Price Point: Bitcoin has traded less than 1% either way for five straight days.
Market Moves: Binance CEO isn't ashamed to discuss the future of DeFi — and how the fast-moving sector might also represent the future of his industry-leading cryptocurrency exchange. Featuring exclusive video interview with CoinDesk's Muyao Shen.
Bitcoin Watch: Market leadership turns to bitcoin as U.S. elections approach, CoinDesk's Omkar Godbole writes.
What's Hot: Coinbase's anti-social-stand stand draws mixed reactions, Bitpanda gets $52M led by Thiel, U.S. House passes $2.2T stimulus bill.
PRICE POINT
Bitcoin was higher, but barely, marking the fifth straight day of anemic price action with a percentage move of less than 1%.
"There is clearly some uncertainty regarding the direction of the crypto market," the Norwegian cryptocurrency firm Arcane Research wrote Tuesday in a weekly report. "The technical signals are looking bullish for the leading cryptocurrency, but more fear in the stock market can very easily drag bitcoin down to the $9,000 area."
In traditional markets, an end-of-the-month rebound in global stocks was fading, as traders looked ahead to a U.S. presidential debate scheduled for late Tuesday. Gold was stronger at $1,886 an ounce.
MARKET MOVES
It might be be part of every job in crypto to anticipate and react to fast-moving developments that seemingly change the industry's direction overnight.
And apparently not even Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the high-profile leader of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, is immune to the industry's capricious shifts.
In a video interview with CoinDesk's Muyao Shen, Zhao acknowledged that the emerging blockchain sector of decentralized finance, known as DeFi, could eventually upend the business that Binance has grown to dominate: running a centralized cryptocurrency exchange.
“Our mission is not to build a CeFi exchange,” Zhao said in the interview, using a shorthand term for centralized finance. “Right now it is one of our larger businesses that support our growth. But over the long term, we want to push decentralization.”
The company’s new foray into DeFi, Binance Smart Chain, attempts to replicate some of the features of the Ethereum blockchain that have proven fertile for developers building decentralized, blockchain-based trading and lending applications that theoretically could one day challenge traditional lenders and Wall Street trading firms.
Like rival cryptocurrency exchanges OKEx, Huobi and Coinbase, Binance is trying to hold on to its central role in digital-asset markets as upstart DeFi projects like Uniswap, Curve, Balancer and SushiSwap attract a bigger share of industry trading volumes. Zhao says he’s open to the idea that Binance may have to adapt its business model to stay relevant, especially with total collateral locked into DeFi protocols surging 16-fold this year to $11 billion.
In designing Binance Smart Chain, the company had to sacrifice elements of decentralization to compete against Ethereum and protect the company’s brand. Binance Smart Chain is controlled by 21 node operators, which are elected by Binance Coin (BNB) holders. But because the company is one of the largest holders of the BNB tokens, it retains significant control over the project’s direction.
“There is a tradeoff between more decentralization versus speed, so we thought that 21 nodes run by the community is probably enough,” Zhao said in the interview.
Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao told CoinDesk's Muyao Shen in a video interview that "nobody complains to Vitalik" when a newfangled DeFi project fails on the Ethereum blockchain. (CoinDesk)
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With the U.S. elections just five weeks away, the market focus looks to be shifting back to bitcoin from ether.
The spread between the six-month implied volatility (IV) for ether (ETH) and bitcoin (BTC), a measure of expected relative volatility between the two, fell to a 2.5-month low of 4% over the weekend, according to data source Skew.
The IV spread peaked at 21% in mid-August and has been declining ever since.
"The decline could signal a change in market leadership back to bitcoin after a couple of months focus on the Ethereum complex," Skew's CEO Emmanuel Goh told CoinDesk.
The impending U.S. elections could be the most contentious in modern history and have a significant impact on traditional markets. As such, bitcoin, which some investors argue has evolved into a macro asset over the past six months, could lead the price action in the crypto markets in the near term.
- Omkar Godbole
CoinDesk Research continues its webinar series on Bitcoin's fundamental metrics with two episodes on UTXO-based analyses.
UTXOs, or unspent transaction outputs, are fundamental components of Bitcoin's distributed ledger that can shed startling light on investors' behavior and positions.
On Sept. 29 at 10:30 a.m. ET, Lucas Nuzzi from Coin Metrics will present charts and insights on the market-value-to-realized-value (MVRV) ratio and the spent output profit ratio (SOPR).
Filecoin IOU (FIL): Three years after $257M initial coin offering, blockchain-based data-storage provider says main network is set to launch around mid-October.
Imagination has always been a key part of what money is. That piece of paper in your wallet only has value because the payer and the payee have both invested belief in its value. The crypto community -- and its many competing sub-communities -- create that common meaning with their preferred form of money.
We've launched a new podcast to explore these ideas and the technological, political and social forces reshaping our financial system.
Listen to the Money Reimaginedpodcast, hosted by our Chief Content Officer and author of CoinDesk's Money Reimagined newsletter Michael Casey and Sheila Warren of the World Economic Forum, on Fridays at 10 a.m. ET.
ANALOGS The latest on the economy and traditional finance
Universities are often key to getting new industries off the ground, providing the infrastructure to take paradigm-shifting ideas to the next level. But in blockchain and digital finance technology, how do they measure up?
Introducing CoinDesk U, a ranking of the top 20 schools identified in our research in collaboration with Mousebelt.
During a special CoinDesk Live episode on Oct. 6, we will release the results of the first CoinDesk U ranking. We are inviting students from around the U.S. as well as representatives from student club networks, the crypto industry and leading institutions to discuss traditional academia’s relevance and support for the financial technology poised to fuel Web 3.0.
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First Mover: Binance CEO Sees Future in DeFi While Bitcoin Volatility Turns Minuscule