Kategorie: Crypto Markets

• Spot trading volume across centralised exchanges rose 16.4% to $575 billion in June, the first time volumes rose in three months.
• Derivatives trading volume on CEXs also rose, with the month seeing a 13.7% spike to $2.13 trillion.
• Binance saw a decline in both spot and derivatives volumes as OKX registered an increase.

According to the latest “Exchange Review” report by research and data platform CCData shows that the spot volumes jumped 16.4% to $575 billion in June as the crypto market experienced increased volatility over the month.

Meanwhile, the combined CEX volumes across spot and derivatives markets hit $2.7 trillion. The monthly trading volume for the two metrics rose 14.2%, while it was 13.7% for derivatives as volumes hit $2.13 trillion – the first increase for derivatives trading volume in three months.

#Crypto trading volumes in June rose for the first time in 3 months, following BlackRock & other spot $BTC ETF proposals.

📈As per our Exchange Review, spot & derivative trading on centralised exchanges rose 14% to $2.71tn.

Full Story by @CoinDesk 👇https://t.co/5OVY6fwE8c

— CCData (@CCData_io) July 5, 2023

Positive news fuel crypto trading activity

The spike in volatility was fueled by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’s lawsuit against leading exchanges Binance and Coinbase. 

Also key to this was the positivity that greeted the filing of spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds (ETFs) by major Wall Street asset managers BlackRock and Fidelity, and the launch of Citadel backed crypto exchange EDX Markets.

“The increase in the market share of spot trading volume hints at the healthy accumulation of crypto following recent positive news in the markets,”CCData researchers note in the report.

This outlook was indeed visible in the market. Increased trading activity saw Bitcoin price shoot to a new year-to-date high above $31k, while altcoins like Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash rode the optimistic outlook to break above critical resistance levels. [Read more]

Binance’s spot and derivatives volumes decline

Despite the above increases, the quarterly spot trading volumes on CEXs still hover near “historically low levels.” For instance, quarterly spot volumes for Q2, 2023 were the lowest since the fourth quarter of 2019.

Also notably, the spot market share of Binance declined 41.6% in June to see the leading exchange record a fourth consecutive month of declines, and its lowest market share since August 2022. And although Binance continues to dominate the crypto derivatives trading market with $1.21 trillion, it fell 56.8% in June.

OKX, which is the world’s second-largest derivatives exchange, recorded a 44.9% increase in its trading volume to hit $416 billion in June. The crypto exchange’s market share has now grown to 19.5%, its highest level since April 2022.

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• The DFSA ordered the Saxo Bank to dispose of its own holdings in crypto.
• The Financial regulators in Denmark have said that local banks are not allowed to hold crypto to hedge against trading risks.
• DFSA’s order concerning Saxo Bank’s crypto holdings will have little impact on the bank’s business.

Local investment bank Saxo Bank has received a formal order from the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority (DFSA) directing it to dispose of its own cryptocurrency holdings.

According to the regulator, Saxo Bank’s cryptocurrency activity “lies outside of the legal business area of financial institutions,” citing section 24 of the Danish Financial Business Act.

Cryptocurrency service providers in Denmark

Danish financial regulators are going after cryptocurrency service providers, saying that local banks are not allowed to hold cryptocurrencies as a form of risk management.

Pinpointing why it singled out Saxo Bank, the DFSA claims that Saxo Bank gives its customers the option to trade a variety of cryptocurrencies on its platform. The regulator stated that the company also provides a number of exchange-traded funds and exchange-traded notes that are linked to cryptocurrencies, adding that “it is possible to speculate on crypto assets.”

The DFSA also noted that Saxo Bank has its own portfolio of bitcoin assets, which is kept as a hedge to counteract the market risk connected to the bank’s cryptocurrency products. The regulator cited Annex 1 of the Financial Business Act in stating that dealing in crypto-assets does not appear to be under the lawful business scope of Danish financial institutions.

Based on the above reasons, the DFSA stated:

“Based on the above, Saxo Bank’s trading in crypto assets for its own account is found to be outside the legal business area of financial institutions. On this basis, Saxo Bank is ordered to dispose of its own holdings of crypto assets.”

It will be interesting to see how Saxo Bank will move ahead with its crypto offering seeing that their customers do not own underlying cryptocurrencies but instead buys financial products that follow the price of cryptocurrencies.

The post Saxo Bank ordered to dispose of crypto holdings by Denmark’s DFSA appeared first on CoinJournal.

• Binance will cease deposit and withdrawals support for Multichain-bridged tokens Polkastarter (POLS), Alchemy Pay (ACH), Alpaca Finance (ALPACA) and Travala (AVA.
• The tokens are minted on BNB Smart Chain, Fantom, Ethereum and Avalanche C-Chain.
• The exchange says the suspension follows an earlier one taken in May after an incident involving Multichain-bridged tokens.

Binance is suspending deposits and withdrawals for several tokens linked to cross-chain router protocol Multichain, according to an announcement the crypto exchange published on Wednesday.

