Decentral Block Post

Trader Joe has risen to the top five decentralized exchanges by trading volume after the launch of its V2 platform on Arbitrum on Feb. 1, 2023. 

The project launched a liquidity incentive program to boost deposits for ARB, ETH and USDC trading which shared 300,000 JOE token rewards worth around $171,000. The incentive program ends on April 6.

The project’s social media account reported that Trader Joe accounted for 15.7% of the total ARB trading volume in the first week.

While JOE token incentives played a hand in increasing the liquidity for ARB token, innovation from the team in developing the capital efficiency of the DEX is the primary reason behind its growth.

Trader Joe climbs up the ranks in DEX space

Trader Joe launched a Liquidity Book (LB) model with its V2 upgrade in Q4 2022, which competes against the Uniswap’s (UNI) V3 liquidity model.

Bitcoin's (BTC) 43% rally between March 10 and March 20 surprised options traders and this is proven by the minimal14% of the $1.12 billion open interest set to expire on April 7 being placed at $28,000 and higher. 

The positive price movement can be partially attributed to an increase in commodity demand, as investors perceive risks in the central bank's emergency funding programs, as injecting liquidity causes inflationary upward pressure.

According to Urban Angehrn, CEO of the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), if Credit Suisse had not been rescued, "many other Swiss banks would probably have faced a run on deposits." Angehrn added that, "there was a high probability that the resolution of a global systemically important bank would have led to contagion effects and jeopardized financial stability in Switzerland and globally."

Investors' appetite for commodities vastly increased after the U.S. Treasury Department reportedly discussed the possibility of expanding the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insurance for bank deposits on March 21. Oil prices measured by the WTI have rallied 23.5% since March 20, and gold broke above $2,000 on April 5 — its highest daily close since Aug. 2020.

An unexpected shockwave on a $33 trillion asset class that was previously thought to be a safe haven for inflation could have benefited the commodity sector as well. Morgan Stanley Wealth Management has issued a warning about the commercial real estate market, predicting trouble with refinancing.

Bitcoin (BTC) and crypto may yet see a long-term correction thanks to central banks keeping liquidity tight, Bloomberg warned.

In its latest research, Bloomberg Intelligence revealed a cool stance on the ongoing 2023 crypto market rally.

Bloomberg: Expecting BTC price to hold “may be illogical”

Despite gaining 70% in Q1, Bitcoin is not convincing everyone that it will continue to climb or even maintain current levels near $30,000.

Examining the macroeconomic climate, Bloomberg Intelligence became the latest voice to note the close relationship between crypto performance and global central bank liquidity levels.

As inflation bites, banks have been withdrawing liquidity from the economy, with risk assets declining as a result — including crypto. The United States Federal Reserve’s quantitative tightening (QT), which began in late 2021, coincided with the current all-time high for Bitcoin.

Tether (USDT) continues to benefit from the ongoing turmoil in the U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin industry with its market capitalization growing significantly in Q1 2023 at other stablecoins' expense.

Tether market cap reaches $80 billion

On April 6, the circulating market cap of USDT surpassed $80 billion for the first time since May 2022 with a gain of $15 billion so far in 2023.

On the other hand, the market caps of its chief rivals, namely USD Coin (USDC) and Binance USD (BUSD), fell by about $12 billion and $9.4 billion, respectively.

Tether benefits from non-U.S. status

Crypto traders opted for Tether given the growing concerns around USD Coin and Binance USD.

Notably, USDC market capitalization slipped due to its $3.3 billion exposure to the now-collapsed Silicon Valley and Silvergate banks. While BUSD suffered after New York regulators ordered Paxos to shut down the stablecon's issuance.

Bitcoin (BTC) saw another failure to exit a tight trading range into April 6 as $28,000 again hung in the balance.

Analysis sees traders “compressing” BTC price

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD trading below the the $28,000 mark at the time of writing.

