Gate Research Institute: Babylon's launch of staking on the mainnet raised Bitcoin network fees, while the market smoothly absorbed the Mt. Gox payment pressure.

Market Review

According to gate market data, as of 12:00 on August 23 (GMT+8)

BTC Market - BTC price has increased by 0.33% in the past 24 hours, currently trading at around $60,861.3. Within the past 24 hours, the highest price reached $61,396.0, and the lowest price reached $59,712.3. Looking at the daily chart, BTC price has experienced a rebound in the past three days and has broken through the 20-day moving average. The resistance level for the price above on the hourly chart is mainly around $62,638.

ETH - The price of ETH has increased by 1.83% in the past 24 hours, and the current price is about $2,669.07. In the past 24 hours, the highest price was $2,652.84 and the lowest price was $2,584.21. The current price is still fluctuating in the range of 2,500-2,780, and a clear market trend will need to wait for a breakthrough in the range.

Alts—— Alts have also rebounded recently. Among the Top 100 Tokens by Market Cap, apart from stablecoins, only 7 tokens have experienced a slight decline. Close to half of the tokens have increased by over 5%, with the blockchain-based machine learning network Bittensor seeing the highest increase, up to 12%. This may be related to the Favourable Information that Grayscale is set to launch a new trust product for Bittensor.

ETF - According to SoSovalue data, the net inflow of the US BTCSpot ETF was $64.91 million yesterday, with a total net inflow of $17.62 billion. The net asset value of the ETF is $55.13 billion, accounting for 4.60% of the total market capitalization of BTC. The total daily trading volume is approximately $899 million.

In terms of the ETF aspect of Ethereum, the total net outflow yesterday was approximately 874,600 USD, with a total net outflow of about 459 million USD. The net asset value of the ETF is 7.27 billion USD, accounting for 2.30% of Ethereum’s total market capitalization. The total daily trading volume is 93.87 million USD.

Three major US indices - According to TradingView data, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by -0.43% yesterday, the S&P 500 fell by -0.89%, and the Nasdaq Composite fell by -1.68%.

Spot Gold - The gold price is reported at $2,493.11 per ounce, with a 24-hour change of -0.38%.

Popular Token

According to the gate market data, as of 4:00 on August 23 (UTC+0), the following popular Tokens in the past 24 hours are as follows:

KONET - The single-day increase is about 149.2%, with a circulating market capitalization of 50,231.7 million US dollars. The surge in the price of KONET may be related to its IFO on gate at 2:00 on August 22 (UTC+0). The KONET Mainnet has recently completed an upgrade, introducing a Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism to enhance the efficiency and security of the network. This upgrade also includes the EIP-1559 fee burning mechanism and the Decentralization governance of PoSDAO, aiming to encourage network participants to stake more stably.

ALPACA - The single-day increase is about 97.92%, with a circulating Market Cap of $38,677,900. On August 22nd, ALPACA’s Derivatives trading pairs were listed on a major exchange, significantly increasing the Liquidity and volume of the market. Alpaca Finance is a lending protocol operating on the BNB chain and Fantom, supporting leveraged yield farming. It provides lenders with secure and stable returns, and offers uncollateralized loans to borrowers for leveraged yield farming, thereby substantially increasing their farming capital and potential profits.

CREAM - The daily increase is about 58.74%, with a circulating market capitalization of $41.15 million. The big pump of CREAM may be related to Cream Finance’s announcement to expand into the Web3 incubator field. Cream Finance recently announced that its C.R.E.A.M. Collective will focus on investing in entrepreneurs and projects, not limited to lending platform functions, but supporting innovation in the Web3 field through collaboration with builders, investors, operators, collectors, and others. Previously, Cream Finance was a decentralized lending protocol that allowed individuals, institutions, and other protocols to access financial services.

Highlights Data

The Cryptocurrency Fear and Greed Index is 39 today, and the market sentiment is still fear. According to the gate Bigdata data, the Fear and Greed Index (FGI) of Cryptocurrency is 39, indicating that the overall market sentiment is still in a state of panic. In the current market’s sideways situation, most investors are staying on the sidelines and it is recommended to wait for the market direction to be confirmed before getting on board.

