Another significant drop in the crypto market was witnessed this week, with Bitcoin in the lead as the continuous selling pressure, macro uncertainty and deteriorating sentiment drove prices down in a steep manner. Bitcoin fell 11.6% over the week, according to CMC Market Pulse, continuing its bigger fall of over 30% since the all-time high in the first half of the quarter. Ethereum was no exception and dropped by 11.51% over the same time.
The overall crypto market capitalization dropped 11.12% to $3.053 trillion, compared to the previous week where the amount was $3.435 trillion.
Although there was the sell-off, the data show that liquidations have been slowly dwindling since the October 10 crash.
The highest point this week was a long liquidation of $695 million in one day, way less than the level of capitulation. Rates of funding in key crypto exchanges were kept at low levels, and it was a sign of no active leveraged positioning.
Kraken secretly filed draft documents of a possible IPO, and Strategy by Michael Saylor acquired 8,178BTC, bringing its total Bitcoin to 649,870BTC. In the meantime, Revolut declared it will work with Polygon to enable payments with stablecoins on its platform.
Altcoin Movers and Broader Market Reaction
The mood in the market was also weak with the larger financial markets failing. The indexes S&P 500 and Nasdaq declined 2% and 2.45% respectively during the week, although Nvidia reported good earnings.
Some of the altcoins also performed better, such as Grass (GRASS), Zcash (ZEC), StarkNet (STRK), Aster (ASTER), and Gnosis (GNO).
Narrative of the Week: Bitcoin’s Fragility Under Scrutiny
The macro narrative was dominated by Bitcoin weakness. This pressure escalated when Vitalik Buterin advised at DevConnect that quantum computing would crack elliptic curve cryptography by 2028, and brought back old arguments on the vulnerability of Bitcoin in the long term.
To further contribute to the bearish movement, Bitcoin OG, Owen Gunden sold the remaining 2,500 BTC (valued at $228M) on Kraken. Gunden has continued selling in bulk since the end of October, with over $1.3B worth of BTC going to Kraken in the previous weeks. The concentrated sell-offs of the early adopters, miners, and institutions all led to the downward spiral of Bitcoin.
Major Crypto Project Updates: Ethereum Pushes for Interoperability
A wave of a great change in crypto projects came up despite the market headwinds. Ethereum launched the Ethereum Interop Layer (EIL) which is a design that aims to bring its L2 ecosystem together so that it operates in a single network manner. Such a step is likely to transform Ethereum scaling in the future as it will ease user experience and developers workflows.
MegaETH declared the introduction of Frontier, the release of the Mainnet Beta next month. Pre-deposits will commence on November 25, which will be limited to $250M. ConsenSys unveiled its Infura on EigenCloud as an AVS, which allows decentralization and permissionless accession to node operators and restakers.
Aztec, a privacy-first project, released Ignition Chain the first entirely decentralized Ethereum L2 with the ability to stake, receive rewards, and participate in the production of blocks.
DeFi Brief: User-Facing Apps Lead the Next Phase
Aave launched Aave App, a consumer-facing platform with up to 9% yields on stablecoins, secured by a deposit of $1M, which enabled users to allocate crypto assets across a variety of strategies without locking them up, improving capital efficiency.
Multichain wallet Phantom introduced Phantom Terminal, combining cutting-edge analytics and speed into the mobile application.
Fundraises: Capital Continues Flowing Into Web3
Strong fundraising activity continued even in the turbulent market. Doppel took in $70M in a Series C. Deblock raised $30M in Series A. The Obex raised $37M to construct its RHA-stablecoin framework, whereas leverage trading application HelloTrade raised $4.6M in a seed round.
Airdrops Abound: Users Prepare for New Crypto Rewards
Debridge airdrop claims Season 2 of 3% of DBR supply, and Hyperbeat announced their airdrop was forthcoming, and a snapshot was taken on November 12. The required terms have to be signed by eligible users by December 5.