The pair had approached $29,000 the day prior, eating into ask liquidity in what analysis called a “choreographed” move by whales.

That appeared to be true, as upward momentum soon faded and spot price remained in an increasingly narrow range.

The cloud of liquidity around $30,000 thus remained untested, much to the frustration of those hoping for an easy continuation of the 2023 upside.

With one week to go until the Ethereum Shanghai and Capella upgrades on April 12, all eyes are on Ether(ETH). The second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization shrugged off rumors and regulatory action against exchanges to hit a seven-month high of $1,922 on April 5. 

Ether price has momentum, and here are three strong reasons why.

Multiple positive price achievements

According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, Ether price has posted gains on the seven-day, one-month and three-month timeframes despite market volatility. Ether price gains are also notable from the year-to-date perspective, showing 59% growth.

Ether’s ability to break resistance levels is leading some analysts to believe a $3,000 price target is on the horizon in Q2 2023. The trend shows that whale accumulation remains strong, growing by 0.5% in March, according to data from analytics provider Santiment.

The bullish buying activity may prove on-chain data correct that Ether sell pressure after the Shanghai hardfork will be a non-event.

Ether’s (ETH) price had been battling the $1,850 resistance level, but it broke through on April 4 when Ether rallied to a seven-month high above $1,900. Recently there has been a lot of speculation on Ether price catalysts. Let’s see if it’s possible to identify any fundamental factors behind the price movement. 

The upcoming Shanghai hard fork could be one factor in Ether’s recent bullish momentum. On April 12, the ability for validators to withdraw their deposits opens, giving staking participants freedom of movement but also creating a sell-off risk for Ether.

There are now 17.81 million ETH staked on the Beacon Chain, though some safeguards have been put in place to prevent a flood of Ether from disrupting the market. For example, because there is a daily limit of 2,200 withdrawals, the maximum daily unlocks are 70,000 ETH.

Scalability and selfish validator risks are still present

The upcoming Shanghai fork, however, does not address some of the most pressing issues currently plaguing the Ethereum network. Scalability continues to be a major issue for most users, as the average transaction fee has hovered around $5 in recent weeks, driving users away from decentralized applications (DApps).

Furthermore, the current consensus mechanism favors rogue miners who outperform other network participants, a phenomenon known as miner extractable value (MEV). They can quickly duplicate all winning deals from the mempool and execute their transactions ahead of others by ultimately deciding which transactions are completed in the block.

Bitcoin (BTC) is still on track to hit $180,000 in its next halving cycle, a longtime market participant said.

In a new analysis published on March 3, Filbfilb, co-founder of trading suite DecenTrader, doubled down on his bullish BTC price outlook for the years ahead.

Filbfilb keeps faith in Bitcoin halving cycles

With BTC/USD approaching $30,000 but traders highly suspicious of the 2023 rally, sky-high BTC price predictions have been poorly received.

Two current $1-million forecasts, from ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood and former Coinbase executive Balaji Srinivasan, respectively, continue to divide opinion in the aftermath of the 2022 crypto winter.

Considering whether either has merit, Filbfilb turned to raw math to determine some likely macro tops and bottoms for Bitcoin after its next block subsidy halving.

On April 4, the U.S. dollar index (DXY), which measures the greenback's performance versus the basket of six leading foreign currencies, dropped by 0.5% after demand for workers in the world's largest economy declined.

BTC price eye breakout with dollar at 2-month lows

Bitcoin (BTC) has grown 3.5% since to around $28,800, continuing its extremely negative correlation with the dollar. The BTC/USD pair now eyes a breakout at $30,000, a psychological resistance level, due to hopes that the greenback will weaken further in 2023.

Meanwhile, the February Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) showed that the number of official job vacancies dropped below 10 million for the first time since May 2021.

In other words, while two jobs were available for each unemployed person at some point last year, there are now just 1.67.