Macro Data

According to CME’s ‘FedWatch’ tool, the probability of the Fed cutting rates by 25 basis points in September has risen to 75%, while the probability of a 50 basis point cut has fallen to 25%.

The minutes of the July meeting released by the European Central Bank on August 22 (UTC+0) showed that policymakers were not in a hurry to cut interest rates at the previous month’s meeting, and they believed that September is the next best time to review the possibility of a rate cut. With the significant risk of escalation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the recent sideways fluctuations in the market, both the European and American economies will decide whether to cut interest rates in September, posing significant policy risks. It is recommended that investors adopt a wait-and-see approach in the near term and make investment decisions after the situation becomes clearer.

Contract liquidation, fees, and long/short ratio As of 10:00 on August 23 (UTC+0), the liquidation volume of long orders is about 22.779 million US dollars, accounting for approximately 45.55%; the liquidation volume of short orders is about 12.742 million US dollars, accounting for approximately 54.45%, with a long/short ratio of 0.8365. In the futures longs and shorts data, BTC long-term shorts dominate, while short-term longs dominate, accounting for approximately 55.1%.

Babylon Mainnet stake opens, BTC on-chain Gas soared to a new historical high yesterday. On August 22, Babylon stakeMainnet was officially launched, reaching the initial stake limit of 1,000 BTC within 3 hours. Due to the fierce competition for the limited stake quota, the on-chain Gas surged to 1,500 sats for a short time. Although this gas competition quickly ended after 9 Blocks, the median average Gas Fee in the first hour of Babylon’s launch reached 798 sats/vB, setting a recent high, second only to 1,917 sats/vB during the Halving period in April of this year and the day when rune went live.

In this gas war, Solv has emerged as the biggest winner, successfully staking 250 BTC, solidifying its position as the primary Liquidity stake solution for BTC with SolvBTC.BBN. At the same time, Bedrock has staked over 200 BTC with a stake rate of 44%, and delegated it to the partner RockX. Lorenzo has also successfully staked 129 BTC with a stake rate of 52%, ranking third among the final providers.

The high gas fees reflect the market’s follow and expectations for on-chain Bitcoin’s new applications, which may promote the development of the BTC ecosystem and bring new opportunities, worth continuing to follow in the market.

Hotspot Review

Mt.Gox continues to repay on a large scale, and the market stabilizes to absorb its potential Fluctuation Mt.Gox Address resumed transfer on August 21st. Except for one transfer that appeared to be a gas fee transfer of 0.02 BTC, the other two transfers were large transactions. One transfer of 12,000.17 BTC (worth about $709.44 million) was sent to a new address ending with ‘C7wnWhTb’. According to previous practice, this address may be a transfer address before transferring to creditors or CEX. The other transfer of 1,264.7 BTC (about $7.536 million) has been transferred to CEX Bitstamp.

According to the announcement【10】 released by Mt.Gox, since July 2024, they have repaid more than 19,000 creditors through designated Cryptocurrency exchanges in the form of BTC and Bitcoin Cash. In July, Mt.Gox transferred 95,523 BTC (6.14 billion USD) to BitGo, Bitstamp, Kraken, SBIVC Trade, and Bitbank for compensation.【11】 In particular, Kraken received 48,641 BTC worth over 3 billion USD from Mt.Gox on July 16, which will be distributed to Mt.Gox creditors. In total, Mt.Gox plans to repay around 142,000 BTC and 143,000 BCH through these exchanges, with a total value of over 8 billion USD.【12】Previously, the Gate Research Institute’s weekly report analyzed the short-term emotional impact of Mt.Gox’s compensation plan. However, based on the short-term test of the 62,000 resistance level in BTC price in recent days, the emotional impact has gradually weakened. Nonetheless, Mt.Gox still holds 46,164 BTC (2.74 billion USD). If these BTC are repaid or circulated in the market during a downturn in market sentiment, it may potentially impact the market.

