Market Update

Risk assets are selling off following the release of Non-Farm Payrolls data this morning, showing 142k payrolls added in August compared to 165k expected, along with June and July numbers being revised sharply lower. The data has fueled recession fears while also sparking uncertainty over the Fed’s policy path and whether they will cut rates by 50bps or 25bps this month. Markets are currently leaning towards 25bps, assigning a probability of 75%, and pricing in close to a 50/50 chance of 100bps of cuts before the year ends. The SPY 0.11%  has dropped to $542 and the QQQ -0.71%  has fallen to $450 and rates continue to roll over. BTC 5.92% has dropped to $54.4k and ETH is displaying slight strength, falling to $2,315, and ETHBTC increasing 0.85%. Despite Bitcoin and Ether falling more than 3%, altcoins are holding relatively well, with TOTAL3 only down 0.90%. Gainers on the day include SUI 6.28% , ARB 5.54% , OP -0.78% , ONDO 6.28% , and APT -0.07% .

Celestia Releases New Roadmap

Celestia, data availability layer, released its updated roadmap, outlining its plans to scale towards 1GB blocks. The roadmap is organized into three different workstreams: abundant block space, verifiable block space, and frictionless block space. Celestia needs to ensure there is abundant block space for high throughput coming from various rollups, whether they are micropayment networks, on-chain games, or defi applications. Larger blocks can be achieved by optimizing Celestia’s consensus mechanism and supporting better data availability through sampling and reconstruction of larger blocks to lower node resource requirements. Secondly, larger blocks need to be able to be verified by anyone, which can be achieved through light nodes on any device, decentralizing the network and minimizing trust assumptions across node operators. Lastly, Celestia plans to reduce friction for developers with the implementation of lazy bridging and blob stream which should greatly enhance Celestia’s interoperability across the base layer, rollups, and other L1’s. Since launching last year, Celestia has grown its ecosystem to 20 rollups, and its blobs represent over 40% of data published.

Libre Brings TradFi Funds to Aptos

Libre, a tokenization protocol, has launched three new tokenized funds from traditional finance managers on the Aptos Network. The funds include the Brevan Howard Master Fund, Hamilton Lane’s Senior Credit Opportunities Fund, and Blackrock’s ICS Money Market Fund, which collectively hold over $90 billion in AUM. Libre gives accredited investors access to traditional funds via blockchain networks with its fully digitized investment lifecycle, unlocking cost efficiencies and improving opportunities for investors and asset managers alike. Its API-first platform allows asset managers to seamlessly integrate into its suite of products and data infrastructure. Libre went live in Q1 this year, starting on Polygon and supporting tokenized funds, collateralized lending of SMAs, and access to crypto-native funds including Laser Digital’s (Nomura) Market Neutral Fund. Tokenized assets continue to gain meaningful traction, with total RWA assets (not including stablecoins) approaching $12.5 billion, almost double compared to this time last year.

Technical Strategy

Today’s break of August lows in Ethereum could likely result in even further losses for the month of September, as price has reached the lowest level since February.  Weekly charts help to put this recent price damage into perspective, and suggest that ETH 2.80% likely will weaken down to what’s widely seen as strong support between $1900-$2000.  This level represents both early August intra-month lows, along with adjoining a larger support trendline since June 2022, more than two years ago.   However, despite this week’s trend deterioration, the one positive concerns the wave structure of the pullback since May 2024 which now clearly resembles the final wave of the most recent decline from May peaks which started just below $4,000.  Overall, the severity of this week’s decline can allow for another 10% decline into mid-to-late September.  However, this should be seen as a very strong area of support that would make ETH 2.80% an attractive risk/reward following a completed five-wave decline from May peaks four months ago.

