Welcome to Around the Blockchain, Huobi Learn’s daily rundown of the crypto markets.
South Korea’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) and Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) have reportedly launched an ’emergency’ investigation into LUNA’s and UST’s recent collapse, requesting information from domestic crypto exchanges on transactions and investors of both tokens. This comes shortly after an investor who had lost around $2 million in LUNA’s collapse broke into the South Korean residence of Terraform Labs’ CEO Do Kwon and his wife, who subsequently sought police protection.
Amid the crypto market crash that has seen the stablecoin UST lose much of its value, MKR — a so-called governance token that helps run the decentralized DAI stablecoin — has surged in value by around 40%. Part of the MakerDAO ecosystem, DAI is the oldest decentralized stablecoin and requires over-collateralization through Ethereum-based tokens. BlockTower Capital general partner Michael Bucella called DAI “one of the few decentralized money plays remaining”.
Ledger is adding Ledger Connect, a Safari browser extension to allow Ledger hardware wallet users to easily connect with Web3 apps without third-party dependencies. It also features a security layer that will flag suspicious apps. It will initially be compatible with the Ledger Nano X and Mobile Safari, then with Ethereum and Solana during its beta launch; support for Ledger’s Nano S Plus and Desktop will come later.
Following the recent crypto market crash, NFTs are experiencing price declines just as the US Federal Reserve has increased interest rates. Yuga Labs’ Otherdeed, BAYC and MAYC NFTs have seen a dip in floor price, though BAYC has since recovered slightly after Otherdeed launched. MAYC and Otherdeed, on the other hand, have seen respective decreases of 13% and 1.2% in the past week, while RRFKT Studio’s CloneX was down almost 13%.
Cloudflare has announced a new Web3 strategy that will see it run Ethereum validator nodes as part of its commitment to help scale the Internet by using PoS consensus technologies. The company said this would allow it to “offer even more geographic decentralization in places like EMEA, LATAM and APJC, while also adding infrastructure decentralization to the network”. It added that this would be done before Ethereum’s upcoming Merge, and mentioned “proof-of-spacetime”, a consensus mechanism used by decentralized storage network Filecoin.
Coinbase has reversed its earlier decision to triple its company size, due to “current market conditions”. President and COO Emilie Choi said it was “prudent to slow hiring and reassess our headcount needs against our highest-priority business goals”, adding that doing so would help ensure Coinbase could reach the profitability guidance it had set for investors. Coinbase’s stock is now down almost 80% compared to its IPO price, and reported a $430 million loss in Q1.
Show me the money
The Crypto Fear and Greed Index has dropped from 14 yesterday to 8 today, a level unseen since Mar 2020. A value of 0 represents “extreme fear” and 100 “extreme greed”, and this latest low comes amid ongoing negative market sentiment. Ever since the US Federal Reserve indicated it would raise interest rates by half a percentage point early this month, BTC’s price plummeted, worsening when UST lost its USD peg and subsequently crashed even further.
Still, many investors are buying the dip, with BTC experiencing an unexpected volume of inflows to the tune of $45 million in the first week of May (the week of the crash). Currently, BTC is trading at $29,900.23, down 2.4% in the last 24 hours.
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