11/06/2021
Welcome to our weekly market summary, in which we discuss the non-stablecoin tokens which have been heavily traded on Uniswap and the reasons that may be behind it. This week has been positive with Bitcoin on the rise and ETH gas prices hitting a 3-month low. This is despite a recent crackdown in China on mining and money laundering, which has seen substantial amounts of BTC being bought and swiftly moved to off-trading venue wallets as a result. Overall, there is reason for cautious optimism if we continue this path for the next week.
Gitcoin
$62.16m weekly volume
Gitcoin is a platform to fund builders looking for a meaningful, open-source work. Project owners can publish their projects including their codebase, git repository, podcasts, and various initiatives on the platform. Donors can browse a list of projects and choose what they would like to fund. The platform has funded over $19.3 million to date with up to 160,000 developers. With the launch of GTC token, Gitcoin is moving to decentralising their platform to be managed by the community.
Gitcoin yesterday continued its unprecedented rise, listing on Binance with 5 trading pairs. With a mission to empower communities to build and fund open-source products, Gitcoin introduced the GTC token and DAO at the end of May, which it says will govern the platform and allow it to decentralise. Through Quadratic Funding, Gitcoin has provided $16 million to projects thanks to the crypto industry’s massive growth. Quadratic Funding is the “mathematically optimal” way to fund public goods in a democratic community because it prohibits whales and central power brokers from controlling the ecosystem. This distributes power back to each community member. Amidst this growth, Gitcoin is now evolving so that it can be credibly neutral, thus introducing a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) to govern Gitcoin.
At its inception, Gitcoin’s DAO will oversee a community treasury of GTC tokens. It will further offer a governance framework for delegates called “Gitcoin Stewards” to participate in key ecosystem decisions such as fund allocation, matching pools, and grant collusion. GTC’s total supply is capped at 100 million, with 50% allocated to Gitcoin DAO, 35% to existing stakeholders, and 15% to be airdropped to past users of Gitcoin. The platform will introduce new ways for GTC to influence sybil-resistance, grant curation, democratised open-source fund allocation, and more in the coming months.
Celsius
$28.51m
Celsius (CEL) is an all-in-one banking and financial services platform for cryptocurrency users. Launched in June 2018, Celsius offers rewards for depositing cryptocurrency, along with services such as loans and wallet-style payments. Users of the platform receive regular pay-outs and interest on their holdings. Celsius’ native token, CEL, performs a variety of internal functions, including boosting user pay-outs if used as the payment currency. Celsius aims to outperform banks at their own game by offering financial services on the kind of terms which traditional financial institutions no longer offer.
These include much higher rates of returns on savings and deposits, easier and fairer loan requirements and automated rewards computed for each user algorithmically. Penalties and bank-style fees are also waived. The platform also functions as a wallet via its CelPay feature and hosts its own CEL token which users can leverage to increase pay-out value among other things.
Celsius now holds over 100 bitcoin, according to a company press release issued this week. BTC accounts for 25% of the platform’s total community assets. Despite a challenging month for bitcoin in May, the company also reported that BTC users with inflows more than doubled the number of users transferring out BTC, with 750,000 users globally. The company’s landmark passing of 100K in BTC holdings sets a new company high.
Celsius continues to emerge in a competitive DeFi crypto lending landscape, battling with notable contenders such as Nexo and BlockFi. Aggressive rates continue to be a major sticking point for consumers. BlockFi is currently offering anywhere from 0.5% to 5% APY for BTC interest, and Nexo is currently offering between 6% and 8% APY on BTC interest. Rates often are variable and can fluctuate and will depend on whether the consumer is redeeming them through BTC or through the platform’s native coin. However, native token rewards are typically not accessible for U.S. consumers.
Celsius started off in 2017 and now looks to maintain an aggressive strategy to grow its position in the market, amassing over $5B in crypto assets. The firm continues to look at partnerships to bolster growth, including a recent partnership with NBA athlete and crypto entrepreneur Spencer Dinwiddie, and increasing conversations surrounding the firm’s upcoming web app.
Shiba Inu
$79.40m
A purebred parody coin, SHIB, which has been labelled the “Dogecoin Killer” and continues to defy logic with just under $80 million worth of assets traded on Uniswap alone in the past 7 days. What is the purpose of this new craze? The SHIBA INU website invites dog-inspired artists from all over the world to foster the “artistic Shiba movement” as they bring their SHIBA INU community into the NFT market. SHIBA INU has also created a campaign using Amazon Smile to collect donations for the rescue of real Shiba Inu dogs with the Shiba Inu Rescue Association. The SHIBA INU “WoofPaper” has three reasons why their team created SHIB:
“We started from zero, with zero.”
“The brilliant minds behind Shib had never collaborated before.”
“We love Shiba Inu Dogs.”
On Wednesday the 8th, it was announced the Shiba Inu dog was set to be auctioned off as an NFT. The meme could fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars, given its popularity and the ongoing meme NFT trend. The popular meme will be auctioned at the NFT auction marketplace Zora and the bidding is slated to start from Tuesday. The meme will also be certified by Know Your Meme, the internet meme database.
Don Caldwell, the meme database’s chief editor said,
“Having interviewed Atsuko in the past, we were thrilled to be involved in this auction. Doge is indisputably one of the most beloved and iconic memes in internet history, and Atsuko herself is such a lovely person.” The proceeds from the auction of the meme photo will be donated to a charity.
NFTs have taken the crypto world by storm this year, with artists, celebrities, and sports stars all turning towards NFTs to auction their popular memorabilia rather than using a traditional auction house.
