Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange platform, has plans to obtain the necessary paperwork and become a registered service provider in the United Kingdom by mid-2022.
Key takeaways:
Binance CEO and founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao has recently indicated that the world’s leading digital currency exchange plans to become a licensed service provider in the UK in the next 6 to 18 months, according to The Telegraph.
Binance will seek approval from the UK’s leading financial regulatory agency Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The FCA has issued a consumer warning on Binance in late June and stated that the exchange “is not permitted to undertake any regulated activity in the UK.”
While the FCA’s oversight doesn’t include cryptocurrency spot market activity, the agency does regulate crypto asset derivatives and digital assets that could be considered securities.
In August, the FCA revealed that Binance complied with all requirements the regulator has imposed, which bodes well for Binance’s prospects of obtaining the required licenses to operate on the island in full capacity in the future.
Binance has recently published a list of 10 Fundamental Rights for Crypto Users, calling for a more regulated crypto market and showing its commitment to work with policymakers to produce a regulatory framework that would be beneficial to an average crypto user.
The world’s leading spot and derivatives crypto trading platform has recently hinted that France could become its new global headquarters. Physical headquarters would go a long way in alleviating some of the regulatory pressure and help Binance’s goal of practicing proactive regulatory compliance.
According to data from CoinCodex, Binance processed more trading volume in the last 24 hours than the next four largest cryptocurrency exchanges combined. According to a recent report from the Wall Street Journal, Binance could be worth north of $300 billion if it were a publicly-traded company.
Leading global digital asset exchange, Gate.io, has quickly become the sixth largest crypto futures platform in the world, having risen from fifteenth place just over two months ago. The rate at which the platform has grown far outpaced competitors, cementing Gate.io’s place in the futures market.
According to data provided by CoinGecko, Gate.io’s 24-hour crypto futures trading volume exceeded $7.1 billion, pushing the exchange to the sixth position worldwide in terms of trading volume. Gate.io provides futures contracts for more than 185 USDT-paired and 25 BTC-paid assets including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Litecoin, Shiba Inu and Sandbox.
“Gate.io’s crypto futures platform has grown tremendously over the last month as turbulent market conditions became more apparent. Favourable word-of-mouth and the variety of products being offered has been the leading contributors to the growth of our futures platform. We’ve been taking users’ feedback and suggestions to heart in further expanding our offerings,” said Marie Tatibouet, Chief Marketing Officer at Gate.io
The futures platform allows users to trade on a platform that offers high liquidity and stability, having proven itself to remain operational even during turbulent market conditions. Users are able to trade over 200 contract pairs on the platform with some of the lowest fees in the industry, while exploring some of its innovative features such as contract bonuses, reverse positions, advanced contract analysis and quantitative trading solutions.
On December 15th, Gate.io will launch the world’s first crypto futures trading championship, a campaign aimed at rewarding the users who have made our platform what it is today. With up to $2 million in prizes to be won, Gate.io intends on using the campaign to elevate its world class trading platform.
In addition to providing a powerful futures trading platform, Gate.io’s spot exchange has also listed more than 1,100 coins and tokens, and the company has invested a lot of money to expand its NFT Magic Box market and its Startup IEO platform.
About Gate.io
Gate.io is a leading digital currency exchange with over 8 million users in 190 countries across the globe. The exchange offers spot, margin, futures and contract trading in addition to DeFi products through HipoDeFi, custodial services through Wallet.io, investments through Gate Labs and it’s dedicated GateChain platform. The company also offers a wholly integrated suite of products such as its Startup IEO platform, NFT Magic Box marketplace, crypto loans and more.
CME Group, the world’s largest derivatives exchange, has expanded its cryptocurrency futures product lineup with the addition of Micro Ether futures (MET). The new financial instrument empowers investors to reach a higher degree of precision when trading and joins Micro Bitcoin futures (MBT) that were launched on the platform in May.
