Strengths
- Of the cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap, the best performer for the week was Nevrous Network, rising 89%.
- Brevan Howard Asset management’s cryptocurrency fund is currently a bright spot for the hedge fund firm, writes Bloomberg, which lost money on macros trades this year. BH Digital, which manages around $1.7 billion of assets, returned 34.5% in the first quarter of this year, says people familiar with the matter. That brings total gains since the fund started trading in March 2022 to nearly 51%, the article continues.
- Ether grabbed the cryptocurrency spotlight this week after posting its biggest jump in more than a month. The surge is pegged to speculation about the outlook for applications to start U.S. ETFs for the token, writes Bloomberg.
Weaknesses
- Of the cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap, the worst performer for the week was Wormhold, down 17%.
- Consumers are divided over Bitcoin’s staying power, with about one-third expecting the world’s largest cryptocurrency to slide below $20,000 by the end of the year, according to a survey by Deutsche Bank. That would slice approximately $50,000 of the token’s current price and take it back to a level last seen during the deep bear market in 2022, writes Bloomberg.
- Galaxy Digital Holdings is down 16% in Toronto trading after the cryptocurrency company said its previously announced bought-deal financing via Canaccord Genuity was upsized to about $125 million, Bloomberg reports.
Opportunities
- Gunzilla Games, the developer of the upcoming video game “Off the Grid,” has announced an integration with OpenSea that will allow players to trade in-game assets on the NFT marketplace, reports Bloomberg. OpenSea has agreed to integrate the gaming developer’s GUNZ blockchain, which is built on a custom Avalanche subnet.
- A crypto token that aims to replicate a common hedge-fund trade is attracting billions of dollars’ worth of tokens and widespread buzz in the market. Yet the project, known as Ethena, is also stoking skepticism about the sustainability of its yields, writes Bloomberg.
- Web3 wallet MetaMask is now letting users verify their airdrop eligibility via an integration with onchain project Daylight, Bloomberg reports. The Daylight API suggests unique NFT recommendations per user based on a variety of social factors such as if they are on an allowlist, hold a required token, or hold a related token, the article continues.
Threats
- A Binance Holdings executive detained for more than 40 days in Nigeria, after being invited by the government and then charged with tax evasion and fraud, has been sent to prison ahead of trial in May. A court ordered Tigran Gambaryan, head of financial compliance at Binance, to be remanded at the Kuje correctional center in the capital Abuja on Monday, writes Bloomberg.
- FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried will appeal his conviction and 25-year prison sentence for committing multibillion-dollar fraud. The 32-year-old filed a notice of appeal in federal court in Manhattan formally starting the process to have his conviction and punishment overturned.
- The SEC warned Uniswap on Wednesday that it intends to bring an enforcement action against the company, writes Bloomberg. It is the leading platform for decentralized finance or DeFi, a segment of the crypto market where traders rely on new computer protocols that act as automated market makers for exchanging various tokens.
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