Price Point: Bitcoin was higher, but barely, as volatility keeps dropping.
Market Moves: There's no single archetype of a yield farmer, which has emerged as one of the hottest and riskiest obsessions among crypto traders. CoinDesk's Daniel Cawrey talked to four of them to get their stories.
Bitcoin Watch: Breakout from contracting-triangle pattern in price charts could expose resistance at $11,183, CoinDesk's Omkar Godbole writes.
What's Hot: Binance, Gemini, Kraken appear to gain inflows after last week's BitMEX's charges, Coinbase employees take severance packages, SEC chair opens door to tokenized ETF.
PRICE POINT
Bitcoin was higher, though not by much, just 0.2%, extending what appears to be a dramatic decline in price volatility for the largest cryptocurrency. One gauge of the magnitude of price swings is now at its lowest in 23 months.
Traders may despair the lack of quick trading opportunities, but the trend might be bullish for bitcoin over the long term: “It is encouraging that bitcoin has shed the volatility it had become known for and is now increasing in value incrementally,” Simon Peters, an analyst at the trading firm eToro, wrote Monday.
In traditional markets, global stocks climbed and U.S. stock futures pointed to a higher open on optimism that President Donald Trump might soon leave the hospital, and as he signaled a desire to push for more stimulus spending.
MARKET MOVES
One is a Grammy Award-winning musician with lots of spare time. Another is a software engineer with nowhere to go during the pandemic. There’s also an editor for a data site and a fund manager who invests in digital assets.
What these people have in common is an obscure side gig known as “yield farming,” a type of cryptocurrency trading and investing that didn’t really even exist until 2020. Yield farming is producing fixed-income-like returns that can, at least for brief stretches, provide annualized interest rates equivalent to percentages investors cannot find anywhere else.
As documented in First Mover over the past few months, the yield farming boom, itself a subsector within the fast-evolving realm of decentralized finance, or DeFi, started in June when the projects Compound and Aave launched. They were soon followed by Kyber, Balancer, and Yearn.Finance. More creative names like Spaghetti, Tendies and SushiSwap followed.
CoinDesk's Daniel Cawrey spoke to four yield farmers to get their stories. Here's a link to his highly recommended piece, along with a video interview he conducted with André Allen Anjos, also known as RAC, who finds time for yield farming in his spare time, when he's not producing and recording music.
Video interview with Andre Allen Anjos, also known as RAC. (CoinDesk)
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Bitcoin's low volatility consolidation continues as the dust settles on the BitMEX controversy.
On Thursday, the U.S. authorities charged the crypto derivatives exchange for facilitating illegal transactions.
Initially, bitcoin fell from $10,900 to $10,450 but recovered to $10,500 on the following day. The cryptocurrency held ground even though the regulator probe triggered massive outflow of bitcoins from BitMEX and the drop in the futures open interest, a sign of panic among traders.
However, while the cryptocurrency has jumped to $10,700 over the weekend, it remains trapped in a contracting triangle, as seen on the daily chart.
A breakout would confirm an end of the pullback from the August high of $12,476 and a reversal higher. That would expose resistance lined up at $11,183 (Sept. 19 high).
Alternatively, a range breakdown may invite a stronger chart driven selling pressure.
The move to ETH 2.0 will bring the Ethereum network ever closer to fulfilling its original vision: that of a "world computer" that plays host to a parallel, decentralized financial system. Will it be the rocket fuel that takes Ethereum's financial engine mainstream?
CoinDesk's invest: ethereum economy virtual event Oct. 14 will address the ramifications for investors of the sweeping changes underway within the Ethereum ecosystem.
Keynote speakers and panelists including Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman and CEO Heath P. Tarbert will offer deep dives into Ethereum’s adoption of a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, sharding and other elements of its impending 2.0 upgrade, as well how the new framework impacts the rapidly advancing business of DeFi, stablecoins and decentralized exchanges.
Join CoinDesk Research for the fourth and final episode of How to Value Bitcoin, our live webinar series covering Bitcoin fundamentals.
On Oct. 6, Delphi Digital head of research Yan Liberman will dive into collective profit and loss taking (CPLT), hodlwaves and the ins and outs of the money analysis.
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.
It seems like every investor has a thesis about how to best play the cryptocurrency opportunity, but who’s right?
CoinDesk has launched The Thesis, a weekly podcast with Senior Markets Reporter Daniel Cawrey that looks at the most important stories and trends for traders and unique interviews with top fund managers digging deeply into their viewpoint - their thesis.
Tune into The Thesis at 9 a.m. ET on the first and third Saturday of each month.Listen to the first episode featuring Jake Brukhman of CoinFund.
Disclaimer: The information presented in this message is intended as a news item that provides a brief summary of various events and developments that affect, or that might in the future affect, the value of one or more of the cryptocurrencies described above. The information contained in this message, and any information liked through the items contained herein, is not intended to provide sufficient information to form the basis for an investment decision. The information presented herein is accurate only as of its date, and it was not prepared by a research analyst or other investment professional. You should seek additional information regarding the merits and risks of investing in any cryptocurrency before deciding to purchase or sell any such instruments.
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First Mover: Day In The Life of a Yield Farmer Means Part-Time Gig, Full-Time Risk