Key takeaways:
After launching regular-sized Ethereum futures in February of this year, CME has now added a more efficient and cost-effective way to gain exposure to the world’s second-largest crypto in the form of so-called micro futures.
Micro Ether futures provide investors with an opportunity to more efficiently manage their portfolio diversification and are designed to benefit smaller traders the most.
The new cryptocurrency-based financial instrument was first announced early in November. At the time, CME Group Global Head of Equity Index and Alternative Investment Products Tim McCourt explained that given Ethereum’s significant price rally over the last couple of months, the regular-sized ETH futures have become inaccessible to a large number of investors.
“The price of ether has more than doubled since these contracts were introduced, creating demand for a micro-sized contract to make this market even more accessible to a broader range of participants,” McCourt elaborated.
According to the company’s November press release, more than 2.7 million Micro Bitcoin futures have been traded since their launch in May.
The new ETH-based product is cash-settled, while the referential price of ETH is updated daily based on the CME’s own ETH-USD rate.
Following the December 6 launch of MET, the price of ETH has surged by over 10% to $4,400.
Following the weekend crypto market crash, digital assets have mounted a strong comeback over the last 24 hours
The total market cap has increased by roughly 9% on the tailwind of Bitcoin’s price growth and impressive showings by several altcoins
BTC dominance has fallen to a two-month low as alternative digital assets are recovering more rapidly than Bitcoin
The cryptocurrency market is experiencing a much-needed bounce back after the weekend’s crash, which wiped out nearly $500 billion from the market in the span of hours. Bitcoin (BTC) reconquered $51,000 support earlier today and was accompanied by numerous altcoins, including Ethereum (ETH), Cardano (ADA), and Solana (SOL), to name just a few, sporting robust double-digit gains.
The crypto market cap is eyeing a $2.5 trillion valuation after gaining 9% in a single trading day
Bitcoin and other crypto assets lost as much as 20% during Friday’s flash crash, whose fallout carried over into the weekend. The 24 hour period starting on December 3 was the second-worst period for the cryptocurrency this year, trailing only the May 19 market crash.
On Friday, the total market capitalization of all digital currencies in circulation fell from $2.68 trillion to $2.25 trillion in a matter of hours. After a modest bounceback on Sunday, the market cap dug an even deeper hole Monday, reaching a two-month low of $2.25 trillion. Starting earlier today, the crypto market has started to mount a comeback and is currently sitting at $2.45 trillion, down 8% since pre-crash levels.
Bitcoin broke the critical $50K resistance level with ease
The exact reason for the severe market pullback is impossible to pinpoint with a hundred percent accuracy. However, the positive results of a recent unemployment report have led many to believe that the Fed, and central banks around the world, will soon start raising interest rates to combat the 30-year high inflation.
Bitcoin benefited greatly from expansionary monetary policy employed to negate the adverse economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, growing from $4,000 in March 2020 to an all-time high of $69,000 in early November.
It seems that the era of massive stimulus packages is slowly coming to an end. As a result, risk assets such as tech stocks and digital currencies have been facing considerable selling pressure. Most notably, Bitcoin fell to the $44,000 level preceding Fed chairman Jerome Powell’s statement about the upcoming interest rate hike.
After the massive drop over the weekend, Bitcoin has recovered a decent chunk of its losses during today’s trading activity. The price of the world’s largest crypto increased from $47,400 at the start of the day to $51,300 at the time of this writing, a 9% improvement.
Going forward, it will be interesting to observe whether the heavily touted notion of Bitcoin being an inflationary hedge turns out to be true. Central bankers across the world are leaning towards implementing higher interest rates to combat the rising costs of living, measured as the consumer price index (CPI), which has increased 6.7% year-over-year.
Ethereum and other altcoins are recovering their losses more aggressively than BTC
Despite significant daily gains, Bitcoin’s recovery is trailing alternative digital currencies by quite a considerable margin. The BTC dominance ratio is currently sitting at 41.3%, the second-lowest value since the last week of September.
