August 2021 In numbers: reactive take -off NFT and GameFi, Solana above $ 100 and Ethereum hard fork

Promotions associated with cryptocurrencies and mining companies in August demonstrated positive dynamics. The completion of the migration of miners from China and, as a result, an increase in the US share in hash, as well as the restoration of the total computing power of the network, have favorably affect the quotes of manufacturers of mining equipment and firms specializing in digital assets mining.

Macroeconomic background

Speech by the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell at a symposium in Jackson Houl did not contain direct indications of the upcoming slowdown and suspension of the “printing press” work. Among his colleagues there was a consensus that this process should begin this year and end in the first-second quarter of 2022.
These words can be perceived as a desire to assess the influence of the distribution of Delta-Skamm on further progress in the labor market. In the conditions of the growth of the Fed, the information indicator of the inflation indicator before the maximum over the past 30 years, the obstacle remains only inhibition on the way to full employment.
Stock markets enthusiastically reacted to Powell’s performance. Index S&P 500 continued a series of rewards of records, the duration of which turned out to be maximum in history.

The start of the Fed’s return to normal monetary conditions is able to cause stress in financial markets. Cryptocurrencies may also be under pressure if their behavior will correspond to the dynamics of risk assets, as was observed in March 2020.

Market moods, correlations and volatility

In August, bull sentiments prevailed on the market – the dynamics of the index of fear and greed indicate this. At the beginning of the month, the indicator decreased to 42, after which he began to move into the zone of greed, indicating the growing optimism of investors. August 23, he reached the maximum value – 79. The average index in August is 68.4 (in July the indicator was 26.3), the minimum is 42, the most common – 70.
The movement of the prices of bitcoin and gold remains multidirectional, but the negative statistical interconnection of two assets has become less pronounced (-0.21 versus -0.62 in July). Correlation of the first cryptocurrency with index S&P 500 amounted to 0.12-a month earlier, the indicator was in the negative zone (-0.15). The relationship with the industrial index of Dow Jones weakened, decreasing to 0.33 mark (in July – 0.74).
A positive correlation of bitcoin with the stock market may indicate the growing acceptance of an asset with retail and institutional investors, who also hold positions in traditional securities.

In August, the coefficient of historical volatility of digital gold was kept in the range from 63 to 103. This is much lower than the level preceding the market collapse in May 2021.

Onchain-data

Throughout August, the ASOPR indicator, which does not take into account the outputs of transactions with a “life date” for less than an hour, was above the mark 1. This indicates an improvement in market moods and that most investors fixes profit, and not sells at a loss.
Since the end of July, the outflow of bitcoin from centralized exchanges has markedly prevail over the tributaries. This indicates the desire of users to convert assets into non-kastodial wallets for their “cold” storage, as well as the expectations of growth in digital gold in the medium and long term.

The outflow of Ethereum continues with centralized exchanges (CEX) against the background of an increase in the share of coins involved in the smart contracts of decentralized applications. This is due to the growth of the popularity of Defi and the desire of users to avoid risks associated with castodial platforms.

In August, the volume of supply on CEX decreased by 2.11%, and from the beginning of the year – by 6%. Over the past month, the share of ETH in smart contracts has increased by 1%, and from the beginning of the year-by 10.5%.
On August 5, Ethereum activated the London update, in which the EIP-1559 was implemented, which involves the burning of part of transaction commissions. Since the hardforn, the protocol has burned more than 159 500 ETH, the cost of which at the time of writing is estimated at $ 572.76 million.
The daily number of burned coins is quite closely correlated with the price of Ethereum, which in August for the The Netherlands first time since May 2021 overcame $ 3500.

In August, the amount of ETH at the Ethereum 2 deposit contract.0 exceeded 7.27 million. By the end of the month, the network participants made more than 226,800 deposits.
Against the background of the price of Ethereum, the number of addresses with a balance of ≥ 32 ETH during August increased steadily and at the end of the month exceeded the mark of 108 500.

Lightning Network

Since the beginning of the year, the capacity of the Lightning Network (LN) bitcoin network has increased by 125%, from 1058 BTC to 2382 BTC. During August, the indicator increased by 14% – in July, the value grew twice as fast as.
Last month, the Substack online service, which allows you to create newsletters and charge a fee for access to them, added support for Lightning payments. On September 1, information appeared in the media about Twitter plans to test the possibility of sending donates based on this technical solution.

Mining, hashrate, commissions

In August, the Heshrait Bitcoin continued the recovery after the June collapse caused by the disconnections of large mining objects in China and subsequent migration in the USA, Canada and Kazakhstan.
According to the results of the month, the smoothed with a seven -day sliding average indicator increased by 5.48%. This is a sign of equipment connection in new jurisdictions, as well as the fact that mining is becoming more attractive with the price increase.
Unsceptibly connected with the hashReit, the complexity indicator has grown by 23% per month. According to the results of the latest recalculation held on August 25, it increased by 13.24%.

