April 14, 2023

Ether (ETH) continues to outperform bitcoin (BTC) following the Ethereum network’s Shanghai upgrade, which has proven to be bullish for much of the cryptocurrency market, with many altcoins following suit. Ether is up 6% on the day vs. bitcoin which gained 1%. Bitcoin did briefly cross $31,000 on Friday for the first time since June 2022, marking a 10% gain over the last 7 days. Ether rose 13% over the same time frame. Arbitrum (ARB) an Ethereum scaling solution, led gains this week, rising almost 30%. According to Sheraz Ahmed, STORM’s managing partner, ARB is bouncing back from the overselling caused by its airdrop in March, which saw the Ethereum layer 2 distribute its long-awaited governance token to community members. The airdrop, however, was plagued with bugs and phishing scams. “The crypto markets are heavily emotionally driven, and we often see overbought/sold tokens based on over-reactions,” said Ahmed. 

Top 10 protocols with a market capitalization > $1B. (Messari)

The tokenization of real-world assets gathers pace, Bank of America (BAC) said in a research report Thursday, which noted that the tokenized gold market surpassed $1 billion in value last month. Tokenization is the process of putting ownership of tangible assets – precious metals being one example – on the blockchain, and thus offering the convenience of buying and selling these assets around the clock as the involvement of traditional brokers is not necessary. Bank of America sees this tokenization – which could also include commodities, currencies and equities –as a “key driver of digital asset adoption.”

Solana Labs’ crypto-forward smartphone Saga will go on public sale May 8, the company behind the Solana blockchain said Thursday. Pre-ordered devices are shipping now. The Android smartphone is a gamble on mobile being imperative to the future of crypto, employees at Solana-focused companies told CoinDesk. It was nearly 10 months ago that Solana first teased the radical potential of a cellphone that doubled as a dedicated crypto hardware wallet, and the possibilities such a product could hold for its entire ecosystem. The new device from Solana Mobile costs $1,000 and is built on hardware from Bay Area smartphone company OSOM. Phonemaker names both big and small – HTC and Sirin Labs among them – have previously failed in their efforts to create a crypto-forward smartphone, setting an ominous precedent for Solana, a device built for and marketed to a single crypto ecosystem.

The options market tied to ether (ETH) has seen more activity than bitcoin (BTC) in the past 24 hours, the first such instance of 2023.

Major exchanges, including industry leader Deribit, have seen ether options contracts worth $1.23 billion exchange hands in the past 24 hours. That is nearly 60% of the global crypto options activity and 50% more than bitcoin's notional trading volume of $823.7 million, according to Swiss-based data tracking website Laevitas.

Options are derivative contracts that give the purchaser the right but not the obligation to buy the underlying asset at a predetermined price on or before a specific date. A call option gives the right to buy while a put option confers the right to sell. Traders use call and put options to hedge their spot/futures market exposure and to acquire an asymmetric payout.

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– Omkar Godbole

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