Schlagwort: blockchain markets

• Okcoin’s institutional clientele increased by 13% in Q2 and by 28% over the first half of 2022.

• Stablecoins (USDT and USDC) have been very popular buys for institutions in 2022 compared to the last bear market.

• Institutional activity on Okcoin jumped 125% in Q2 from Q1, with Bitcoin still seeing the majority of trading activity at 40%.

Okcoin has announced that institutional activity on its trading platform grew 125% from Q1 to Q2 in 2022, reflecting a more than 2x increase for the fourth-consecutive quarter.

The surge in institutional investor trading volumes come as the US-based cryptocurrency’s clientele in this category increased by 13% over the quarter. 

Overall, Okcoin saw its institutional clientele accounts grow by 28% in the first six months of the year, the platform said in a press release published on Thursday.

Institutional investors buy more despite crypto winter

Institutional clients on the exchange include legacy financial trading firms, asset managers, prime brokers, venture funds and hedge funds, among other large-cap customers. Trading activity amongst these groups has been on the up despite the crypto winter.

“Despite the market downturn, institutional activity on Okcoin continues to reflect increasing crypto interest and greater sector maturity,” the firm’s COO Jason Lau said in a comment.

According to Lau, institutional client activity in 2022 is markedly different from what was observed in the last bear market.

“Whereas in 2018 we saw institutions liquidate their crypto holdings in response to the bear market, nearly all of our clients are seeking greater exposure this time around and taking a longer term view.”

As well as being more active in this bear market, institutional investors have also veered from largely buying Bitcoin (BTC), to considering top altcoins and stablecoins. Among these, Ethereum (ETH) has featured highly, and so have two of the leading stablecoins – USDT and USDC.

According to Okcoin, USDT and USDC purchases on the exchange in Q2 jumped 116% and 47% respectively from numbers recorded in Q1. However, Bitcoin still saw the most activity in the first half of 2022 compared to stablecoins, with BTC purchases on Okcoin accounting for 40% of trades compared to 33% for stablecoins.

Okcoin is one of the earliest cryptocurrency exchanges – it launched in 2013 – and it offers over 50 digital assets. Its services are accessible in 190 countries.

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Daimler South East Asia, part of the Mercedes Benz Group announced that it shall build its blockchain-based data sharing platform on Polygon, an Ethereum Layer-2 scaling solution.

The choice of using Polygon adds to the widespread adoption of Polygon across various sectors around the world.

The Acentrik platform

The new data sharing platform by Daimler South East Asia will be called Acentrik and will enable enterprises to buy and sell data in a decentralized environment.

In addition, although the platform is a product of the Mercedes-Benz associate, the blockchain platform will also be used to trade data from a wide range of industries including insurance data, clinical trials, and many others.

And unlike most other similar decentralized data platforms, the data on Acentrik will not be stored on the blockchain. A non-fungible token (NFT) will instead be used to represent each data set on the blockchain. Each of the NFTs will store specific metadata.

Why Mercedes-Benz settled on Polygon

According to reports from Daimler South East Asia, the buying and selling of data will be conducted on Polygon and Ethereum Rinkeby testnet. Additionally, to protect the monetary value of data, businesses will be expected to use stablecoins to make payments.

But since the transactions will need to be done on Polygon, users will also be required to pay gas fees using the MATIC token, which is the native token of Polygon.

Once a user makes all the necessary payments, they can access the data which will be accessible on AWS 53 or IPFS.

While commenting about the development, the co-founder of Polygon, Sandeep Nailwal, celebrated the feet through a tweet that said:

“Mercedes Benz is the latest brand to be Powered By Polygon Onwards!”

And following the news, the price of MATIC jumped by 10% to hit a daily high of $0.9078. At the time of writing, the coin was still bullish and was trading at $0.8734.

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Fantom will use 10% of the burn fee to support various projects within its ecosystem.

The Fantom (FTM) community has passed an on-chain governance proposal aimed at supporting the continued evolution of the Layer-1 platform’s ecosystem.

The governance proposal was created on 5 July and sought the community’s approval via a vote. According to the Fantom Foundation, the vote passed on Tuesday, 26 July by a majority of 99.75%.

Ecosystem Support Vault governance proposal voting has concluded.

Vote: Passed ✅ https://t.co/MaDhvbrJss pic.twitter.com/w3nSKG7XBQ

— Fantom Foundation (@FantomFDN) July 26, 2022

What’s the Ecosystem Support Vault?