Among the Antpool mining bullets, the share in the total computing power holds. Poolin came to the second place, squeezing F2Pool and Viabtc. Binance exchange pool in a month rolled away from the fifth position to the sixth.
Against the background of growth in the price, the Heshreite Ethereum updated the historical maximum. A 7-day sliding average indicator grew to 624.37 Th/s, exceeding the May record.
The exit of the Ethereum hashReum to a record level is facilitated by an increase in mining capacities outside of China, the continuing growth of Defi sector and an ongoing boom in the sphere of non -deputied tokens (NFT).

Against the backdrop of revitalization of demand on Ethereum, the average cost of the commission on the network increased to May marks, approaching $ 40. London hard fork and EIP-1559 update, designed to reduce the volatility of gas prices, did not reduce the severity of the scaling problem and the high transaction costs arising from it.

According to the results of August, the income of the Bitcoin Mainers increased by 40%-from $ 972.6 million to $ 1.36 billion (+40%), despite the growth of complexity. The share of commissions in the structure of revenues decreased from 2.94% to 1.32%.
The total income of Ethereum Mainers over the past month increased by 75%, reaching $ 1.89 billion. The May indicator of $ 2.39 billion remains a record.
The share of the commissions in the structure of the Ethereum Mainers increased from 22% to 34%. The growth of the indicator did not stop the activation of the EIP-1559.

The volume of trading

The volume of trading on leading cryptocurrency exchanges in August reached $ 1.3 trillion, surpassing the result of July by 69%.
The Binance trade turnover grew to $ 750 billion, OKEX – to $ 176 billion, Huobi – to $ 166 billion, Coinbase – up to $ 96 billion.

Futures and options

The volume of trading in Bitcoin -based futures increased at the beginning of the month as BTC prices are higher than $ 40,000.
When trying to take $ 50,000, a similar surge in the volume on the futures market was not recorded.
According to the results of the month, the total volume of trade in futures increased by 17%, to $ 1.7 trillion.

Open interest both in futures and in Bitcoin options reached a three -month maximum. On the market there is a revival of trading derivatives.

Defi

Within a month, the volume of blocked funds (TVL) in the Defi segment stably grew, on September 1, upgrading the maximum at the mark above $ 165 billion.
TVL in the leading landing protocol AAVE exceeded $ 15 billion. In a month, its indicator increased by more than 26%.

Almost all TOP-20 tokens demonstrated convincing growth. Exception – AMP. The growth leader was the Raydium project, which develops the mechanism of an automated market maker and the supply of liquidity based on the SOLANA blockchain.
AAVE strengthened positions. This was facilitated by the integration with Polygon and the initiative of Avalanche Foundation, focused on the deployment of the protocol in the same blockchain.
Pancakeswap went to third place in capitalization. The rating leader – Uniswap – grew from $ 12.99 billion to $ 18.62 billion.

Against the background of continuing the restoration of the price of the first cryptocurrency, the total cost of “bitcoins on the air” increased by 19%, to $ 12.59 billion. The leader of the segment is Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), its share remains unchanged – more than 75%.
The Binance Smart Chain (BSC) ecosystem continues to lead the daily number of transactions. Last month, the network has transmitted data daily between addresses on average 7.73 million times.

Ethereum ecosystem dominates the Defi segment. More than $ 120 billion was blocked in applications and wrapped assets on the basis of this blockchain – over 70% of the total TVL of decentralized finance protocols.

Dex

In August, the volume of trading on decentralized exchanges (DEX) based on Ethereum reached $ 76 billion – the second largest figure in 2021.
The Uniswap exchange remains an unchanged leader, the turnover of which exceeded $ 50 billion. Sushiswap and Curve share the second and third lines with indicators of $ 8.8 billion and $ 4.9 billion, respectively.

Stebblecoins

In August, the total capitalization of stablecoins exceeded $ 112 billion.
In the context of projects, Tether USDT remains an unchanged leader, which increased the issue of 62 billion to 65 billion USDT for a month.
USDC issuer Centre Consortre suspended coin production. Capitalization remained at $ 27 billion.

NFT

In August, the trend on the NFT-TOCEN GameFi platforms and marketplaces continued. Among the leaders are Axie Infinity (AXS), Sandbox (SAND), DecentRaland (Mana).
The volume of trading on Axie Infinity increased to $ 800 million (+20%), Cryptopunks – up to $ 650 million (+300%). The excitement around the latter fueled the announcement of Visa, which acquired Cryptopunk #7610 for almost $ 150,000.
NFT marketplace Opensea recorded a record $ 3 billion in August. The total indicator in July was a little more than $ 320 million.
Superrare’s platform has been released by the Native Token Rare. After a day, it grew in price by 900%.

About how the GameFi segment develops, read in FORKLOG material.

