Friday, September 8th. As the week comes to an end we can focus on the highlights of the crypto industry over the past few days.
Coinbase receives over 150 entries for its October summit
More than 150 companies and crypto projects have volunteered to participate in the Coinbase Ventures Summit event, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says.
He also added the Web3 version of social network LinkedIn as number 11 on his list of concepts which hold the potential to shape the future of the crypto industry.
“It would be great if companies could issue soulbound NFTs [SBTs] to verify employment or credentials,” he outlined.
The event would take place in Malibu as soon as October 2023. Some attendees of the Summit may receive some funding from the bitcoin exchange.
As we reported earlier, back in August, developers of the Coinbase-backed L2 platform Base unveiled a transition plan to a decentralized model, implying several tech upgrades and the elimination of a single-point failure.
In September, the crypto exchange rolled out a crypto lending service aimed at institutional investors. To this end, Coinbase has brought in $57 million.
Solana user count sunk to a 2-years low
Solana blockchain activity keeps to spiraling downward, with the number of daily users on the network dropping to 204,000 as of Aug. 31.
This marks the lowest since analysts first started tracking the protocol’s on-chain data in late 2020.
The decline attributes to the now-bankrupt FTX exchange. Activity resumed its slide even after the SEC labeled the native SOL token as a security.
“The Solana ecosystem was already seeing a decline in active users prior to the collapse of FTX, but the fact that the blockchain had such strong ties to the exchange and Alameda Research [FTX’s sister trading firm] hurt its reputation a bit,” said Rebecca Stevens, data analyst at The Block Research.
According to CoinGecko, SOL is trading at $19.77 at the time of writing, suffering a 7.9% loss for the week.
Based on data from DeFi Llama, Solana ranks tenth in total blockchain value, equaling $314.28 million.
As far as you remember, in August, the Elusiv team introduced a “private token swaps” feature to its eponynous app running on the Solana network. The solution enables asset swaps to be done without exposing you public address details on the blockchain.
Prior to that, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko allowed Ethereum to be used as a Layer-2 solution.
Crypto outflows slowed down amid rising market volumes
Digital asset investment products saw outflows declining from $168m (highest since March 2023) to $11.2m between Aug. 26 and Sept. 1, CoinShares analysts report.
Over the past seven weeks, investors have withdrawn a total of $342m from crypto-related products. YTD net inflows of $165m have been maintained.
“Disappointment from SEC ETF decisions has impacted sentiment,” the report says.
To support this view, analysts cited expectations for the spot-based ETF in the US, which failed to materialize after the SEC postponed action on a number of filings.
Total trading volumes surged to $2.8b – 90% of the YTD average.
Bitcoin exchanges have seen a resumption of inflows after experiencing $149m in outflows a week earlier. Investors upped their positions by $3.8m.
Out of the entities allowing to open short positions on the alpha cryptocurrency, customers netted $3.3m compared to $4m in the previous reporting period. The downward dynamics lasts for 19th consecutive week. AUM for the period shrank by 48% which is $103m.
Altcoin-based products saw somewhat harshly mixed trends. As for Ethereum, investors withdrew $3.2m as opposed to $16.8m the previous week.
Polygon-based entities turned out to be more aggressive sellers ($8.6m). By contrast, Solana-based products attracted $0.7m. With the gains sustained for the ninth week straight, YTD revenue hit $26m.
Let us remind you that Grayscale’s legal victory in its case against the SEC led Bloomberg analysts to raise the chance of a bitcoin-ETF being launched in the U.S. by late 2023 to 75%.
Former SEC head Jay Clayton described the approval of such products as inevitable.
MetaMask now allows crypto cash-out to PayPal and banks
The developers of the non-custodial crypto wallet MetaMask have integrated the ability to “cash out” digital assets with withdrawal to a bank card or PayPal account.
The feature is available in the US, UK, and select European countries. For withdrawal, dollars, euros and pounds are supported. You can cash out your funds in the MetaMask browser app as well. At the first stage, only Ethereum is available.
The company said it “plans to expand into more regions to meet the needs of the global community.”
“It’s important that users can freely enter and exit cryptocurrency, and we hope this update will make Web3 accessible to more people,” the tool said.
According to a report from CoinGecko, MetaMask became the most popular non-custodial wallet in 2023 with over 22.66 million installations.
Let us remind you that in July the MetaMask team updated the interface of the browser extension in the release of the wallet v10.33.
In April, app developer Taylor Monahan discovered that users had lost over $10.5 million due to an unknown exploit.