July 17, 2023

Traders in the perpetual futures market tied to BNB are the most bearish in months as the embattled exchange and its related cryptocurrency face a challenging environment on multiple fronts. Data tracked by Coinglass show open interest and volume-weighted funding rates in perpetual futures have slipped to -0.18%, the lowest since late April. Those numbers mean shorts, or positions that profit from a price drop, are dominant, and are willing to pay longs to keep their bearish bets open. Funding rates are charged every eight hours. "BNB is being heavily shorted," Huff Haus, co-founder of Pear Protocol, said, referring to the deeply negative funding rates.

BNB open interest-weighted funding rate (Coinglass)

The native token of decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator 1inch (1INCH) rose by more than 58% early Monday before giving back most of the gains. Trading volume hit $597 million, its highest level since October, 2021. At press time 1INCH was higher by about 10% over the past 24 hours. Coupled with a spike in trading volume, $3.37 million in leveraged 1inch short positions have been liquidated over the past 24-hours, according to CoinGlass. While there was no immediate catalyst evident, 1inch's rally appears to be a continuation of the uptrend begun following’s XRP supposed legal victory against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week. XRP nearly doubled that day, leading a rally in the altcoin sector that included sizable gains for tokens like Solana’s (SOL), Cardano’s (ADA) and Polygon’s (MATIC).

The Bitcoin hashrate continues to hit all-time highs as competition between miners escalates ahead of the next halving event, JPMorgan (JPM) said in a research report Thursday. Expected to take place in the second quarter of 2024, the halving will reduce issuance rewards to 3.125 BTC from 6.25 BTC, “implying a reduction in miners’ revenues, effectively increasing Bitcoin’s production cost at the same time,” the report said. “While Bitcoin halving is seen as having a positive effect on the bitcoin price given the production cost acted historically as a floor, it poses a challenge for bitcoin miners,” analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote.

A message from Bitget

(Coinbase) 

Cathie Wood's ARK Invest sold another $50.5 million worth of Coinbase (COIN) stock on July 14, lightening up the funds’ position to cash in on the recent rally in the crypto exchange’s stock.

The sales on July 14 totaled more than 480,000 COIN shares, or more than 4% of ARK’s holdings, reducing the tech-focused investment manager's holdings to 10.5 million shares.

Coinbase shares late last week rose to a one-year high above $116 before closing Friday at just above $105, up 213% year-to-date. Helping the stock were the disclosure of surveillance-sharing agreements with five spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund applicants, which may prove to be the breakthrough in getting the SEC to finally approve such a fund to be listed in the U.S. Providing further fuel for the run higher was XRP’s apparent court victory over the SEC, which gave optimism for Coinbase in its legal battle against the U.S. regulatory agency.

- Omkar Godbole