During the development of Bitcoin, successive developers attempted to implement token issuance functions similar to Ethereum on the Bitcoin chain. BRC-20 is an experimental product based on this idea. It is based on Ordinals’ Inscription technology, in a well-defined template format, engraved with JSON string information in text format, to realize the deployment, minting, and transfer functions of the token.

With the increase of computing power across the Bitcoin network, bitcoin mining has gone through three stages since 2009:CPU, GPU, and ASIC.

The collapse of once dazzling algorithmic stablecoin UST and the world's second-largest centralized exchange FTX last year caused huge losses to many investment institutions and retail investors, which attracted unprecedented attention from various regulatory agencies to the digital assets, and SEC and CFTC have been doubling down their efforts to increase oversight of the crypto industry.

Ever since FTX went bankrupt, the crypto investors once again realized the importance of decentralization for seeking the security of their assets. With the strong demand for leveraged trading, on-chain margin trading exchanges have become an alternative option for the traders. The current daily trading volume of on-chain margin trading exchanges has exceeded $200 million, with nearly $1 billion deposited in these exchanges. This piece will cover the mechanisms and development of 3 representative on-chain margin trading exchanges.

What is a Stablecoin? A stablecoin is a digital asset pegged to the value of other assets (fiat, gold, other cryptocurrencies) and designed to address price volatility and the on/off-ramp in the digital asset market, backed by the 1-to-1 equivalence it represents. For example, a stablecoin issuer pegged to the U.S. dollar would reserve one dollar for each stablecoin it creates as a reserve. Customers can exchange one dollar for a dollar-denominated stablecoin, and customers can redeem one dollar for a dollar-denominated stablecoin.

Favour a Balanced Risk Approach… With recent price momentum consolidates, a good thing in our view as market risk is increasingly pushed out of the market, we continue to favour hedging some of the recent stellar portfolio capital market gains. As trading volumes and arbitrage opportunities recover, chasing strong price increases, select liquid majorcoinpairs now provideinterestingbasis yieldopportunities when hedging.

Digital Asset Markets Rally… Despite the US regulatory offensive, markets absorbed last week’s regulatory news flow as crypto market inched higher throughout the week. There were large movements between stablecoin complexes as BUSD saw outflows (-US$ 3bn) into alternatives like USDT (+US$ 2bn) and BTC (+11%) itself.

Sustained Regulatory Offensive… the trend is clear with many (many) more enforcements actions to come. The crypto news cycle is lit with “what began as a trickle is now a flood”. US authorities are using the banking sector to organize a sophisticated and widespread crackdown on the industry. Larger, more established crypto firms will be able to hang on to their bank relationships, while newer ones are shut out. The next step will be for a corresponding industry pushback and innovation response.

BTC Tops US$ 23,000… in best monthly performance since October 2021 and saw a number of short squeezes throughout the period. BTC climbed more than 39%, breaking through the US$23,000 resistance ceiling. Ark Investment put out a highly bullish long-term report for BTC. We agree with direction of travel however balance views, focusing on a steadier and stable long-term appreciation, adoption rate and horizon.

Post Chinese New Year Digital Asset Rally… fundamentals still are broadly supressed; however, a bullish price rally is likely to induce a rush of FOMO investors back to the market. Additionally, investors have access to several new access products to get market exposure, including a raft of new ETF’s. Further dovish news coming from major central banks will continue to fuel the digital asset rally, supported by US unemployment which remains at historical lows.

Macro Headlines Driving Western / Eastern Front… as global offices trickle back in from the new year break, lacklustre volumes in public chain digital asset markets remain with attention floating towards China’s border reopening, implications for rebounds for global risk assets, improvements in Hong Kong’s domestic economy, cautiously optimistic views remain for global interest rates and taming of inflation trends.

Heading in Year-End… unless there is an additional systemic event, this week’s update will be a shorter format and our final update for the year. Readers are invited to kindly read our 2023 Outlook, published last week. We review past 2022 predictions, ranking our accuracy and outline our secular macro viewpoints for industry direction over 2023. Strong winds of regulation and global geo-political frictions are blowing. We are hopeful for balanced regulation for robust sector growth. The reaction to this means DeFi (Decentralised Finance) will be ‘the’ sector to watch as cost of compliance rises, technology lowers costs, increases scale of adoption, new DeFi protocols and strategies will emerge, e.g. Compound, AAVE, Uniswap…etc worked relatively well during recent tumultuous events, supporting this thesis.

Reflecting on a Turbulent Year… Every year, peering into a predictive ‘crystal ball’ is tough at the best of times, let alone predicting fast-paced digital asset markets. Year ends offer a unique time to observe investor behaviours, evolutions in a constantly changing market structure. How well did the Author’s written 2022 predictions do? We critically review and rank last year’s Outlook predictions, drafted in late Dec-2021.

Day 2 of Miami Web3 Conference... A Massive Success! Co- sponsored by the City of Miami, CTH Group (Fundamental Labs | IDEG | Atlas Technologies) extended its Day 1 success, bringing in over +100 speakers and thought leaders and totalling over +1,000 high quality investors and attendees.

CTH Group Inaugural Miami Web3 Conference… Supported by the City of Miami, Fundamental Labs, IDEG and Atlas Technologies

Sentiment Remains Fragile, Separating the “Assets” from the Bad Actors… ‘majors’ like BTC and ETH, ~US$16K and ~US$1.2K respectively are holding up relatively well, given the systematic events of late.

FTX Default and Alameda Fallout… headlines and implications rippled across crypto markets, impacting both institutional and retail investors.

“War of Words FTX vs. BNB”… digital asset markets have been roiled after news of Alameda Research’s balance sheet, related to FTX exchange, showed about 40% of the firm’s $14.6 billion of assets were attributed to FTT, a token that powers trades on FTX.