Daily Important Metrics Crypto Size Bullish signal is tied to the crypto market growing Market cap 2.00T +$26B(1.31%) BTC Dominance 56.20 % (0.10%) Stablecoins Increase in circulating stablecoins is a Bullish signal In Circulation +$118B (-0.02%) In Exchanges +$21B (0.19%) BTC Metrics A decrease in Bitcoin on exchanges is bullish, indicates investors are moving coins to cold storage # BTC Exchanges +$3.0M (0.21%) Funding Rates Positive funding rates indicate traders are Bullish Aggregate +0.2909(-0.1881) Binance +0.6533(0.3788) Bitfinex 0.0000(-0.0389) Bitmex +0.3628(-0.5626) ByBit -0.1789(0.1414) Deribit +0.0235(0.0271) Huobi +1.0000(1.0000) Kraken +0.2961(0.0275) Mean +0.2909(-0.1881) OKex +0.6335(0.0125) Sentiment BMI : 44 (100.00%) Futures A positive spread between Futures Prices and Spot Prices is Bullish CME Price $56,965(1.33%) Spot Basis +$74(0.13%) Volume 688,031(-9.50%) Open Interest 294,246(2.78%) Options all exchanges Higher open interest change in a bull market is bullish for the sector Volume 19,926(-37.86%) Open Interest 278,343 (1.02%) Vol. Put/Call Ratio 1.06 (-7.81%) OOI Put/Call Ratio 0.4863 (0.67%) All metrics as of 2024-09-06 13:23:44 All Funding rates are in bps Crypto Prices Symbol Market Cap Last Price Daily Change Year to Date Relative to BTC YTD BTC $1.06T $53,896 -4.28% 27.61% ETH $269B $2,239 -5.92% -1.61% -22.90% SOL $59B $126 -2.82% 24.32% -2.58% HNT $1.4B $8.48 6.16% -77.53% -82.39% DOGE $138,814 $0.0001 -16.94% -99.84% -99.88% All prices as of 2024-09-06 13:41:43 Exchange Traded Products (ETPs) Symbol Prem. to Nav Last Price Daily Change Year to Date Relative to BTC YTD BITW -31.52% $27 -3.84% 17.21% -8.15% ETHE -0.34% $19 -5.01% -2.27% -23.41% News Quick Bits The Block Japan’s three major banks to test cross-border stablecoin transfer platform MUFG, SMBC and Mizuho banks are set to trial a platform using stablecoins to facilitate cross-border transfers. CryptoSlate Toncoin bucks market slump as Telegram’s Durov addresses arrest in France Toncoin, a digital asset tied to Telegram, stood out in a declining market after the app’s founder, Pavel Durov, broke his silence following his arrest in France. CryptoSlate data shows that Toncoin rose by over 4% in the past 24 hours, reaching $5 before settling around $4.77 at press time. Meanwhile, top assets like Bitcoin, […] The post Toncoin bucks market slump as Telegram’s Durov addresses arrest in France appeared first on CryptoSlate. Market Data The Block US spot bitcoin ETFs saw $211 million in outflows, extending streak of negative flows Fidelity’s FBTC saw the largest outflows among spot bitcoin ETFs, with $149.49 million, followed by Bitwise BITB's $30 million outflows. Dose of DeFI Coin Telegraph Libre launches Brevan Howard, BlackRock, Hamilton Lane funds on Aptos After Solana and Near, Libre protocol is deploying its pool of tokenized funds on the Aptos blockchain. Infrastructure provider Libre is launching a new Web3 protocol to bring investment funds to the Aptos network.The first funds to be deployed on the Aptos layer-1 include Brevan Howard Master Fund, Hamilton Lane’s Senior Credit Opportunities Fund, and BlackRock’s ICS Money Market Fund. Combined, the funds are reported to hold over $91 billion in assets under management. Libre, a recently launched joint venture between WebN Group and Nomura’s Laser Digital, will serve as the backbone infrastructure for integrating real-world assets (RWAs) on Aptos. According to an announcement, Libre’s Gateway DeFi DApps will allow accredited, professional and institutional investors to access the funds onchain. Read more Crypto Infrastructure The Block Celestia releases roadmap to scale to 1 GB blocks on modular network Celestia plans to increase its block sizes to 1 gigabyte to enhance data throughput and reduce transaction fees for rollups using it for data availability. Thoughts and Opinions The Block Bernstein says crypto micropayments are key to avoiding AI financial economy bottleneck While the convergence between crypto and AI is already underway, stablecoins present the greatest opportunity, the analyst said. NFTs Coin Telegraph Rare Ape CryptoPunk sells for $1.5M amid market downturn CryptoPunk #6915, one of only 24 Apes, saw offers earlier this year of over $6 million, marking a 78% drop in value. The CryptoPunks non-fungible token (NFT) collection made headlines when a rare Ape-themed CryptoPunk sold for over $1.5 million on Sept. 5.CryptoPunk #6915 was sold for 620 Ether (ETH), equivalent to around $1.48 million. This particular NFT is one of only 24 Ape-themed CryptoPunks and features three distinct attributes: a cap, an earring, and an eye patch.Although the NFT sold for over a million dollars, the owner had received higher offers for the piece earlier this year. According to CryptoPunks data, in March 2024, when monthly NFT sales volume was approximately $1.6 billion, offers for Punk #6915 ranged from $5 million to $6 million.Read more