BTC OTC Trading platform balance soared to a two-year high, Miner dumping pressure is emerging According to data from CryptoQuant, the recent BTC balance of Miners in over-the-counter (OTC) trading desks has reached the highest level in nearly two years, at about 153,000 BTC. Over the past three months, this balance has risen significantly by 70%. OTC platforms are usually the preferred choice for large investors and Miners, as they can trade without significantly affecting market prices. Therefore, the increase in OTC balance may indicate that Miners intend to sell more BTC, which could bring dumping pressure to the market.

From historical data, this trend is not the first time it has appeared. For example, in November 2021, when the OTC balance reached its peak, the BTC price entered a Bear Market. A similar situation occurred in June 2018, when the OTC balance remained high and the market subsequently experienced a pullback. However, historical performance cannot accurately predict the future, and it is currently uncertain whether this balance has reached a cyclical peak. Therefore, we still need to closely follow the changes in OTC balance to better understand the trends of BTC Miner and the potential impact on the market.

Financing Information

According to Rootdata’s investment and financing data, a total of 7 projects received financing in the past 24 hours, with the highest financing amount of 8 million US dollars, and a total financing of 24.7 million US dollars excluding undisclosed amounts. The information of the top three projects in terms of financing amount are: [14]

Credbull — on-chain private sale credit fund Credbull announced the completion of a $5.2 million financing, without disclosing the round. This round of financing was led by GnosisVC, with strategic investors such as Outlier Ventures participating. Credbull claims to be the “first licensed on-chain private sale credit fund protocol” and was launched on Polygon PoS blockchain in April this year, aiming to democratize private sale credit real world assets (RWA) investment by connecting TradFi and Web3. The project aims to bridge the gap between TradFi and Web3, providing a wider range of investors with the opportunity to participate in the private sale credit market.

SatLayer —— BTC stake platform SatLayer announced the completion of an $8 million Pre-Seed financing, led by Hack VC and Castle Island Ventures, with participation from Franklin Templeton and others. SatLayer is a platform based on the BTC stake protocol Babylon, which allows users to re-lock previously staked BTC to support the security of decentralized applications and infrastructure. Co-founder Luke Xie stated that the project initially planned to raise $4 million, but due to strong market demand, ultimately raised twice the amount of funds.

Arch —— The encryption lending platform Arch announced on August 22nd that it has completed a $5 million seed round of financing, led by Morgan Creek Digital and Castle Island Ventures. At the same time, Galaxy provided $70 million in debt financing. This funding will be used to serve institutional clients and individual investors. Arch was founded in February 2022 by financial industry veterans Dhruv Patel and Himanshu Sahay, with the aim of revitalizing the encryption lending industry that was hit hard by the collapse of companies such as BlockFi and Genesis.

Airdrop Opportunity

Magic Eden On the 22nd, Magic Eden announced the official launch of $ME Token, and users need to apply for it on the Magic Eden Wallet they released. Magic Eden is the largest non-fungible token trading platform on Solana, which has expanded to multiple chains such as Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Polygon. Users can browse and trade various non-fungible tokens on its interface. Magic Eden is also constantly innovating, such as supporting Bitcoin Ordinals and introducing BCD reward programs. The subsequent Airdrop plan needs to wait for the official announcement.

DeAgentAI Deagent is a project dedicated to building the world’s first AI intelligent agent neural network in Web3 through self-developed LLM models and Agent-Centric Index (AGI) system. The platform enables users to create and deploy their own AI agents, incentivizing high-quality agents based on Token economics, thereby driving innovation and development in the field of artificial intelligence. On August 22nd (UTC), the Deagent project announced its scheme for task point acquisition on its official Twitter account.

Specific operation steps: Enter the official website Airdrop interface, connect to the wallet, and complete the tasks listed on the official website. The tasks include simple operations such as joining Discord, Telegram, and following on X. [15]

Original text reading: https://www.gate.io/learn/articles/gate-research-babylon-launches-staking-mainnet-boosting-bitcoin-fees-market-stably-absorbs-mtgox-liquidation/3892?ch=GDR_ann_20240823&utm_campaign=TR_xsuFXWBY&utm_content=&utm_medium=CPM&utm_source=CH_79kTf7RP&utm_term=