Chart of the Week

Meme coins have been one of the dominating narratives in the last two months, reflected in the surge in trading volume - up 779% compared to in January.

Weekly Market Index

Last week’s crypto market prices were flat at -0.95%. Volume and volatility dropped by -25.68% and -57.16%, respectively.

Weekly Performance

Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) were both flat at -0.6% and +0.4%, respectively, in the past seven days. Other selected top-cap tokens mostly showed slight decreases.

Artificial Intelligence was the best performing category in the past seven days.

News Highlights

• Visa is experimenting on Ethereum’s Goerli testnet with smart contracts aimed at transaction-free payments with the help of account abstraction. The aim of these contracts is to simplify user interaction with the Ethereum network by eliminating the need for end-users to hold ETH, for “gas” fees or letting users pay with any token.

• Tether said it will allocate up to about 15% of realized profits to purchase bitcoin (BTC) for its stablecoin reserves. The company also reported US$1.48 billion in net profit for Q1 2023 and US$1.5 billion in BTC holdings.

• The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) began the pilot programme for its central bank digital currency (CBDC), called the e-HKD. The programme will explore potential use cases in six categories, including full-fledged payments, programmable payments, offline payments, tokenised deposits, settlement of Web3 transactions and settlement of tokenised assets.

Recent Research Reports

• Research Roundup Newsletter [April 2023]: In this issue we feature trending market insights, and our latest research reports take a closer look into Bitcoin’s expanding ecosystem specifically Layer 2s, DeFi, and NFTs. 

• Bitcoin’s Expanding Ecosystem: Layer-2, DeFi, NFT: The landscape of the latest projects building on top of Bitcoin is expanding beyond payments and includes Layer-2 scaling solutions and key application categories like DeFi and NFT.

• Alpha Navigator: Quest for Alpha [April 2023]: Asset classes were generally flat in April, with crypto outperforming. US Federal Reserve could be on the cusp of ending rate hike cycle.

Recent University Articles

• What Is the BRC-20 Token Standard for Bitcoin?: Learn about the BRC-20 token standard for the Bitcoin blockchain and the tokens that have been minted on it so far.

• What Are ERC-20 Tokens? All About Ethereum’s Most Important Token Standard: ERC-20 is a token standard for fungible tokens on Ethereum. Learn what it is and how cryptocurrencies can be minted with it.

• Ethereum vs Ethereum Classic — What Is the Difference?: They may share the name, but Ethereum and Ethereum Classic are different in many ways. Here’s a comparison of both chains.

Catalyst Calendar

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