The altcoin surge has been headlined by Ethereum, which regained lost ground much quicker than BTC, and is now exchanging hands at the $4,400 level, just 4% removed from its pre-flash crash price.
Despite impressive 10% gains posted by ETH, numerous other altcoins have managed to mount even more aggressive comebacks. For instance, BitTorrent (BTT) grew by over 65% in the last 24 hours, while Loopring (LRC), Bitcoin SV (BSV), and Kadena (KDA) all demonstrated over 30% gains.
Polygon (MATIC) has been arguably today’s most impressive top 100 crypto asset by market capitalization. The 35% price increase has pushed the value of MATIC to a new cycle high of $2.44 and cemented the Layer 2 scalability solution firmly in the crypto top 20 on an $11.7 billion valuation. While the steady growth of the Polygon network and solid platform fundamentals have without a doubt been a determining factor of MATIC’s recent price rally, the listing of several exchange-traded products (ETPs) for Polygon in the recent weeks have provided an additional boost.
The past decade has witnessed the rise of several revolutionary technologies but none has had the impact of cryptocurrencies. It has given rise to a trillion-dollar industry that continues to grow daily.
The beauty of blockchain technology is that it isn’t limited to a particular sector. For example, the concept of cryptocurrency initially proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto was heavily focused on transforming the finance sector. However, crypto has expanded beyond finance and can be applied in sports, entertainment, supply management and more.
Unsurprisingly, there is a rush by many institutions and individuals towards adopting blockchain solutions in their businesses and everyday life. Bitcoin and Ethereum, as the two initial cryptocurrencies, have made a significant impact on the blockchain industry but have their limitations in scalability and high transaction costs.
This has led to calls for a next-generation cryptocurrency that can be highly scalable and yet maintain low transaction fees. BixBcoin is a blockchain protocol that seeks to fill this void with its innovative ecosystem.
A unique blockchain approach
BixBcoin (BIXB) has developed its native blockchain based on a decentralized architecture that supports fast transactions at low costs. Its blockchain is secured by a group of people called miners that contribute their computing power to solve complex mathematical equations and maintain the integrity of BixBcoin.
BixBcoin has deployed an incentive system for miners for their activities and this ensures that its blockchain is one of the safest. Transactions with BixBcoin can be tracked since they are recorded on its native BixBexplorer.
BixBcoin has also gained a reputation of launching innovative financial-based blockchain solutions. Some of its popular dApps includes Loanypto, a lending platform where users can lock their BIXB tokens for rewards in interests.
There is a growing push from merchants and businesses to accept crypto payments. BixBcoin makes this possible with its payment gateway BixBpay. Businesses can integrate the payment API directly in their stores and receive crypto payments within a few minutes. Unlike other expensive options, BixBpay is very cheap and charges only 0.001% in transaction fees.
In addition, BixBpay comes with a dashboard where businesses can track crypto transactions from customers, prepare customized invoices and more.
A fast-growing ecosystem
BixBcoin has been able to establish itself as a key stakeholder in the blockchain industry. Its native token BIXB has received massive adoption and acceptance on several platforms. In addition, BixBcoin has launched an incentive program with crypto exchange Hotbit for BIXB holders.
BIXB holders will be able to stake their assets on Hotbit for interests of up to 60.60% APY. This according to BixBcoin is meant to serve as an incentive to long-term holders since the lock-period is 90-days. BIXB can be traded on several platforms including Coinsbit, Hotbit and BIXB Exchange. To learn more about BixBcoin visit their website.
Since the launch of Growth DeFi on Avalanche, the platform has seen tremendous growth and welcomed new users. Growth DeFi is mainly a DeFi cross-chain farming protocol created to allow capital efficiency and help investors compound their returns with various products.
