidations. Funding rates support this trend, with funding rates on most majors continuing to fall from their single digit levels last week, with some hitting the negative range as well.
📌 Michael Saylor’s Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) announces a proposal for the issuance of $2B worth of senior convertible notes due 2030. - Link
📌 The SEC has acknowledged the Cboe’s 19b-4 seeking for approval for 21Shares’ filing regarding staking of ETH in the ETH Spot ETF. - Link
📌 The SEC launches their Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit, designed to target fraud in crypto, among other crimes. - Link
Why does it matter?
This week was relatively uneventful from the weeks prior which experienced much more volatility due to macroeconomic factors and geopolitical tensions. While BTC and other cryptocurrency majors continue to range and consolidate, bullish sentiment seems to be slowly returning with markets showing some form of life in old altcoin favorites. Nevertheless, the crypto markets still seem to underperform their traditional counterparts, taking into account the additional risk, with the S&P 500 returning 0.96% this week and the Nasdaq returning 1.37%.
Although the end of last week saw Bitcoin dominance break down from its range, the range was quickly reclaimed as Bitcoin dominance climbed back up to end the week at 61.29%. Bitcoin remains king, as an asset with a perpetual bid, be it from Michael Saylor, institutional parties or the ETFs.
Several subsectors of altcoins outperformed this week, with notable outperformers including AI tokens, Freysa AI (FAI), AI Rig Complex (ARC) and Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL), as well as several recent token launches, Story Protocol (IP), Berachain (BERA) and Movement (MOVE).
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Narrative of the Week 📰
Over the weekend, the botched launch of the Argentine memecoin, LIBRA, took the crypto world by storm, with most if not all non-insiders losing money on the token launch.
📌 The LIBRA memecoin was launched over the weekend, with a tweet released by Argentine president, Javier Milei supporting the launch. However, the token quickly fell in value after Milei distanced himself from the token, with KIP Protocol, the project supporting the launch, claiming the token as a “private enterprise” project without the involvement of president Milei. - Link
📌 Jupiter founder, Meow, releases a statement on Jupiter and Meteora’s involvement in the LIBRA token and the actions that will be taken following the saga. - Link
📌 Popular internet detective YouTuber, Coffeezilla, interviews Hayden Davis of Kelsier Ventures, one of the teams involved with the launch of the LIBRA token, with Davis making several incriminating statements regarding his involvement. - Link
Why does it matter?
The year kicked off with the launch of the TRUMP memecoin by the president of the United States himself, Donald Trump. While the TRUMP token did extremely well upon its launch, the subsequent launch of the MELANIA token just days later kicked off a series of highly extractive token launches, similar to early 2024’s celebrity memecoins, but on a much larger scale. While the LIBRA token launch was not the first of its kind, the blatant criminal nature of its launch showcased the dark underbelly of the crypto space, with grifters completely unremorseful over their own actions. On the LIBRA token alone, more than $280M was lost by traders.
Major Project Updates 🗓️
📌 Hyperliquid launches the HyperEVM, bringing the chain to live with HyperEVM blocks using the HyperBFT consensus, spot transfers from native spot HYPE to HyperEVM and a canonical wrapped HYPE (WHYPE) for DeFi purposes. - Link
📌 Ethereum announces the timeline for the upcoming Petra upgrade, which will go live on the Holeksy Testnet on February 24th and Sepolia on March 5th. Mainnet date will be released after the successful testnet deployments. - Link
📌 Parallel execution L1, Monad, goes live with their highly anticipated testnet. Developers can now begin to build on and interact with the testnet in preparation for the mainnet deployment. - Link
📌 The Ethereum Foundation introduces the Open Intents Framework, an open, modular framework designed to facilitate seamless transfers between chains to improve on-chain UX. - Link
📌 AI agent launchpad, Virtuals Protocol, introduces Agent Commerce Protocol, an open standard designed to facilitate multi-agent commerce and coordination. - Link
📌 Zksync announces Union Chain, a ZK Chain powered by ZKSync designed to bridge traditional finance and crypto through RWA tokenization. - Link
📌 Ethereum NFT collection, Doodles, announces the Doodles token, DOOD, on Solana, with a total supply of 10B tokens, with 30% allocated to the Doodles community. - Link
Why does it matter?
