Decentral Block Post

Polygon (MATIC) took a break from its prevailing bearish course, posting one of sharpest rebound in the crypto market this week.

Notably, MATIC's price has risen to $0.50 this June 23, four days after hitting $0.317, its lowest level since April 2021. This amounts to roughly a 60% gain, surpassing the performances of even Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) in the same timeframe. 

Nevertheless, MATIC is still down significantly from its December 2021 high of $2.92, coinciding with the overall crypto bear market and a hawkish Fed putting pressure on risk-on assets. 

MATIC "in a pretty big accumulation"

Meanwhile, some of its richest investors have been accumulating MATIC tokens despite the general downtrend, on-chain data suggests.

Notably, the so-called MATIC sharks and whales have been in accumulation, according to data provided by Santiment. That includes the tiers of Polygon token holders ranging from 10,000 to 10 million coins, which have "collectively added 8.7% more to their bags" since May 9.

Ether (ETH) price is down 37.5% in the last seven days and recent news reported that developers decided to postpone the network's migration to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus. This upgrade is expected to end the dependency on proof-of-work (PoW) mining and the Merge scalability solution that has been pursued for the past six years.

Competing smart contracts like BNB, Cardano (ADA) and Solana (SOL) outperformed Ether by 13% to 17% since June 8 even though there was a market-wide correction in the cryptocurrency sector. This suggests that the Ethereum network's issues also weighed on the ETH price.

The "difficulty bomb," feature was added to the code in 2016 as plans for the new consensus mechanism (formerly Eth2) were being formed. At the peak of the so-called "DeFi summer," Ethereum's average transaction costs surpassed $65, which was frustrating for even the most fervent users. This is precisely why the Merge plays such an important part in investors' eyes and, consequently, Ether price.

Options traders remain extremely risk-averse

Traders should look at Ether's derivatives markets data to understand how whales and market makers are positioned. The 25% delta skew is a telling sign whenever professional traders overcharge for upside or downside protection.

If traders expected an Ether price crash, the skew indicator would move above 10%. On the other hand, generalized excitement reflects a negative 10% skew. This is precisely why the metric is known as the pro traders' fear and greed metric.

Ripple (XRP) price stares at potential losses in the coming weeks as it breaks out of a "descending triangle" pattern, with its bias skewed toward the downside.

Major XRP breakdown underway

To recap, XRP started forming the technical structure after reaching $1.98 in April 2021, its second-highest level to date. In doing so, the token trended lower inside a range defined by a falling resistance trendline and a horizontal support trendline.

On May 16, 2022, XRP broke below the triangle's support trendline, accompanying a decent increase in trading volumes.

The move confirmed the descending triangle as a bearish reversal indicator. Meanwhile, as a rule of technical analysis, XRP now risks extending its downside move by as much as the triangle's maximum height when measured from the breakdown point, as shown below.

This could have XRP drop to $0.18 by July 2022, down nearly 40% from June 1's price. 

Venture firm Three Arrows Capital (3AC) has reportedly failed to meet margin calls from its lenders, raising the spectre of insolvency after this week’s crypto market collapse triggered unforeseen liquidations for the Singapore-based company.

Crypto lender BlockFi was among the firms to liquidate at least some of 3AC’s positions, according to the Financial Times. Citing people familiar with the matter, FT reported that 3AC had borrowed Bitcoin (BTC) from the lender but was unable to meet a margin call after the market turned sour earlier this week.

The issues surrounding 3AC appear to have impacted Finblox, a Hong Kong-based platform that allows investors to earn yield on their digital assets. Finblox said it was forced to reduce its withdrawal limits on Thursday due to concerns surrounding the venture firm.

While estimates vary, 3AC likely incurred $400 million in liquidations across multiple positions. The company had significant exposure to Terra (originally Luna, now LUNC) and also held large positions in projects such as Solana (SOL) and Avalanche (AVAX). As Cointelegraph reported, 3AC has spent the past few days moving assets to top up funds on various decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, most notably Aave (AAVE).

However, this week’s mass liquidations were likely triggered by the collapse of Ether (ETH), which plunged toward $1,000 en route to its lowest level since December 2020. It has also been speculated that 3AC’s exposure to synthetic assets, such as the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and Lido’s Staked ETH (stETH), was also responsible for the mass liquidation events.

Layer-2 scaling solution Synthetix recently collaborated with liquidity provider Curve Finance to create Curve pools for Synthetic Ether (sETH)/Ether (ETH), Synthetic Bitcoin (sBTC)/Bitcoin (BTC) and Synthetic U.S. dollar (sUSD)/3CRV, allowing investors to cheaply convert synths such as sETH to ETH.

Given the investors’ willingness to hold tokens instead of synths, the protocol racked up over $1.02 million in trading fees — overshadowing Bitcoin’s (BTC) daily performance by five times.

Synthetix, Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, created a buzz across the crypto ecosystem after witnessing a sudden increase in trading activities and an unprecedented comeback of its in-house token, SNX, during an unforgiving bear market.