USRates and Employment March Onwards… With US unemployment marginallyincreasing, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)raised rates by 75bpslastWednesday – its fourthsequentialjumbo hike and its sixth increase this year

We have our ‘ear to the crypto ground’ as both HK and Singapore host their local Fintech weeks concurrently. The community heard announcements at HK Fintech week to loosen crypto policy.

Global Frictions to Remain High, Digital Assets a Good Hedge… Digital asset secondary market prices remain resilient and primary market investment activity is suppressed but is active.

CPI Hotter Than Expected… the hotly anticipated Consumer Price Index (CPI) arrived hotter than expectedand was the last before US mid-term elections8-Nov-22, placing further political pressure on the Biden Administration.

Macro Still Walking the Walk… stronger than expected Non-Farm Payrolls (NFP’s) data was released on Friday, October 7. Now

he CTH team, including IDEG’s sister companies, Fundamental Labs (VC) and Atlas (Crypto Mining) teams were represented at Token2049, one of APAC’s most well attended events with over 7000 participants. International visitors flew in to participate in this crypto / web3 conference.

We appreciate your feedback for our Poll in our last publication. After sourcing feedback from readers, we have heard your voice. The results were overwhelming from our international readership. Given IDEG’s and its group company CTH’s participation in Token2049, one of most anticipated events in APAC, for those that are not able to attend we are happily willing to report back what we learnt in the coming weeks.

Gratitude to our long-term readers for the continued readership of our CryptoVerse publications. It gives us great pleasure to service client needs for both information and education of this new and growing alternative digital asset sector.

Risk assets are climbing a Wall of Worry and with many not longenough, the squeeze can continue, esp. as CPI and VIX trade lower

10 Reasons why Ethereum (and the broader crypto market) might consolidate over the near-term 1,800 target level reached, Fed QT, Google trends, declining ETH revenue, USDC stablecoin market cap, TVL, NFTs, ETH/BTC, consolidation in our Alpha / Beta index, etc.

Some NFT prices – and their tokens – have dropped -70% from the recent highs. The value proposition that NFTs offer still remains, in our view, and therefore the current price level might offer an opportunity to gain exposure

We are a strong believer in making investment decisions when the odds are on your side. During the last four weeks, our research is showing exciting results about the crypto market. With signals appeared, is this the turning point and upside is here?

As we analysed last week, inflation expectations and with it rate hike probabilities appear to peak out and as expected, this has caused a significant rally in risk assets. Contrary to initial readings and as feared, the University of Michigan’s longer-term inflation expectations have not become unanchored after the earlier released number of +3.3% was revised lower to +3.1%.

Interest rate hike expectations appear to have peaked and with it, financial markets might start to price in recession risk - lower bond yields might confirm this view. While the Fed hiked interest rates by +75bps to 1.75% in June 2022, expectations that the Fed Funds rate would increase to 375-400bps by June 14, 2023 (one year from now with roughly four 50bps rate hikes each time) decreased from a probability of 90% to 50%. While the market still expects rates to rise, the magnitude and the certainty of those hikes are coming down.

One of the most compelling investment cases in the digital asset space could be made around Bitcoin mining as the sector has been significantly repriced lower due to the decline in Bitcoin prices, higher energy costs and a lower terminal value for mining equipment.

Bitcoin (and the broader digital asset market) appears to follow the previous halving cycle trends with a potential bottom later in Q3 2022 But as we outlined in our ‘IDEG All-Weather’ Strategy overview, there are opportunities to trade even in bearish or neutral markets

Bitcoin prices are at a ‘make-or-break’ level whereas a close above $32k can open the upside towards $36k while the next break below $29k might open the downside back towards $26k; implied vol is cheap But with futures (short) liquidations having reached very high levels, shorts have been burned and they might be reluctant to short again

Ethereum is sitting at the 2,000-support level, previously during the summer of 2021, this was an attractive level to buy √US economic data continues to weaken, and companies are indicating that they are currently overstaffed (Walmart, Amazon) – there is a possibility that US rate hike expectations are reversing

The Fed hiked rates but was seen as indecisive in fighting inflation. While ETH holders selling at a loss, there is no panic in the market √Global crypto market cap at $1.66trn, this compares to tech stocks\:\ Apple $2.6trn, Microsoft $2.0trn, Alphabet $1.5trn, Amazon $1.2trn

Time has value, and interest rates are the most fundamental expression of the value of time. By exploring and studying interest rates, we can gain a deeper understanding of the nature of finance and use it to develop trading models that are widely applicable to various scenarios and capture long-term stable business value.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, global markets tumbled into a crisis fermented over a decade of monetary easing. Surrounded by elevated volatility, acute shift of risk appetite, and easy-to-access trading venues supported by technology, a wide range of market participants stepped into the more sophisticated option market and drove the volume to a level not seen in the history. (1) For the first time, the single stock option trading volume has surpassed that of shares

Decentralized Finance (DeFi), as the name implies, is decentralized finance. As the most popular sector in the digital asset market this year, DeFi has received great attention from the capital in the industry. According to the latest data from DeBank, the total DeFi lock-up volume (TVL) has exceeded 22 billion U.S. dollars, while the TVL at the beginning of the year was only 752 million U.S. dollars, a year-to-date increase of more than 2800%. At present, the DeFi market is still at a high-growth stage, and more innovative applications continue to appear.

Looking back to 2008, when the capital market was caught in an unprecedented crisis, the financial crisis broke out in the United States and spread to the world after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. In response to the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve began to cut interest rates. On December 16, 2008, the Fed announced that it would lower the federal funds rate to an ultra-low level of 0% to 0.25%, officially entering the era of zero interest rate, which can be clearly seen in Figure 1 below.