Hyperliquid launches its highly-anticipated HyperEVM, finally turning the project from just a well-designed perpetual DEX to a full-fledged L1. The launch however, came with its own criticism, with some complaining that the chain launched without any new applications live on it as no teams were given prior knowledge of the launch. However, Hyperliquid founder, Jeff Yan, explained that this was done intentionally, for a perfectly fair launch.
DeFi Brief 🏦
📌 DAI stablecoin issuer, MakerDAO (now Sky) has put forward an emergency vote, which increases debt ceilings and reduces loan-to-value (LTV) ratios on the platform. During this vote, several active voters were suddenly banned from voting, bringing into question the legitimacy of MakerDAO’s governance system. - Link
📌 HyperUnit launches on Hyperliquid, allowing seamless deposits, withdrawals and trading of spot assets on Hyperliquid, starting with native BTC, with ETH and SOL expected in the future. - Link
📌 Solana DEX aggregator, Jupiter Exchange, announces Jupnet, an omnichain network designed to aggregate everything. Jupnet proposes the use of decentralized oracles, an omnichain ledger and a fully on-chain identity system to achieve this vision. - Link
📌 Spot and perpetual DEX, Ethereal, launches Season Zero, kicking off Ethereal’s liquidity bootstrapping phase where users can deposit USDe on the platform for Ethereal Points and 30x multiplier on Ethena rewards. - Link
📌 Clearpool introduces Port, a RWA exchange-traded pool powered by Ozean, the RWA blockchain run by Clearpool. Port provides additional liquidity to illiquid RWAs through pooling them with liquid, yield-bearing assets. - Link
Why does it matter?
The sudden governance vote to significantly reduce MakerDAO’s LTV ratio while increasing its debt ceiling raised eyebrows from many in the DeFi community, questioning the safety of such a vote for the stability of the DAI/USDS stablecoin. Additionally, the censorship of votes from active voters in the community also raised questions on the transparency and legitimacy of the governance process guiding the protocol.
Meme Coins 🚀
📌 The Binance Smart Chain announces a new initiative to inject $4.4M in liquidity for top memecoins on the chain, with memecoins selected based on market capitalization, price increase and trading volume. - Link
📌 Binance Alpha lists three BROCCOLI tokens, all named after Binance founder CZ’s pet dog, much to the surprise and confusion of speculators. - Link
Fundraises 💰
📌 Unified multi-VM network, Fluent Lbas, raises $8M in a funding round led by Polychain Capital, with support from Primitive Crypto, Symbolic Capital, Nomad Capital and more. - Link
📌 Curve Finance founder, Michael Egorov, raises $5M at a valuation of $50M for his latest project, Yield Basis, a project designed to help solve impermanent loss faced by liquidity providers. - Link
📌 On-chain security project, Blockaid, raises $50M in a Series B funding round led by Ribbit Capital, with participation from GV and other existing investors including Variant and Cyberstarts. - Link
📌 Omnichain crypto trading platform, Universal, raises $9M in a round led by a16z Crypto, with support from Coinbase Ventures, Four Cities Capital, Data Tech Fund and more. - Link
📌 Cross-border payments project, MANSA, raises $10M in a funding round led by stablecoin issuer, Tether, and Polymorphic Capital, with other investors including Faculty Group, Octerra Capital and more. - Link
Airdrops Abound 🎁
📌 Data analytics platform, Kaito, opens claims for the KAITO token airdrop, releasing 10% of total token supply to Yappers and Kaito Genesis NFT holders. - Link
📌 Oracle network, RedStone Oracles, introduces their token RED and its tokenomics, with 10% allocated to the community and genesis airdrop. - Link
📌 Solana perpetual DEX aggregator, Ranger Finance, announces Ranger Points, their incentives program with rewards correlating to trading activity on the platform. - Link
Tweet of the Week 📝
Source: BuzzlamicJihad
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