Interestingly, the implicit federal funds rate for January 2024 declined after the latest JOLTS data, in similar fashion amid March's bank failures.

Bitcoin (BTC) headed back toward $29,000 into April 5 as data showed whale orders guiding price action.

Analysis: BTC price push still “bear market rally”

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed BTC/USD as it hit $28,780 on Bitstamp.

The pair continued a rebound from one-week lows under $27,300 at the start of the week courtesy of rumors around the Binance crypto exchange and its CEO, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao.

After reclaiming $28,000, Bitcoin saw fresh momentum as Binance order book data showed large-volume “whale” traders buying.

This was not all as it seemed for bulls, monitoring resource Material Indicators nonetheless warned, as those same traders could be artificially pushing the market higher in order to sell closer to $30,000.

The total amount of funds bridged to zkSync reached $115 million within 10 days of the public mainnet launch as users rush to farm the airdrop of the Ethereum rollup’s expected native token, per L2BEAT data.

The zkSync era mainnet was launched one day after the March 24 Arbitrum airdrop. The median airdrop for eligible wallets was 1,250 ARB, earning its owners around $1,500 in free money. As users rushed to farm the next airdrop, zkSync has emerged as one of the most popular airdrop plays for the market.

The new Zero-knowledge proof (ZK) based Layer-2 is also giving an opportunity for developers to establish an economic moat within the fresh ecosystem by gaining a first-mover advantage. Moreover, these projects also become eligible for an expected airdrop of the platform’s native token, similar to Arbitrum.

DeFi Liquidity on zkSync skyrockets

The total value locked in DeFi applications surged to $50 million on April 4 led by deposits across decentralized exchanges and derivatives trading platforms.

More than 43% of zkSync deposits of $115 million have been added as liquidity across DeFi platforms on the blockchain.

Bitcoin (BTC) might have shown strength after successfully defending the $28,000 support amid unfounded rumors regarding Binance, but an interesting development to note is BTC is becoming less correlated to traditional markets after the U.S. Federal Reserve elected to provide emergency liquidity to banks. 

This change in attitude from the central bank has caused a shift in the trajectory of US Treasuries as traders sought refuge from the inflationary upward pressure. Bitcoin appears to be agnostic to the movement and its price has been hovering around $28,000 for the past week.

Meanwhile, the yield on the 5-year note fell to 3.50% on April 3, a drop from 3.70% in the previous week. Higher demand for debt instruments reduces payout, resulting in a lower yield. The $152.6 billion in outstanding borrowings from the U.S. Federal Reserve's backstop lending program has been the driving factor.

The general public's lack of trust in banks has also caused them to reconsider what the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is and how the Fed no longer controls the inflation trajectory. The question of whether Bitcoin can serve as a reliable store of value during a crisis remains open, but the 70% year-to-date gains certainly demonstrate a point.

Investors are reducing their cash positions

According to data from Bank of America, the total assets of money market funds in the United States reached a record high of $5.1 trillion. These instruments invest in short-term debt securities such as the U.S. Treasuries, certificates of deposit and commercial paper. Furthermore, fund manager and analyst Genevieve Roch-Decter, CFA, states that investors have withdrawn $1 trillion from banks because money market funds offer a much higher return.

Arbitrum suffered a big blow during the April 1–2 weekend due to a conflict between ARB tokenholders and the Arbitrum Foundation on the allocation of 750 million ARB tokens worth around $900 million.

Data from on-chain analysis firm Arkham Intelligence shows a transfer of $50.5 million out of the disputed allocation of 750 million ARB tokens. They shared with Cointelegraph:

“Only 50.5 million of those tokens have been moved. 10 million tokens have been sent to be sold on exchanges, 40 million have been loaned to Wintermute and the remaining 500,000 remain untouched in a multisig wallet (labeled Gnosis Safe Proxy).”

