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Whales are actively exploring the depths and shallows of the ocean of decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges (DEX). Most of these platforms are deployed on Ethereum, where fees are very high. Small traders cannot afford to pay for day-to-day operations, and therefore the overwhelming majority of transactions are made by large wallets with serious capital.…
The excitement – and to call a spade a spade, an outright hype – is also observed today in the virtual world of the metaverse. Investors are queuing up for digital real estate. Just over the past week, a little less than $ 106 million was invested in it.
Meanwhile, the real world is also full of events. For example, there is a growing open interest in Bitcoin futures. Despite the correction in the market, institutions are relentlessly launching contracts. Are you expecting the Santa Claus Rally?
DEX – territory of the whales
More than half of the protocols in the DeFi market are deployed on Ethereum, with average commissions surging to $ 52 this week (according to BitinfoCharts).
Researchers from the French team Kaiko believe that the main players on decentralized exchanges (DEX) are whale addresses. Only they are able to pay prohibitive transaction fees. In recent months, the number of transactions on trading floors has remained stable, but the average volume of transactions has grown significantly.
For example, the average transaction volume on the Curve DEX platform reaches $ 1 million. On other well-known exchanges of the DeFi ecosystem (Uniswap V3 and Uniswap V2, SushiSwap and Balancer V1), this figure ranges from $ 10,000 to $ 20,000.
For comparison, on centralized platforms the “average check” does not exceed $ 2,000– $ 4,000. Millions of transactions are made daily on these exchanges, and on DEX there are less than 50,000 of them per day.
“The reason for the dominance of large deals is likely due to the high transaction fees on Ethereum. They prevent a large number of retail traders from using the DEX. The user is obliged to pay a commission for transactions on Ethereum for each transaction, and in case of problems with the scalability of the network, fees can sometimes exceed $ 100, “the authors of the study emphasized.
Ethereum holds the lead in the DeFi market in terms of the number of launched projects, accumulating more than $ 178 billion (according to DeFiLlama).
Other networks are ready to compete with ETH and are gradually pulling protocols onto their blockchains, offering low fees. The value of funds locked in projects powered by Binance Chain rose to $ 19.25 billion in November.
Virtual houses on imaginary land
Internet users are massively interested in projects deployed within the so-called metaverse. DappRadar analysts state: just last week, investors invested almost $ 106 million in the purchase of digital “real estate”. Virtual “land” was in demand in such ecosystems as Sandbox, Decentraland, CryptoVoxels and Somnium.
More than 6,000 users of the metaverse have become owners of a new type of property.
“The metaverse is undoubtedly an incredible success for the NFT industry. Due to record sales volumes and steadily rising prices for tokens, virtual worlds are becoming a popular asset in the crypto space ”, – noted in the DappRadar review.
Sales of digital real estate in the ecosystems of Sandbox, Decentraland, CryptoVoxels and Somnium amounted to $ 86.5 million, $ 15.5 million, $ 2.6 million and $ 1.1 million, respectively.
All of these worlds operate on the Ethereum blockchain. And the largest deal in the past 30 days was implemented in the Decentraland ecosystem. The investor spent 610,000 MANA tokens ($ 2.7 million) to buy 116 plots of land in the Fashion Street area.
Institutional Loss Can’t Be Surprised
Hedge funds and financial companies continue to show interest in the cryptosphere, despite the November losses of bitcoin. Open interest in BTC futures rose to $ 22.87 billion on December 2, according to CoinGlass.
Note that in early November, when the leading cryptocurrency was trading at its historic peak, the amount of contracts in the futures market exceeded $ 28.85 billion. Then there was a weakening of interest. And it began to grow again at the end of last month – despite the creeping correction of bitcoin.
Arcane Research researchers come to the conclusion: the sale in the market, provoked by the information about the emergence of a new Covid strain, could not break the positive trend.
In terms of the amount of Bitcoin futures launched, Binance, CME and FTX are in the lead among trading platforms – by $ 5.95 billion, $ 3.59 billion and $ 3.4 billion, respectively.
Institutionals are also active in the bitcoin options market, which indicates the dominance of positive sentiments. Open interest in options on BTC in early December rose to $ 12.57 billion. The rating of trading platforms is topped by the Deribit exchange: contracts for a total of $ 11.4 billion remain open on it.
Sources: CoinGlass, DappRadar, CoinTelegraph, CoinDesk, Kaiko, Arcane Research
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