Growth Defi announced that they have partnered with Olympus DAO to be part of the first Olympus Pro Avalanche Cohort. They are incorporating Bonds into their ecosystem. In simple words, what Bonds does is link protocols with buyers. Suppose the protocol is concerned about getting a specific asset such as LPs (Liquidity provider tokens). At the same time, the bond buyer is interested in buying the protocol tokens at a bit of discount compared to the market price. It would help improve the cost basis in the long term. Unlike the protocol selling its token directly to the market, it would harm the price.
In the same way, if the buyer instantly arbitrages the discount, it would cause the same impact on the market price. Because of this reason, Bonds introduced lockup or vesting. This process ensures that buyers can’t arbitrage the price. Protocols can now get liquidity tokens, and buyers can get their tokens at a discount without affecting the market. Bonds are created to replace constant emissions to incentivize Liquidity Providers that dilute token holders and entirely own token’s liquidity. Why are they adding this feature? Growth DeFi has decided to owe its own liquidity instead of renting and paying incentives to external LPs to stay. There are many benefits to this though
1. There is more liquidity for buying and selling GRO and WHEAT
2. The sell pressure from LP farms are reduced
3. There is more MOR in circulation
4. More Profits from swap fees
5. There is liquidity no matter the market conditions
GRO and WHEAT Bonds
GRO DAO has a treasury holding of about 150,000 GRO. Since GRO is a deflationary token, it doesn’t have any emissions. So, the treasury can be used for different purposes. Still, the major purpose is to acquire GRO/MOR LPs starting with GRO/MOR TraderJoe LP tokens on the Avalanche network. Bond buyers can buy GRO with their GRO/MOR JLPs. Most of the 15,000 GRO will be changed into liquidity across different chains throughout the coming months and over the years.
Once DAO-owned liquidity increases, there would be no need to incentivize pairs like GRO/AVAX anymore. With that, emissions can now be redirected towards increasing the rewards of staking WHEAT AutoCompound and govGRO staking, making it a win-win situation for both. The swap fees received from Lps locked by the protocol will also help in increasing GROs revenues.
Wheat can combine bonds with its EBCs (Exponential Buyback Collectors) because of its unique position. Bonds will allow WHEAT to acquire any asset, set aside the asset into an EBC with a tailored strategy, and use the yield to repurchase WHEAT. The Bond starts simply on Avalanche and then evolves. The first month of it going live, buyers will be able to provide MOR/AVAX JLPs or WHEAT/MOR JLPs. The majority of the bonds will be towards accumulating more WHEAT/MOR liquidity.
As soon as there is enough WHEAT/MOR liquidity in the pool, there would be no incentive on WHEAT/AVAX anymore. Instead, the incentives would be moved to WHEAT Autocompound pools to almost double its staking rewards. With the huge WHEAT/MOR liquidity position, the protocol will eat up any dips with its liquidity and may even profit from it through swap fees. WHEAT future is not going to stop at acquiring WHEAT/MOR and MOR/AVAX liquidity. It will also allow the protocol to boost its existing EBC holdings and increase WHEAT burn rate.
Growth DeFi also launched on Avalanche with a new hybrid bridge system for their incentives token $WHEAT and a self-repaying loan feature for their stable coin $MOR. MOR is an overcollateralized stable coin that is running on Avalanche. It permits users to deposit collaterals like xJOE that earn yield and then borrow MOR at a favourable rate which means users get paid a percentage on their debt to borrow MOR.
There are different strategies to maximize your yield on Avalanche with MOR & WHEAT; however, we would only focus on maximizing without using leverage. For you to do this, you need to visit the xJOE borrow page on MOR. Once you are on the page, input how much xJOE you would like to deposit and the amount of MOR you want to borrow alongside. Done with that? You also need to sign these three transactions:
Setup proxy
Enable Collateral
Open Vault
Since you now have MOR in your wallet, you can stake it in WHEAT (Avalanche) and start farming. When the price of JOE increases, so does your collateral ratio, which means you can mint/borrow more MOR to stake in WHEAT and earn larger returns. Also, when the price of JOE decreases, your collateral ratio decreases. Still, you can reduce this liquidity risk by unstaking some of your MOR in WHEAT to repay your debt. With this effective strategy, you can maximize the yield on your xJOE using MOR.
