Crypto Surges on More China Stimulus, Ethena Announces New Stablecoin

Sep 26, 2024

Market Update

The PBoC has announced a fresh package of economic stimulus, weighing a $142 billion injection into top domestic banks and pledging to stabilize the housing and stock markets. Domestically, durable goods data came in better than expected, and GDP met expectations, providing more confidence in the stability of the U.S. economy. Crypto is responding positively to both developments, as BTC -0.27% has gained to $65.3k and ETH -2.43% to $2,650, with altcoins showing larger moves. SOL -4.17% and ecosystem memecoins WIF -1.88% and BONK -7.47% are some of the top gainers, rising 6.01%, 12.13%, and 9.65%, respectively. Crypto-related equities are reacting to the move, with COIN -3.27%  and MSTR -1.29%  gaining about 8%. Equity indices are showing more muted gains, with the SPY 0.29%  and QQQ 0.16%  gaining around 0.30%, while Chinese names continue to outperform, with KWEB 0.20%  gaining more than 10%.

Ethena Announces UStb

Ethena, a stablecoin protocol, has announced its newest product, UStb, a fully collateralized stablecoin backed by Blackrock’s BUIDL fund. BUIDL is a tokenized MMF fund that mainly holds U.S. treasuries. UStb will diversify Ethena’s product suite, creating a fiat-backed stablecoin separated from its main product, USDe. The new product comes in response to concerns about how USDe would operate in times of prolonged negative funding environments. If needed, Ethena can now adjust the backing composition of USDe between basis positions and liquid stables. They can close hedging positions and reallocate collateral towards UStb to alleviate potential risks. Additionally, as Ethena integrates with centralized exchanges, they can now offer two options for margin collateral. Ethena has surged following the product announcement, with ENA -6.89% gaining more than 16%.

Crypto Surges on More China Stimulus, Ethena Announces New Stablecoin
Source: Ethena

Paypal Enabling Crypto Capabilities for Businesses

Paypal has announced plans to allow U.S. business customers to buy, sell, hold, and transfer crypto via their PayPal accounts. The service will be available in all states except New York upon initial launch. The same functionality has been enabled within personal PayPal and Venmo accounts since 2020, but they stated they have observed how users want to leverage crypto and have seen increased interest among businesses looking to accept or use crypto. PayPal continues diving deeper into crypto, launching its own stablecoin last year, which has grown substantially after launching on Solana. PYUSD’s market cap has grown to over $700 million, making it the 7th largest stablecoin. PYPL 0.62%  shares are up 2.67% today and have risen more than 36% over the past three months.

Crypto Surges on More China Stimulus, Ethena Announces New Stablecoin
Source: Defi Llama

Technical Strategy

NEAR -3.31% has begun to turn the corner given today’s 12% gains. This directly followed last week’s trendline breakout which exceeded a downtrend extending back since May, and NEAR was able to bottom out at an exact area of Ichimoku cloud support.  Overall, gains look likely to test $8.52 in the months ahead and this is a very key technical area of resistance.  Getting above this argues for a much larger rally up to $10.91 and then $13.22, both of which have importance being retracements of the former decline from early 2022.  Overall, NEAR looks like an appealing risk/reward and pullbacks likely find support near $5-$5.15 before turning back higher.

Crypto Surges on More China Stimulus, Ethena Announces New Stablecoin
Source: TradingView

Daily Important Metrics

Crypto Size

Bullish signal is tied to the crypto market growing

Market cap 2.27T +$24B(1.09%)
BTC Dominance
56.31 % (0.19%)
Stablecoins

Increase in circulating stablecoins is a Bullish signal

In Circulation +$119B(0.04%)
In Exchanges +$22B(0.02%)
BTC Metrics

A decrease in Bitcoin on exchanges is bullish, indicates investors are moving coins to cold storage

# BTC Exchanges +$3.0M(-0.03%)
Funding Rates

Positive funding rates indicate traders are Bullish

Aggregate+0.5710(0.0200)
Binance+0.4082(-0.3787)
Bitfinex+0.1997(0.1997)
Bitmex+0.2519(-0.0401)
ByBit+1.0000(0.0047)
Deribit+0.2392(-1.4501)
Huobi+0.9887(0.9887)
Kraken+1.0253(-0.2815)
Mean+0.5710(0.0200)
OKex +0.5071(-0.4331)
Sentiment
Picasso Network Successfully Integrates IBC with Ethereum, Wormhole Token Goes Live

