Triaconta Weekly #278

The following topics will be addressed in this weekly:

  • Bundle performance
  • Winners & Losers
  • Market overview

Bundle performance
The market is hardly reacting to the mega fine for Binance and the resignation of its CEO. What could have been a huge blow is instead widely seen as positive for the crypto sector. Central crypto exchanges are becoming more and more regulated and controlled and if you don’t want that, there is now growing turnover on multiple decentralized exchanges. DeFi grabs an excellent profit this week while the other bundles show a small increase.

Big3:
1 Month: +8.49% | 7D: +3.62% | 24H: +0.82%

Top30:
1 Month:+22.82% | 7D: +1.69% | 24H: +1.06%

Penny:
1 Month: +30.28% | 7D: +0.82% | 24H: +2.43%

DeFi:
1 Month: +38.10% | 7D: +8.82% | 24H: +1.86%

Winners & Losers
OpenAI has been plenty in the news so Fetch.AI (+24%). Uniswap (+22%), a decentralized exchange built on Ethereum (+7%), is this week’s leader of the DeFi bund in which Lido DAO (+19%), The Graph (+16%) and Synthetix (+16%) also posted fine results. A big drop for Yearn.Finance (-42%) after a possible major price manipulation to make big money with leveraged short positions. Also declines in happy ex-Defi coins Fantom (-13%) and ThorChain (-12% ). Même coins Dogecoin (-8%) and Shiba Inu (-7%) seem to suffer mostly from Binance news.

Market overview

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, pleads guilty to violating anti-money laundering requirements and sanctions laws. He started the exchange in 2017 and in a short time became the largest in the world. This mainly thanks to many U.S. customers they were not officially allowed to have. Binance settles with the U.S. Department of Justice and pays a record fine of more than $4 billion. CZ must resign as CEO and is no longer allowed to interfere with Binance. Binance will also have to appoint an independent regulator from the U.S. Department of Justice for the next five years. All financial companies must follow the rules and that includes crypto companies. That this is quite difficult if you want to generate a lot of profit and revenue is also evident at Dutch banks. For example, ING bank paid 775 million (2018) and more recently ABN-AMRO 480 million (2021) in fines for serious negligence in preventing money laundering. Binance too can easily pay the fine and remains the largest crypto exchange in the world.

With confidence in a rising Bitcoin price, computing power continues to be added by Bitcoin miners. This week total computing power reached a new milestone of 500 exahash per second. With November now already $860 million in earnings, the October earnings of 885 million are very likely to be surpassed with a week to go. The continued increase in computing power from new investments also reflects confidence that mining will remain profitable beyond the Bitcoin halving (April 2024). Earnings are slowly shifting more and more toward transaction costs.

47 countries, including the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, said in a joint statement that they will incorporate the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) into legislation as part of an effort to standardize crypto tax laws. This includes that starting in 2027, possession of crypto at a crypto service provider through tax authorities will be shared internationally.

Earlier this week, Javier Milei was elected as the new president of Argentina. Milie is a strong supporter of Bitcoin, which he believes is the people’s money. Milei’s commitment to libertarian ideals and the Austrian school of economics aligns closely with the beliefs of many Bitcoin proponents. This school’s critique of centralized banking and government intervention in currency finds much resonance within the crypto community. In a country plagued by inflation, Milei’s victory is hopeful for the future of digital currencies in Argentina and South America.

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