Feb 26, 2023

The bitcoin (BTC) price was little changed Monday, in line with subdued weekend volatility, with one trader saying it could drop to as low as $47,000. “The price of bitcoin has fallen below $51K, which is near the bottom of the consolidation range of the last eight days,” Alex Kuptsikevich, FxPro senior market analyst, told CoinDesk in an email. The CD20 broad market gauge has dropped 0.4% in the past 24 hours. Bitcoin hovered around the $51,500 mark, while ether (ETH) regained $3,100 on the back of the relatively new narrative for spot ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs). After a buoyant week for artificial intelligence (AI)- related tokens, prices fell with Worldcoin (WLD) and SingularityNET (AGIX) both losing around 4%. Tokens of Ethereum layer-2 platform Mantle zoomed 30% to a lifetime peak at 93 cents. There was no immediately apparent catalyst for the price gains, but it came on the back of mantleETH, a staked version of ether, crossing the $1.5 billion value-locked mark last week. 

U.S.-based forex pioneer Oanda is opening a U.K. cryptocurrency trading platform registered with the country’s regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), based in London and dubbed Oanda Crypto. It’s the summation of last year’s acquisition of a majority stake in FCA-registered Coinpass, and will offer trading in over 63 cryptocurrency pairs, including bitcoin, ether and XRP, with plans to add more tokens and features over the course of the year, the company said. While some crypto-focused companies tend to stay away from places like the U.S. and other heavily regulated jurisdictions, this was an attractive feature for Oanda, the firm’s head of digital assets, Lucian Lauerman, said.

The core team behind decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Frax Finance could soon follow the leading decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap's proposal to distribute a portion of protocol fees to stakers of its native token, Frax's CEO and founder Sam Kazemian told CoinDesk. The ecosystem's governance and utility token is (FXS). Users who lock their FXS receive veFXS tokens, allowing them to keep their utility and governance rights. The veFXS tokens can be staked on the Ethereum mainnet and natively on Frax Finance's layer 2, Fraxtal. The proposal will recommend sharing protocol revenue with veFXS stakers, Kazemian said in an interview. The community voted to stop revenue sharing in 2022.

A bitcoin (BTC) indicator is suggesting a build-up of speculative froth in the market, often a recipe for leverage flushout and a sudden drop in price.

The ratio between the implied yield basis, or annualized spread between prices for one-month futures and prices in spot markets, and options-induced one-month implied – or expected – volatility has more than doubled to around 0.34 this year, according to data tracked by crypto structuring and trading solutions firm STS Digital.

"When the implied yield basis is large relative to the underlying volatility, it can signify outsized levels of leverage and speculation," Jeff Anderson, a senior trader at STS Digital, told CoinDesk.

- Omkar Godbole