BMI : 55 (100.00%)

Futures

A positive spread between Futures Prices and Spot Prices is Bullish

CME Price $64,495(1.17%)
Spot Basis $-133(-0.21%)
Volume 428,453(-22.73%)
Open Interest 308,483(-0.14%)
Options all exchanges

Higher open interest change in a bull market is bullish for the sector

Volume 21,964(0.87%)
Open Interest 301,903 (1.22%)
Vol. Put/Call Ratio 0.7297 (-29.25%)
OOI Put/Call Ratio 0.5069 (1.40%)

All metrics as of 2024-09-26 15:10:52

All Funding rates are in bps

Crypto Prices

Symbol Market Cap Last Price Daily Change Year to Date Relative to BTC YTD
btc imageBTC
$1.29T $65,144 2.55%54.24%
btc imageETH
$319B $2,647 1.70%16.32%-24.59%
btc imageSOL
$74B $157 4.33%54.43%0.12%
btc imageHNT
$1.2B $7.33 -4.00%-80.58%-87.41%
btc imageDOGE
$263,183 $0.0003 -5.02%-99.70%-99.81%

All prices as of 2024-09-26 12:05:30

Exchange Traded Products (ETPs)

Symbol Prem. to Nav Last Price Daily Change Year to Date Relative to BTC YTD
BITW -36.56% $302.55%27.64%-17.25%
ETHE -0.39% $223.38%15.64%-25.03%

News

Quick Bits

The Block

PayPal to allow US business accounts to buy and transfer crypto

The digital payments firm said it will enable U.S. merchants to buy, sell and hold supported cryptocurrency.

CoinDesk

Wall Street Titan Guggenheim Tokenizes $20M of Commercial Paper on Ethereum

Guggenheim Treasury Services, a subsidiary of financial services giant Guggenheim Partners, has issued $20 million of tokenized commercial paper on the Ethereum blockchain, its partner, blockchain platform Zeconomy, announced Thursday.

CoinDesk

Avalanche Unveils $40M Grant Program Ahead of 'Avalanche9000' Upgrade

The program, called Retro9000, is supposed to encourage developers to build on Avalanche ahead of a much-anticipated upgrade known as Avalanche9000.

The Block

Hamster Kombat token goes live for trading with airdrop to 131 million user accounts

HMSTR token goes live for trading on several exchanges including Binance, OKX and Bitfinex as 60 billion tokens are distributed.

Dose of DeFI

The Block

Ethena plans to launch new stablecoin backed by BlackRock’s tokenized BUIDL fund

Ethena’s existing decentralized synthetic dollar, USDe, is now the fifth-largest stablecoin, with a $2.6 billion circulating supply.

Web 3.0

Coin Telegraph

Web3 music streaming brings direct stablecoin payouts to musicians

Web3 is reshaping the music industry as platforms like Audius enable direct stablecoin payouts, offering artists more control over pricing and fan engagement. Few industries have been as proactive as the music industry in exploring and adopting emerging technologies at the intersection of Web3 and culture.From streaming and distribution to fan engagement and exclusive communities, the use cases for Web3 in music are plenty and only becoming more so. One of the early pioneers at this intersection, Audius, a decentralized, community-owned, and artist-controlled music-sharing and streaming service, just announced that artists can now be directly paid for their content via stablecoin. Read more

Investment Products

BTC Manager

Leverage Shares debuts 3x leveraged MicroStrategy ETPs in Europe

Leverage Shares has launched the first leveraged and inverse exchange-traded product tied to the performance of MicroStrategy stock. These new investment products, now available on the London Stock Exchange, include the 3x Long MicroStrategy exchange-traded product (ticker symbol ‘MST3’) and…

Hacks, Exploits, and Scams

The Block

WazirX granted four-month moratorium to restructure its liabilities after $230 million hack

Meanwhile, the hacker continues to launder the stolen funds in batches of 5,000 ether ($13 million) via crypto mixer Tornado Cash.

The Block

Crypto losses due to hacks and scams fall to $413 million in Q3: Immunefi

The losses were dominated by hacks on crypto exchanges WazirX and BingX, which were exploited for $235 million and $52 million, respectively.

Reports you may have missed

Stay up to date with the latest articles and business updates. Subscribe to our newsletter

Articles Read 1/2

Enjoyed the read? Subscribe now for unlimited access!

Get invaluable analysis of the market and stocks. Cancel at any time.

Already have an account? Sign In