The interest of users in the market of non -replaced tokens (NFT) reflects the dynamics of search queries in Google. In August, the indicator reached the last peak. It is possible that already in early September he will update the maximum.

The activity of large players

The total open interest in bitcoin textures continues to fall-the descending trend lasts since August last year.
For large players of the Non-Commercial category, shorts over the Longs are steadily predominant. A slightly different situation in small players of the NonrePortable category is dominated by Longs, and the total number of open positions is gradually growing.

OI also increases through microfites based on the first cryptocurrency, as well as the number of traders with these more affordable tools.
Open interest in futures on Ethereum is growing confidently. Among large players of the Non-Commercial category, short positions are steadily predominable. Small players (nonreportable), on the contrary, are significantly dominated.

On August 24, Microstrategy, which has an additional 3907 BTC.
In total, Microstrategy invested more than $ 2.9 billion in digital gold. As of 1.09.2021 The cost of cryptocurrency on its balance sheet is estimated at $ 4.97 billion.

Large venture rounds

$ 356 million

Decentralized Autonomous Organization Bitdao against the background of the launch of the BIT control token.

$ 263 million

European cryptocurrency brokerage company Bitpanda during the round of the series with. Its assessment increased to $ 4.1 billion.

$ 210 million

Infrastructure company Blockstream in round series B. The estimate increased to $ 3.2 billion.

$ 210 million

FalConx cryptocurrency exchange oriented towards institutions during the round of the series C when assessing $ 3.75 billion.

$ 120 million

Liquid hacked exchanges attracted from FTX as debt obligations.

$ 100 million

Jihana Wu, who separated from the Bitmain of Matrixport, is based. Its assessment exceeded $ 1 billion.

Key events in the field of regulation

Putin instructed to prepare proposals for checking information about the ownership of cryptocurrency.
The Russian Federation determined the developer of the tracking service of bitcoin transactions.
The court sided with the seller of bitcoins in the case of blocking the card with a Sberbank.

The US Senate failed a vote on the taxation of cryptocurrencies in the infrastructure bill. The attention of lobbyists has shifted to the House of Representatives. Detailed analysis of the situation read on forklog.
SEC head Gary Gensler hinted at the upcoming regulation of Defi projects, regardless of the degree of decentralization. Fears were confirmed with the conclusion of the SEC contract with the analytical service of Anchain for monitoring operations in the Defi sector.

Financial supervision department Great Britain announced the settlement of Binance Exchange of all charges. The regulator noted that it cannot effectively control the activities of Binance.

Sec South Korea will stop the activities of 11 cryptocurrency exchanges that did not comply with the requirements of customer identification.

Tax Office Iran called the authorities to legalize cryptocurrency exchanges in the country for subsequent taxation.

Central Bank Brazil supported the regulation of the cryptocurrency industry. The initiative will be developed with local SEC.

Japan By mid-2022, he will present an updated regulatory framework for the cryptocurrency industry. The regulator intends to be guided by the principle of “no harm to innovations”.

In parliament Salvadora approved a bitcoin fund of $ 150 million to ensure cryptocurrency exchange in fiat and installation of 200 cryptomats. Protests began in the country against the legalization of bitcoin.

Significant events of Augustus

On August 5, on the main network Ethereum, on the #12 965 000 block, the London Harder was held, in which five sentences (EIP) were implemented to improve the work of the second capitalization of cryptocurrency. The main one was the EIP-1559, which involves the burning of part of the transaction commissions depending on the loading of the network and the reduction of gas volatility.

As of September 1, the network burned more than 150,000 ETH. The main combatants were the Opensea NFT market (almost 25,000 ETH) and DEX Uniswap (10,000 ETH). Another 13,000 ETH accounted for translations on the network.

On Friday, August 27, a large -scale reorganization (more than 450 blocks) was recorded on Ethereum. She affected the nodes operating under the Geth client. However, the correct canonical chain turned out to be longer, the main players updated software and catastrophic consequences were avoided.

On August 10, the unknown attacked the Chinese inter -grid protocol Poly Network and displayed assets totaling $ 611 million, which became the largest hacking in Defi and the industry in general.

The attacker attacked three networks: Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and Polygon. Part of the funds ($ 33 million) in USDT quickly froze Tether. A day later, the attacker began to return the stolen, explaining that he was engaged in Khaking “for the sake of fun”. The full return lasted about a week. The Poly Network team offered the hacker a reward of $ 500,000, but he refused.

Quotes of the month

“It is clear that I would like to buy bitcoin when I first heard about it – it was a serious mistake. I could invest $ 100,000 in it? Of course. I mean that I invested this money in other things that turned out to be unsuccessful “.Peter SchiffBitcoinsk-Square and Supporter of Gold

“Even with the hypothetical collapse of the American dollar, I do not think that even then Bitcoin will be able to provide the stability that business needs”.Vitalik ButerinEthereum co -founder