Play-to-earn blockchain game SYN CITY will be launching its Binance mafia metaverse via the Binance Initial Game Offering (IGO) on December 9th at 4 pm UTC. As part of this launch, the SYN CITY team will offer a list of limited-edition NFTs and other in-game assets specifically designed exclusively for Binance.
The concept of Initial Game Offerings (IGO) has been gaining significant traction in recent months. All IGOs are exclusive to Binance, where top-tier blockchain games drop their NFT collections on the Binance NFT platform. These collections may list via auctions, fixed-price sales, mystery boxes, and more. Binance allows game developers to install several rounds of IGOs for their upcoming games. This helps creators offer unlimited assets in each round via flexible pricing structures.
IGOs are limited to gaming so all dropped content on the Binance NFT platform must only include in-game assets. These may include assets such as experience points, access passes, legendary weapons, skins, and exclusive in-game items for the Binance community.
SYN CITY, a free-to-play game founded by Tron’s former Head of Business Roy Liu, is the first-of-its-kind syndicate and mafia-themed blockchain game. The proposed “mafia metaverse” will introduce a unique governance system called Mafia-as-a-DAO (MaaD). MaaD incentivizes every player and allows them to join or create their own syndicates. SYN CITY’s developers are gaming veterans from Disney, Ubisoft, Roblox, EA, and Gameloft.
SYN CITY is historic and unique with its approach as a completely free-to-play and play-to-earn game. Thus, SYN CITY has received the backing of several prominent investors and VC firms. Days before SYN CITY’s genesis launch, Twitch co-founder Justin Kan and Robin Chan’s Goat Capital led an $8 million funding round, with additional financial backing from Spartan Group, Hack VC, A&T Capital, Animoca Brands, and more.
About SYN CITY
SYN CITY is the first-of-its-kind “mafia metaverse” game built for the blockchain. Constructed by a team of experienced game developers, SYN CITY brings the mafia and syndicate-style gameplay on-chain while introducing a unique in-game governance feature called Mafia-as-a-DAO (MaaD). The platform’s native token, SYN, offers players access to several earning opportunities like events and governance rewards. Gamers can take part in daily events, including PvP, PvE, and Syndicate-based contests like cross-chain tournaments.
Astar Network (formerly known as Plasm Network) has won the third Polkadot parachain slot in last week’s parachain auction. The multichain smart contract hub supporting Ethereum VM, WebAssembly, and Layer 2 raised over 10 million DOT, worth $274 million at corresponding market rates.
Key takeaways:
Astar Network, a Japan-based blockchain firm focused on creating scalability solutions, has secured the third parachain slot on the Polkadot platform thanks to 27,100 contributors participating in the auction.
Sota Watanabe, the founder of Astar Network, spoke with Forkast.News: “This is a huge step for the entire Astar ecosystem, since we have been developing the network for more than 2.5 years to become a Polkadot parachain.”
Astar joins the previous two auction winners, DeFi hub Acala with 32.5M DOT contributed, and multi-chain protocol Moonbeam with 35.8M DOT contributed. Astar will be onboarded onto a Polkadot parachain on December 17, along with the other first five auction winners.
Each parachain auction winner will be able to build on the Polkadot network for the duration of 96 weeks (22 months).
Parachains are customized blockchains designed to feed into the mainchain. The project-specific design allows them to achieve higher throughput while retaining lower transaction costs than the main blockchain. Parachains were first introduced in Polkadot’s white paper and later incorporated into its canary network Kusama.
The next two parachain auction winners will be announced prior to December 17.