The crypto behemoth states that the suspension of the Multichain-bridged tokens will take effect on July 7 starting at 00:00 UTC and will last “until further notice.” 

The price of Multichain was down nearly 6% in the past 24 hours and traded near $3.14 at the time of writing.

#Binance will suspend deposits and withdrawals for a number of Multichain-bridged tokens from July 7, 00:00 UTC until further notice.

More details here 👇https://t.co/CL7V8UeT9l

— Binance (@binance) July 5, 2023

Polkastarter (POLS), Alchemy Pay (ACH) among affected tokens

Binance says in the notice to users that the deposits and withdrawals pause will impact different networks, including BNB Smart Chain, Fantom, Ethereum and Avalanche C-Chain. In particular, Multichain-bridged tokens that users can no longer transfer via the above chains are:

Polkastarter (POLS), Alchemy Pay (ACH), and SuperVerse (SUPER) and Harvest Finance (FARM) on the BNB Smart Chain; Alpaca Finance (ALPACA) and Beefy.Finance (BIFI) tokens that are minted on Fantom Network; Spell Token (SPELL) on Avalanche C-Chain and Travala (AVA) on the Ethereum bridge.

Although the Binance did not provide specific details on why its ceasing support for the above bridge tokens, it highlights that the move as related to the earlier suspension of several Multichain bridge tokens. 

On May 24, the crypto giant announced a temporary suspension to multiple tokens after an incident involving Multichain bridge transfers.

While deposits and withdrawals for the above tokens are suspended on Binance via the listed chains, users can still access these transfers via other Binance-supported network, the exchange reiterated.

The post Binance suspends transfers for several Multichain-bridged tokens appeared first on CoinJournal.

• Aave holders are voting on a governance proposal to convert 1,600 ether (ETH) to wstETH and rETH.
• Aave currently earns a yield of 1.69% from the ETH that it has staked on the Aave v2 platform.
• At press time all the 252,152 votes cast were in favor of the proposal.

AAVE’s Bull Run has gained momentum as AAVE holders vote on a governance proposal titled “Treasury Managemet – Acquire wstETH & rETH.” The proposal seeks to convert 1,600 ETH to equal amounts of wstETH and rETH to be held in the Ethereum Collector Contract.

AAVE token has gained in excess of 26% in the last seven days and today’s surge confirms a long-term bullish trend. The token has hit a daily high of $80.28 today although it had pulled back to $76.92 at the time of writing.

Why convert the ETH to wstETH and rETH?

The majority of the Aave DAO seems to be in agreement seeing that all the voters had voted in support of the proposal at press time. 252,152 votes have been cast so far out of the 320,000 votes required for the proposal to be actioned. But what is the catch?

Aave is currently the third-largest DeFi protocol and has a total value locked of $6 billion. The Aave DAO currently holds 1,786.51 awETH and 104.548 ETH in the Collector Contract. The awETH deposit yield in Aave v2 earns 1.69%, compared to the 3.8% and 3.13% that Aave DAO would earn if it held wstETH and rETH respectively.

If passed all the unproductive ETH balance, along with aWETH (v2 and v3) will be converted into the same amounts of wstETH and rETH for higher staking yields.

Besides the higher yields, the wrapped staked ether (wstETH) and rocket pool ether (rETH), which are liquid staking derivatives, will allow Aave to stake the tokens for a yield whilst still retaining liquidity.

The post AAVE hikes as holders vote on converting 1,600ETH into rETH and wstETH appeared first on CoinJournal.

• The DBS bank has started an e-CNY collection platform.
• The platform will enable automated settlement of e-CNY into businesses’ CNY bank deposit accounts.
• The bank is participating in Project Guardian, a project for testing asset tokenization and DeFi for traditional banks.

According to a Wednesday announcement, clients of the Singaporean bank DBS can now receive payments in e-CNY, the digital currency issued by the Chinese central bank.

The new platform enables automated e-CNY settlement into business customers’ bank deposit accounts. According to DBS, at least one client has already completed a transaction using this platform.

Singapore’s Project Guardian

Besides taking part in experiments aimed at building the infrastructure required to issue a programmable digital Singapore dollar, DBS is also taking part in Project Guardian, a project launched by the Monetary Authority of Singapore to test asset tokenization and decentralized finance (DeFi) for traditional banks.

Project Guardian involved the DeFi lending platform Aave, the decentralized exchange Uniswap, and the Ethereum scaling system Polygon. The project will also involve several traditional banks including Singapore’s DBS Bank, US-based JPMorgan, and Japan’s SBI Digital in addition to Marketnode, a digital asset platform built by the Singapore Exchange (SGX) and Temasek.

The first phase of the Project Guardian testing involved trades in tokenized Singapore dollars (SGD), Japanese yen (JPY), Japanese government bonds, and Singapore government securities and was done using Polygon, Aave and Uniswap.

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