The Ecosystem Support Vault allows Fantom to support new projects and ideas on the Fantom Opera network via funds set aside from a percentage of the 30% transaction fees burn rate.

Through the proposal, 10%, or a third of the 30% burn fees will go to a vault controlled by Fantom validators and stakers. 

The community will oversee the application of the funds on key ecosystem projects, doing so via on-chain governance mechanisms to ensure a decentralised approach is maintained.

Fantom is a high performance blockchain fully compatible with Ethereum and has seen over 200 decentralised applications (dApps) deployed.

These include apps across decentralised exchanges (DEXs), Lending and Borrowing, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) platforms, GameFi, wallets and Cross-chain Bridges. Top DeFi protocols on Fantom include Aave and Alpaca Finance.

Notably, the adoption of the governance vote means Fantom’s burn rate is effectively 20%.

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FUD misleads investors and harms the crypto industry’s image, Johnny Lyu said on Tuesday.

KuCoin CEO Johnny Lyu has today unveiled plans for a fund that he says will focus on tackling the issue of disinformation and misinformation, popularly bundled under the term FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt), within the crypto space.

Lyu revealed the plans in a Twitter thread on Tuesday.

He highlighted that “FUD benefits no one except the FUDers” and that apart from misleading investors, it “harms the industry’s image and market confidence.”

The KuCoin chief believes that the Anti-FUD Fund initiative his platform is looking to launch will help the industry combat FUD, benefiting the investors and the entire crypto space.

An anti-FUD fund, three initial targets

The crypto industry has in the past few months witnessed the collapse of some of the biggest companies in the sector, the likes of Three Arrows Capital, Celsius Network and Voyager Digital. And over the past few weeks, FUD across crypto Twitter has been about KuCoin’s solvency.

The exchange’s announcement of a funding round only triggered more FUD – to which Lyu and KuCoin responded to.

This FUD has been clarified yesterday.

Short translation:
– No exposure to LUNA & wLUNA
– Recent fundraising has nothing to do with the market downtrend

I will unveil the full conversation between me and @otteroooo shortly. We explained everything but otter is still FUD. pic.twitter.com/mUHXwnxrDo

— Johnny_KuCoin (@lyu_johnny) July 23, 2022

The Anti-FUD Fund will thus look to achieve three objectives to help fight unnecessary FUD.

According to Lyu, the first goal is to “implement Anti-FUD education online and offline” with the exchange leveraging its global community to spread information about what makes FUD and how to spot it. The plan is to see this rolled out in over 20 languages.

The other avenue will be to use industry leaders and responsible influencers, motivating them and tapping into the reach to deliver trusted information to the public. The goal is to help audiences keep off FUD, the KuCoin CEO added.

The third approach will target FUDers – those deemed to be deliberately spreading misleading information. The fund will dedicate resources to trace and institute legal action against such individuals or platforms.

“The spread of FUD and panic harms projects, users, and the industry,” Lyu noted, saying that such actions must see those responsible “held to account.”

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Bitcoin price fell below $21,000 on Tuesday as the market sentiment turned sour on reports the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was investigating US-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.

BTC has touched lows of $20,915 and with potential downside likely to push it to the key support line around $20K. Fresh selling could include pain beyond the psychological level.

SEC probing Coinbase spooks investors?

Coinbase had already come out against suggestions that it had listed crypto token securities on its platform when it first emerged following the SEC’s insider trading charges against the crypto platform’s former product manager.

But on Tuesday, it emerged that the SEC was indeed looking into whether Coinbase offered security tokens to US investors – with at least seven of nine alleged security tokens listed on Coinbase.

According to a Bloomberg report, the SEC’s investigation started way before the insider trading case. However, with regulatory scrutiny firmly on the crypto sector following recent events, the investor community is seemingly spooked on the potential impact of the SEC vs. Coinbase case if it comes to that.

Crypto market cap falls below $1 trillion

The downside in the BTC market was also mirrored across the altcoin market, with top altcoin Ethereum (ETH) declining by more than 8% to drop below $1,400.

The sell-off pressure, also seen across the equities market with US indexes opening lower amid investor jitters over recession ahead of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting.

The S&P 500 was down nearly 1% and the Nasdaq over 1.3% lower, while the crypto market total capitalisation has fallen below the $1 trillion mark.

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