Bitcoin and other digital assets lost as much as 20% during Friday’s flash crash, the second-worst 24 hour period for crypto markets since May 19
Fed’s upcoming interest rates hike intended to combat 30-year high inflation levels has put downward pressure on risk assets, including digital currencies and tech stocks
The mid-December period has historically been pivotal for Bitcoin’s performance in subsequent months
After a month-long period of downward momentum and trading in a relatively tight range, Bitcoin and the broader crypto market were hit by a severe flash crash on Friday, which torpedoed prices of most crypto assets and, in several cases, sent them to 2-month lows.
What is driving the bearish market trend?
According to a prominent US investor Louis Navellier, the recent market pullback can be primarily attributed to the Federal Reserve’s assumed policy change regarding inflation rates. The world’s most influential central bank will likely elect to reign in the runaway inflation (currently at 30-year highs) by raising interest rates. The US central bankers are not alone in their approach, as Brazil, Canada, and India are considering implementing similar measures.
Bloomberg recently reported that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by 0.7% in November, signifying a massive 6.7% year-over-year increase in the prices of consumer goods and services.
Economists on average expect next week's CPI print for what happened in November to be 6.7% year-over-year (up from 6.2% in the month prior) and for the month-over-month print to be 0.7% (down from the month prior's 0.9%). pic.twitter.com/ljOEZQVDBz
The Fed deems that the low-interest rates and loose economic policy concerning inflation, implemented as critical tools in combating the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, have achieved their desired effect of lowering the unemployment rate (which fell to a year-low of 4.2% in November) and that not adjusting the monetary policy would end up hurting the economy in the long term.
Bitcoin and crypto assets, in general, have benefited immensely from the expansionary monetary policy central banks across the world have employed to diminish the impact of the pandemic. For reference, Bitcoin’s price tag increased from roughly $4,000 in March 2020 to the all-time high of approximately $69,000 in November 2021 – a whopping 1,600% increase over 20 months.
Speaking to Forbes, the CEO of Florida-based investment firm Zega Financial Jay Pestrichelli, identified similar economic factors at play as Navellier:
“The lower growth paired with potential supply chain issues from the new omicron variant may actually cause the Fed to raise rates more aggressively than previously thought—all in an effort to fight rising inflation.”
The stock markets and crypto markets alike have responded to the potential tightening of the cheap money faucet with distinct negativity. The inherent volatility of crypto markets came to light on Friday when the total market capitalization of all digital currencies in circulation shrank by approximately $500 billion in the span of hours. The stock market also suffered heavy losses, with the most notable losers being technology companies as Tesla declined by 6.4% and Zoom Video by 4.1%.
Mid-December has historically been a pivotal period for Bitcoin
Navellier maintains that the recent advertisement shopping spree by the likes of cryptocurrency exchanges Crypto.com and FTX point to the crypto market top and the mania stage of a textbook bubble. Going forwards, Navallier believes a massive correction is coming in 2022, with the price of Bitcoin falling to $10,000.
It seems that such a bleak outlook might be premature. For example, the amount of BTC on exchanges keeps dropping, which is generally regarded as bullish as crypto assets are taken off exchanges to be stored in cold storage and removed from short-term trading cycles.
BTC exchange reserves drop to a yearly low, despite the bearish momentum. Image source: CryptoQuant
Philip Swift, a crypto analyst and the creator of a learning hub lookintobitcoin.com, has recently shared the multi-year overview of the last five mid-December market periods.
15-19 Dec ‘16 = Start Parabolic Run 15-19 Dec ‘17 = Cycle Top 15-19 Dec ‘18 = Cycle Bottom 15-19 Dec ‘19 = PlusToken Bottom 15-19 Dec ‘20 = Broke Previous ATH ($20k)
Although past market data shouldn’t be considered a prediction for future trends, given the vastly different broader economic factors at play between different years, it is interesting to observe how mid-December has historically set the stage for BTC markets in subsequent months.
The next few days will likely determine the fate of crypto markets for the next few months. Given the recent developments, it is now all but certain that Bitcoin won’t reach optimistic predictions, made by several analysts, of a $100,000 price tag by year’s end.
