This Week in Crypto: Heavy Accumulation Observed Across All BTC Holder Cohorts; US Lawmakers Call for Stricter Regulation

News Round-Up for the Week

US Lawmakers Call for Stricter Regulation

The implosion of Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire is likely to have a lasting impact on the industry in terms of increasing regulatory pressure. Find out more ,here,.

Solana Reveals Ties to FTX and Alameda

While many crypto projects are grappling with the FTX collapse, Solana has taken a bigger hit than most, with damage further exacerbated by the network’s intricate link to the fallen exchange. Find out more ,here,.

US Banks to Launch Blockchain Pilot

Traditional financial institutions are taking another step into the world of digital currency amid the unraveling of the FTX saga. Find out more ,here,.

GBTC Discount Widens

The rapid collapse of FTX continues to send shock waves across the industry, ensnaring some of the largest crypto lenders, including BlockFi, which is said to be preparing bankruptcy filings.Find out more ,here,.

Starkware Deploys StarkNet Token

In some news to distract us from the FTX saga, Starkware recently deployed its native token STRK on the Ethereum network.Find out more ,here,.

L1/L2 Development of the Week

This week, we took a look at Anoma, a new Proof-of-Stake network of blockchains.

Anoma calls itself an “intent-centric, privacy-preserving protocol for decentralized counterparty discovery, solving, and multi-chain atomic settlement.” Essentially, Anoma sets itself apart with four features, including intent-centric, privacy, multi-chain, and fractal scaling. ,,Read more details ,here, as we look into each of the four features.

DeFi Updates of the Week

This week, we dive into Vela Exchange, an order book DEX launching soon on Arbitrum.

Vela Exchange is one of the latest protocols to step into the growing DEX category. Its competitors, like GMX and GNS, that use order book or synthetic-based trade execution models, are gaining traction in a space that is currently dominated by automated market maker based holders like Uniswap.

Read more ,here, as we look into its business model and tokenomics.

On-Chain Round-Up for the Week

The FTX collapse continues to send shockwaves across the industry, with some of the largest lenders succumbing to liquidity issues. The troubled crypto exchange’s new CEO, a veteran in restructuring who handled Enron’s bankruptcy, lamented the “complete failure of corporate controls” and “absence of trustworthy financial information” in this “unprecedented” situation. His comments may only reveal the tip of the iceberg of the unfathomable damage dealt to the entire crypto industry as FTX’s contagion gradually unfolds. On-chain investigations trace further back to the Terra implosion in May and pinpoint that incident as one that exposed fundamental flaws in the FTX-Alameda relationship.

Equity markets remain largely unscathed by crypto’s cascading blowups, with major benchmarks consolidating in narrow ranges for most of this week. Macroeconomic uncertainty prevails as multiple Federal Reserve officials reiterated the resolve to combat inflation, casting a shadow over the narrative of an impending tapering.

Despite BTC spot prices plummeting to new lows since late 2020, massive accumulations have occurred on-chain as HODLers rushed in to buy the dip. All cohorts ranging from shrimps to whales have experienced a net balance increase throughout the FTX fallout. ,Entities with less than 10 BTC holdings reached an all-time high, representing more than 15.9% of the circulating supply. HODLers’ resolve remains strong despite the acute financial distress facing some of the most price-insensitive traders.

According to DeFi Llama, the total value of stablecoins locked in various smart contracts has plummeted 76%, outpacing the 23% drawdown from its peak of the total market cap.

While stablecoins are being sourced from smart contracts amid the FTX collapse, stablecoins across all exchange reserves rose to a new all-time high of $41.19 billion. Both USDT and USDC exchange reserves declined notably, suggesting a potential shift in market preference is brewing.

Meanwhile, BTC mining difficulty experienced a marginal adjustment last week, which did little to alleviate miners’ woes of intensive competition and compressed revenue. Miners’ wallet balance has nosedived significantly in the past few days, lending evidence to the narrative of another impending miner capitulation.

Macro events to look out for in the coming week

Nov 18, 2022	Canada Retail Sales report , The Sandbox NFT Public Sale
Nov 21, 2022	Audius Town Hall
Nov 23, 2022	EU S&P Global Composite PMI , FOMC minutes
Nov 28, 2022	US GDP report , Skey Network Box premiere

Three coins to watch

Token	Reason
,LDO,	Lido’s native token LDO has been outperforming the broader market with a 7-day gain of 6.6% since the FTX collapse. The impressive token performance is partly fueled by the growing demand for ETH staking, which now rose to a post-Merge all-time high of 10.7%
,SCRT,	Privacy-centric blockchain Secret Network saw its native token SCRT go parabolic despite increasing regulatory scrutiny from European financial watchdogs. The surge in the token’s price was possibly due to the anticipation of Secret 2.0, which enhances the network’s interoperability and safety.
,TWT,	The FTX collapse certainly spells trouble for Trust Wallet’s gains. The mishandling of customers’ funds shakes retail and institutional trust, pushing traders to opt for non-custodial wallets that give users full control over their digital assets. TWT, the utility token of the wallet, has bucked the market downturn with a staggering 150% rise in less than a week, and the momentum doesn’t seem to stop there.