As a direct result of the massive trading volumes, the SNX token, too, witnessed a momentary surge of 105%, bringing up its value to over $3.00, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Sharing his thoughts on the development, Synthetix founder Kain Warwick, otherwise known as kain.eth, released a blog post that highlighted the difficulty of DeFi protocols to absorb Bitcoin’s volatility if the price drops even further:

Bitcoin (BTC) plummeted to $17,622 on June 18. This marked the first time in Bitcoin’s history that it has fallen below its previous cycle high. The United States Federal Reserve’s aggressive monetary tightening, a crisis at crypto lending platform Celsius and liquidity issues at investment fund Three Arrows Capital are creating a sense of panic among traders.

Markets commentator Holger Zschaepitz said that Bitcoin has crashed more than 80% four times in history. That puts the current fall of about 74% within historical standards. Previous bear markets have bottomed out just below the 200-week moving average, according to market analyst Rekt Capital. If history repeats itself, Bitcoin is unlikely to stay at the current depressed levels for a long time.

Coinglass data suggests that Bitcoin’s 39% loss in June of this year is the worst ever since 2013. While several investors expect Bitcoin to bottom out soon, crypto critic Peter Schiff warned that the selling could continue and the largest cryptocurrency may drop to $3,000.

Could bulls arrest the decline in Bitcoin in the short term? If that happens, let’s study the charts of the top-5 cryptocurrencies that may outperform the other coins.

BTC/USDT

Bitcoin plummeted below the crucial support of $20,111 on June 18, indicating the resumption of the downtrend. A minor positive is that the bulls purchased the dip as seen from the long tail on the day’s candlestick.

Last week, a WeChat post published by the Shanghai Fengxian Court began circulating in crypto circles regarding its recent ruling on a car sale in May 2019 made using digital currency. At the time, the buyer, identified only as Mr. Huang, signed a sales contract to purchase a 2019 Audi AL6 for 409,800 Chinese yuan, or $59.477 at the time of writing, in exchange for the consideration of 1,281 Unihash (UNIH) tokens with an undisclosed car dealership in Shanghai. Per the original contract, the seller was to deliver the car to Huang within three months’ time.

According to the Shanghai Fengxian Court, Mr. Huang paid 1,281 UNIH on the date of the contract signing but did not receive the car within the specified duration nor afterward. As a result, Mr. Huang took the seller to court, demanding the delivery of the vehicle and the payment of 0.66% daily interest of the transaction amount in damages for each day that the car went undelivered beyond the original deadline.

The case took over three years before a verdict was reached this June. Citing regulations in September 2017 that evolved into what is known now as China’s cryptocurrency ban, the Shanghai Fengxian Court said that digital assets “cannot and should not be used as a currency for circulation in the markets,” and that the use of digital tokens such as UNIH in lieu of fiat money as a consideration in everyday contracts was in breach of respective regulation that overrides such contracts themselves. Therefore, the sales contract was ruled to be null and void. The buyer was neither granted damages, delivery of the car, nor a refund of his 1,281 UNIH. 

It’s unclear as to how the seller agreed to a conversion rate of 1 UNIH = 320 Chinese yuan as stipulated in the original contract in the first place. Unihash was supposedly a digital payment token developed for e-commerce in 2018 and was only available to private investors with no public initial coin offering (ICO). Shortly after its launch, allegations quickly surfaced on Chinese social media that labeled the project to be a “scam” and that its token metrics, as well as company history, had allegedly been grossly inflated to solicit investors. 

Currently, the project appears to be abandoned with no link to socials, no market listing and no further development activity. Moreover, the firm behind UNIH did not accomplish any of its goals listed in its original white paper. One such promise made to investors in the document included: “What can be certain is that the Unihash token can appear on several exchanges by Q4 2019.”

The crypto markets have been in a strong bear phase for the past several months but JPMorgan Chase analysts expect that to change and they have projected a significant upside from the current levels. The analysts cited the rising share of all stablecoins in the total crypto market for their bullish outlook.

Unperturbed by the current fall, retail traders have been adding Bitcoin (BTC) to their portfolios. The number of wallet addresses holding one Bitcoin surged by 13,091 to a record high of 865,254. Similarly, the number of addresses holding about 0.1 Bitcoin has also witnessed a sharp rise in the past 10 days, according to data from Glassnode.

Bitcoin’s sharp recovery from the June 18 fall shows strong buying at lower levels and according to Whalemap, this has led to the formation of a new “whale level,” which may act as short-term support.

Could the recovery in Bitcoin and major altcoins continue in the near term? Let’s study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

BTC/USDT

Bitcoin plunged below $20,000 on June 18 but made an equally sharp recovery on June 19, indicating aggressive buying at lower levels. If bulls sustain the price above $20,000, it could improve sentiment and attract more buyers.

Over the last couple of years, games using blockchain technology have been actively developing and attracting new players, and the decentralized games market — broadly referred to as GameFi — has gained great popularity. 

The GameFi industry started back in 2013, and since then, the sphere has been slowly developing, but in 2021 the popularity of decentralized games exploded along with the boom in nonfungible tokens (NFT). According to the DappRadar analytical service, the total value of one of the most popular blockchain-based games, Axie Infinity, exceeds $550 million.

But the GameFi industry has its issues. Many projects often “launch” regardless of the game’s development stage.

And while Bitcoin’s (BTC) price trend can enhance or weaken the success of GameFi projects, there isn’t necessarily a direct correlation. 

Despite the bear market, the price of many GameFi tokens is growing today due to their NFT component as investors aim to make money on the resale of in-game heroes and digital items, rather than concentrating on the improvement of game mechanics.