Ether Hits New Highs | NBA Top Shot Creator’s New Act

ETHER IS ON A ROLL

Ether (ETH), the native asset of the Ethereum ecosystem and the world's second-largest cryptocurrency, soared to new highs this week, touching $2,800. This feat is even more impressive given the fact that bitcoin is still struggling to recover its $300 billion flash-crash losses from last week and remains stuck in the mid $50,000s. With this new milestone, ether is up 273% this year.

Ethereum’s standout performance continues to be rooted in its position as the blockchain of choice for many of the products and services that have recently soared in popularity—including the decentralized-finance (DeFi) products that have grown four-fold in volume this year (to about $65 billion) and the plateauing frenzy around non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Earlier this month, billionaire investor Mark Cuban said that the value of applications leveraging Ethereum will eventually dwarf bitcoin, which he criticized as “very difficult to use.”

BITCOIN BOUNCES UP AND DOWN

Meanwhile, bitcoin remains in a state of limbo. On the one hand, it rebounded after crashing below $50,000 last weekend. On the other, it is looking for a new path upwards, which could be difficult in the short term as institutions look to cement some profits. Epitomizing this trend is Tesla, which made waves earlier this year after it was revealed to have $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin, selling 10% of its holdings for a $100 million profit . Perhaps understanding the negative reception to this sale, CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter to suggest that the company only sold to prove the asset’s liquidity and that he is not selling any of his personal holdings (which remain a mystery).

Additionally, the falling volume of CME bitcoin futures, a relatively obscure indicator on the world’s largest regulated crypto derivatives exchange, suggests that institutional interest in bitcoin is withering away, at least for now.

Looking further out, bitcoin’s dominance, a measure of its share of cryptocurrency market capitalization, has dropped more than 16% to 50.5% since the beginning of April. This is the lowest it has been since 2018 and suggests that investors are starting to look more closely at ether and other altcoins to stretch out their gains.

NFT BUILDERS REMAIN HARD AT WORK

NFT marketplaces are not discouraged by the cooling NFT mania. This week, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, announced that it will be launching its own NFT marketplace in June. One potential advantage of the new platform will be its lower fee structure than those of its competitors such as Opensea, SuperRare and Rarible. Binance will charge a 10% fee for the premium sales, so creators will receive 90% of the profits, and a 1% processing fee on the “Trading market” sales or auctions, where NFT creators and depositors will also receive a 1% royalty payment on all subsequent trades of their works. They may also include a discount program for users of its blockchain’s native token, BNB.

Additionally, NBA Top Shot creator Dapper Labs revealed plans for its next big NFT project. The Vancouver-based startup is launching a marketplace in partnership with celebrity-driven avatar technology company Genies, where celebrities and, ultimately, all users will be able to create and sell digital wearable NFT collections for their avatars or digital alter-egos. Shawn Mendes, whose avatar digital wearable NFTs hit the market earlier this year, said through a shared statement with his manager Andrew Gertler, the marketplace will enable his fans “to interact [with] and customize their Genies and trade in digital goods and wearables in a truly unique way.”

BLOCKCHAIN 50 SPOTLIGHT

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance lists more than 150 tokenized assets and supports almost a hundred blockchains. Its total trading volume reached $2 trillion last year. Over the past month, Binance’s native cryptocurrency BNB rallied from sub-$300 levels to $600. It is currently the third largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Daily transactions on Binance’s blockchain for decentralized applications and digital assets, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), currently surpass Ethereum’s by almost 8 times.

ELSEWHERE

Coinbase Debuts ‘Buy With PayPal’ Feature (but Read the Fine Print) [CoinDesk]

Report: Chinese Officials Are Examining Bitcoin Energy Use [Bitcoin Magazine]

SEC Punts Long-Awaited Bitcoin ETF Decision to at Least June [Bloomberg]

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