Weekend Movers: Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Uniswap (UNI)

The largest cryptocurrency by market cap continues to trade above $30,000. Down 2% in the past week, BTC/USD is currently trading at $30,168, still up 81.13% in 2023 so far.

BTC opened the new week by defending the key support level with a spot Bitcoin ETF continuing to be the market’s focus. However, the SEC called ETF filings inadequate. Later, BlackRock refiled its application, and the market is now waiting for more clarity around this development.

In addition, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has come forward with full support for Bitcoin. But not everyone sees this as a good thing as Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy, wrote last week in his report, “So-called mainstream adoption will bring waves of new entrants to bitcoin, and the risk is that they won’t care, and won’t protect the decentralization properties that make it valuable over centralized alternatives in the first place.”

However, the market at large doesn’t really seem to care, as the price remains largely unchanged despite a pretty much uneventful last week. In fact, at one point, Bitcoin was trending downward to test support levels near $30K but managed to defend the level.

With Bitcoin keeping above the key psychological level and $27K remaining strong support for now, the market has its eye on inflation numbers and jobless claims that will come later this week. These numbers are important, as the Fed will take them into the factor when making its next moves on rates.

Interestingly, Bitcoin (BTC) is available at a nearly $3,000 discount on Binance.US. However, it’s not only BTC that is showing a widening price discrepancy between cryptocurrencies listed on the United States crypto exchange and their global spot prices, as many other cryptocurrencies are also trading at a discount in US dollar terms. For instance, Ethereum has been trading about $200 cheaper on Binance.US, with some stablecoins like USDT trading below their pegs.

While the crypto discounts look attractive for an arbitrager, the thing is, most investors can’t really take advantage of them because the discount only applies when a crypto asset is traded against fiat USD on the crypto exchange, and Binance.US has suspended USD deposits into the platform since June 9. According to an email from Binance.US to customers, starting July 20, USD withdrawals won’t be allowed either.

A similar thing happened late in May when BTC price fell 20% against AUD on the Australian branch of Binance when the company’s third-party payments provider closed fiat on and off ramps.

Is Crypto Winter Really Over?

Looking beyond price, which has been recovering nicely this year, crypto winter is continuing when it comes to software development. As per a report from venture firm Electric Capital, the number of active developers working on crypto projects has fallen 22% over the past year.

Compared to 27,200 the year before, there were 21,300 active developers in June despite prices rising since January. This decline in the active number of crypto developers over the past year could be attributed to developers shifting their attention and efforts elsewhere, such as AI. Not just crypto developers but institutional investors are also increasingly eyeing AI instead. A survey conducted by JP Morgan earlier this year found that traders expect AI to be more influential than crypto over the next three years.

According to the report, most developers who left crypto had little experience with newcomers, those who have worked in crypto for less than a year, making up the majority of departures from the cryptocurrency space, adding up to 7,730 leaving since last June. These newcomers, as per the report, are responsible for less than 20% of all code commits.

The majority of commits come from open-source developers who have been in crypto for more than a year, and that figure has grown by almost 16%, from 11,300 to around 13,100, according to Electric Capital.

However, the report found that fewer developers are exploring crypto for the first time, with only 2,900 developers entering the space this past May compared to 5,900 that month a year ago.

Amidst all this, crypto exchange Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss shared an open letter to Digital Currency Group CEO Barry Silbert, who owes Gemini’s Earn program users around $1 billion.

Meanwhile, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao denied rumors that its workforce was shrinking ever since the exchange and its CEO were sued by the SEC for alleged securities violations. The clarification came after Fortune reported that at least three executives left Binance as the company prepared to defend itself.

Best Weekend Performer

As Bitcoin flirts with its highest price in a year, many altcoins have been rallying. In the past 24 hours, among the top 1000 cryptocurrencies, Compound (COMP) emerged as the top performer with almost 10% gains. Another DeFi token, Curve (CRV), also managed to rake in 5% gains, while Maker (MKR) is also in the green along with LEO and KAVA, but barely.

If we take a look at last week, Solana (SOL) was among the best performers, and it is still up 6.6%. SOL also jumped 10% over the weekend initially, only to fall back to around $20.65. Other crypto tokens that saw an upside during the weekend include Curve, Leo, Tezos, Polygon, Cosmos, Cronos, and Cardano, but the gains didn’t last long.