On April 3, the Arbitrum Foundation conceded to the community’s opposition and decided to break up the said proposal in question into multiple proposals for allocating the funds for the project’s ecosystem growth.

Another on-chain transfer of 2.694 billion ARB tokens from the decentralized autonomous organization’s treasury to 140 addresses spooked the market. The transfers ranged from 100,000 to 71.6 million ARB per address.

The price of Shiba Inu (SHIB) increased over 10% in a day amid broader upside moves across meme cryptocurrencies in the past 24 hours. But will SHIB price rally further

SHIB price tails Dogecoin's gains

On April 4, SHIB's price reached $0.00001159 a day after rebounding from its local low of $0.00001049 — a 10.5% increase. Still, the meme-token underperformed most of its rivals, including Dogecoin (DOGE), which jumped over 30% in the same period.

On a year-to-date timeframe, SHIB and DOGE's gains are nearly identical around 38%. 

SHIB price started rallying after Twitter, owned by self-proclaimed Dogecoin supporter Elon Musk, replaced its iconic blue bird logo with Dogecoin's Shiba Inu symbol. SHIB/U has rallied similarly in the past due to Musk's Dogecoin mentions on Twitter.

Interestingly, in October 2021, Musk clarified that he does not hold Shiba Inu.

Dogecoin (DOGE) pared a portion of its massive daily gains on April 4 as investors speculated on the meaning behind Elon Musk’s latest cryptic stunt.

Elon Musk pumps Dogecoin by over 30%

In what appears to be a late April Fool’s joke, Musk-owned Twitter changed its official blue bird logo to mimic Dogecoin’s symbol — a Shiba Inu dog featured in viral memes. Later, Musk tweeted a meme recognizing the change.

Over the years, Musk has influenced the Dogecoin market with his cryptic tweets. The billionaire investor calls himself “Dogefather,” and has earlier discussed the prospect of adding a DOGE payment option for Twitter subscription services. 

His other ventures, Tesla and SpaceX, already accept DOGE for their merchandise products.

Dogecoin rose nearly 33% after Musk’s tweet on April 3, reaching $0.104, its highest level since December 2022. DOGE price has pared a portion of its gains since, dropping to lows of $0.092.

Bitcoin (BTC) hit new month-to-date lows overnight into April 4 as fresh rumors over the biggest exchange, Binance, spooked fragile markets.

BTC price returns to $28,000 after weekly lo

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD dipping to $27,240 on Bitstamp.

Its lowest since March 28, the performance followed an outbreak of claims that Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, already under investigation by United States regulators, is now wanted by Interpol.

The claims came from an accidental leak of an encrypted tweet by the private Twitter account Cobie, which appeared to lack evidence, resulting in a market rebound.

Now trading above $28,000 at the time of writing, Bitcoin was exhibiting “classic” behavior, according to Cointelegraph contributor Michaël van de Poppe, founder and CEO of trading firm Eight.

Cryptocurrency markets have been trading within an unusually tight 5% range since March 17 as conflicting forces continue to pressure the sector. Consequently, in the past 7 days, the total market capitalization gained 3.8%, which was driven mainly by Bitcoin's (BTC) 3.6% price increase and Ether's (ETH) 5% gain.

On March 27, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued Binance and Changpeng "CZ" Zhao for allegedly violating trading and derivatives rules, heightening regulatory uncertainty. According to the lawsuit, Binance provided access to leverage for customers trading on the spot and futures markets.

The announcement came just five days after Coinbase received a Wells Notice from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which could target the exchange's staking program, listed digital assets, wallet and Coinbase Prime services.

Similar actions occurred outside the U.S., after Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA) March 31 announcement that several foreign cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, Bybit, MEXC Global and Bitget had been operating in the country without proper registration, in violation of the country's laws.

The lateralization trend that began in mid-March has repeatedly tested the crypto market’s $1.14 trillion market capitalization support. The movement suggests that investors are hesitant to place new bets until more information on the lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase is available.