Serum (SRM) Gains 55% In Last 24 Hours as Broader Market Soaks in FTX Collapse-Inspired Losses

Bitcoin, Ether and other largely-traded crypto coins have seen relatively calm price actions on Tuesday after a predominantly volatile week headlined by the implosion of the FTX exchange. Highlighting the massive sell-off across the gone week, Coinglass data shows that Bitcoin registered 21.91% losses in its weekly returns in the latest reporting while the alt leader, Ethereum, printed a 22.09% red weekly candle. Bitcoin’s negative returns marked the first such since the week ending in Oct 16, after which it has recorded three consecutive green weekly returns.

“Bitcoin split from global markets to slide all on its own. Gap in weekly performance of sliding Bitcoin, rallying Nasdaq largest since 2020. Crypto universe shrank to the equivalent of 1% of global equities,” financial markets commentator Holger Zschäpitz noted in a Monday tweet.

Decreasing negative on-chain exchange netflow balances

Glassnode on-chain alerts provider reported significantly lower negative weekly netflows on Monday at $122 million and $123.5 million for Bitcoin and Ethereum. Though these figures are nonetheless unimpressive, they are a relief from heavier outflows in the past seven days. For context, the daily on-chain exchange netflows for Bitcoin and Ethereum totaled -$267.2 million and -$855.5 million respectively on Sunday.

“Following the collapse of FTX, Bitcoin investors have been withdrawing coins to self-custody at a historic rate of 106k BTC/month. This compares with only three other times: Apr 2020, Nov 2020, June-July 2022,” Glassnode analysts pointed out.

Thus far, the first half of November has served a sour taste to bullish traders at the micro-level with unfolding events within the digital assets sector spreading fear and risk sentiment.

On-chain balances remain high as investors flee to self-custody solutions

Heading into the new week, self-custody is still the theme among the vast majority of crypto holder across all categories from shrimps to whales. Market data as of the end of last week showed that almost $3 billion left exchanges from investors hurtling to safety because of uncertainty and erratic price action. Glassnode alerts observed earlier today that the Bitcoin number of addresses profit is at a two year low.

Correspondingly, the Bitcoin supply in profit (7d MA) is currently hovering at a two-year low marginally above 48% as per another update shared by market tracker today. The volume of Bitcoin miner outflows is also at a 22-month high, reported at 123.981 BTC on Nov 14 and 124.338 BTC on Nov 15. The current BTC price range is especially worth watching as a slip below $16,000 will mount heavy pressure on even previously profitable miners.

DeFi watch

Meanwhile, the cumulative total value locked across all decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols has continued tumbling in November. DeFi Llama’s dashboard shows that DeFi protocols have a combined TVL of $43.12 billion, about 25.85% of the figure at the start of the year. Crypto intelligence platform Messari reported on Monday (Nov 14) that decentralized exchanges holding substantial trading pools/assets have been affected most, registering massive losses across a six-month timeframe.

“It seems to mainly be single-chain deployed DEXs that have suffered the most. Single chain deployment + lots of pools = lots of altcoins, making these DEXs more susceptible to large drops in TVL during a bear market.”

Though the market capital is still stuck below $850 billion at the time of writing, trading activity appears to be resuming. This is partially attributable to the reaction by centralized crypto exchange entities to give assurances on their token reserves via proof of reserves concept. This counteraction has, however, been criticized by many including Prometheum CEO Aaron Kaplan, who questioned the approach’s relevance in reflecting the actual financial status of entities operating in the digital asset space.

Mistrust in exchanges could yet catalyze fresh declines this week

Bitcoin has remained bounded in the lower regions of the $15,800, to $17,200 range since Monday, leaving it vulnerable to further declines on injection of any slight negative sentiment. The fearful mood and lack of many forward-looking technical indicators work against a nice closing price.

Market standouts: Serum and Bonfida lead in biggest gains

There aren’t many top alts among heavy losers today as focus shifts to recovery from the heavy slump. Nonetheless, there are some standout tokens charting a short-term price course. Serum (SRM), Coin98(C98), and Bonfida (FIDA) are all trading double digits in the green on Tuesday. The SRM /USD chart shows that the Serum token price has added 57% in the last 24 hours while Bonfida (FIDA) is on an equally hot streak, up 28% on the day. Quant (QNT), the native token for Ethereum-based Overledger platform, is also trading attractively today as it seeks to reclaim Oct 17 highs. The enterprise interoperability-focused project (Quant Network) got on many traders’ watchlists after its token charted a yearly peak of $226 four weeks ago.

QNT/USD 24-hr trading chart

Though the price rally was quelled last week, the QNT/USD pair appears to be moving northbound quietly– up 13.45% in the last 24 hours. Overall, the altcoin market structure is still fragile. Modest gains could motivate traders to settle for quick profit-taking in currently trending alt markets in turn mounting selling pressure and erasing gains.

To learn more about these token visit our Investing in Serum and Investing in Quant  guides.