Shiba Inu (SHIB)

The $4.4 billion market cap meme coin SHIB started pumping ahead of the weekend when it was trading at $0.00000717 and went as high as $0.00000778. Since then, the meme coin has lost its momentum to now trade at $0.00000752, down 3.4% in the past 24 hours.

As SHIB’s price became volatile, so did the market activity, as seen in its trading volume, which jumped only to then drop by 20.20% from a day ago. The altcoin is currently up over 14% in the past 30 days but in red by 8.27% year-to-date (YTD).

SHIB is the native token of Shiba Inu, the second most valued meme coin by market cap after Dogecoin (DOGE).

The latest jump in SHIB’s price came as its large transaction volume totaled 6.36 trillion SHIB and $46.45 million in USD terms last week, reaching a seven-day high, according to IntoTheBlock data. The Large Transactions Volume Indicator provides insight into the total amount transacted by big participants on a given day. As spikes in large transactions have previously impacted SHIB’s price, it makes sense this time as well, SHIB gained in value and could see further upside.

Another reason for positive SHIB momentum could be attributed to the project lead, Shytoshi Kusama hinting at a possible debut date for Shibarium Layer 2 in a blog post. Shibarium’s launch, which is set for August, can further drive demand for the token and add to its solid fundamentals.

The upcoming launch of Shibarium is speculated to be a significant contributing factor to a shift in attention and investments toward its other ecosystem tokens, such as BONE, LEASH, WOOF, and PAW.

As per Shytoshi Kusama, the blockchain will launch after an upcoming Blockchain ​​Futurist Conference in Toronto, which Shiba Inu, along with Eth Toronto and Eth Women conference, will sponsor.

Besides Shibarium’s rollout, governance is another focus of the project, with the blog post stating that Doggy Dao will be the next interesting announcement. To give an equal voice to all the members of the Shib community, the project’s governance will be split into four, it added.

Click here to learn all about investing in Shiba Inu (SHIB).

Worst Weekend Performer

Last week, a lot of coins saw some deep losses, with FLOW being the worst performer among the top 100 crypto assets. While FLOW’s price was down 20%, Fantom wasn’t much behind either, with its 7-day loss of 18.6%, followed by The Graph (17%), Bitcoin SV (16.5%), and Litecoin (16%). Mina, PEPE, Algorand, LDO, Stacks, and BitDAO all fell by more than 15%.

Meanwhile, in the past 24 hours, Kaspa is in the lead with a 6.7% drop. Pepe, Injective, Apecoin, Avalanche, Solana, and Tron are also down 5% to 6%. The total crypto market cap is down by 0.8% at $1.21 trillion.

Uniswap (UNI)

When it comes to the weekend, UNI price fell by 7% and, as of writing, is trading at $5.18. The $3.8 billion market cap token is in the red by 2% on Monday, while its trading volume has jumped by 12.20% in the past 24 hours. However, despite these losses, UNI is up 30% in the past month but down 2.52% YTD.

While holders of the native token of the biggest decentralized exchange (DEX) aren’t able to enjoy the positive momentum in the broad crypto space, the community is eagerly awaiting a new product that may finally bring some relief for the token, which is down 89% from its ATH.

Last week, the Uniswap Foundation hinted at a timeline for the debut of its latest version, 4. Erin Koen, the Governance Lead at the Uniswap Foundation, shared that the definitive timeline for the v4 launch is targeted for later in the year. However, v4 first requires the completion of the much-anticipated Cancun upgrade of the Ethereum platform, which is currently expected to conclude by the end of September. Following this upgrade, a security audit will be performed to ensure the new protocol is secure and can span up to four months.

First made public last month, Uniswap V4 will come with a modular exchange structure. At the time, the team also mentioned a special feature, “hooks,” which are smart contracts that allow customizations in the DEX’s liquidity pools, such as on-chain limit orders, fees, and bespoke on-chain oracles.

To lower fees, Uniswap v4 will also transfer only net balances, which is known as “transient storage.” Uniswap v4 is currently in the “protocol code frozen” stage, which incorporates the EIP-1153 into the v4 code, making it subject to the successful inclusion of EIP-1153 into the Cancun upgrade.

Amidst all this, the total number of transactions on Uniswap reached the 200 million milestone, according to data from Dune Analytics. At the same time, the protocol saw a decline in holder count, from 370,000 late in May to 354,000 now, as per Santiment.

Click here to learn all about investing in Uniswap (UNI).