Banks and Institutions
Despite Bitcoin unable to close 2021 above the $100,000 level, Goldman Sachs experts said in a note released last Tuesday that this psychological horizon is still achievable if it takes a share of the gold market, though for a longer period. According to this note, BTC also needs to overtake approximately 50% of the ”store of value” market share over the next five years to see the $100,000$ valuation become true.
A pilot version e-CNY, the mobile wallet for China’s digital yuan, has gone live on iOS and Android app stores in China. Individual users in China may now download a version of the app to try out “personal wallet opening and management” and “e-CNY exchange and circulation services”.
The first Bitcoin ETF isn’t looking good: the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) is now trading at nearly 30% below its launch price. The Bitcoin institutional demand remains very low. Meanwhile, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) continues to trade at its biggest-ever discount to Bitcoin spot price, and is getting ready to be converted into an ETF.
Ecosystem
NFT volumes had been steadily decreasing between August and November, but December broke that trend: volumes increased 16.6% from November to December, reaching $2.26 billion in the last month of 2021. Possible explanations for December’s rise in sales volume could be increased interest in Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and gaming-focused NFTs during that month.
Welcome to ”Aave arc”: a permissioned version of the DeFi lending platform for institutions. Fireblocks, an institutional crypto custody firm, has become the first whitelister and will approve institutions that want to take part. The platform is aimed at institutions who want to participate in the DeFi sector in a compliant manner, by undergoing KYC and financial due diligence to be able to borrow and lend cryptocurrencies automatically to other such parties.
Technology
Decentralized exchange protocol Uniswap is live on Polygon since December 22. This news is coming just one month after the proposal to launch the Uniswap version 3 on Polygon. Uniswap users can now swap tokens using the Polygon blockchain via Uniswap’s official interface, which will avoid the pain of high gas fee at the same time.
Polygon was at risk of an attack which could have allowed attackers to steal over 9.2 billion MATIC tokens. The development team rushed to fix the issue, but before the mainnet upgrade was undertaken, a malicious actor exploited the bug and stole 801,601 MATIC tokens. The bug was patched on december 5, but was only disclosed on the 29th.
According to Wu Blockchain, the Solana network went down for around four hours in the early morning of Tuesday UTC time as a result of an apparent DDoS attack. Solana.Status shows the network has been fully operational with 100% uptime over that period. This is the third time in two months that the network suffers a halt in transactions or at least severe slowdowns.
Figures
