BTSE Weekly Digital Asset Industry Report-October 27

This Week’s Big Movements

The week’s winner was undoubtedly SOL, which rose over the past seven days to hit a 14-month high, going above US$46. The token gained 50% in October and added US$6 billion in market cap for the month, outperforming other top digital assets, however, the token has since retreated to a price of US$38.66.

Overall, there have been positive strides in the digital asset space. Inflows for digital asset products spiked, with US$326 million heading into digital asset investment products in late October, the highest figure since July 2022. In that amount, 90% went into Bitcoin products.

ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) traded US$1.7 billion last week, the second highest since its debut week. Meanwhile, Grayscale Investments‘ Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) did US$800 million in volume. These instruments are less desirable than a spot ETF, so it’s clear that there is still a massive appetite for digital asset exposure in traditional finance.

This Week in the Business

• Stablecoin issuer Circle will no longer support USDC minting for consumer accounts on November 30. This will not impact business or institutional users who have accounts with the company’s Circle Mint platform. Individuals who want to mint US dollar-backed USDC or euro-backed EURC stablecoins will have to use an intermediary.

• Ethereum‘s scaling solution, Arbitrum Orbit, is set to launch on the mainnet, as announced by its developer, Offchain Labs. The launch will allow developers to establish custom chains that settle onto Arbitrum’s layer-2 networks like Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova, effectively creating Ethereum layer-3 networks.
• Bitcoin’s on-chain activity has shown a significant surge in “whale” transactions, with those exceeding US$100,000 hitting a year-to-date high of 23,400 last week, a trend supported by data from blockchain analytics firm IntoTheBlock. This surge coincides with bitcoin’s price surpassing the US$35,000 mark for the first time since May 2022, an ascent partially attributed to anticipation around spot ETFs and increased demand as a safe haven.

• MetaMask, in collaboration with Israeli security startup Blockaid, is introducing a new feature to bolster security against potential digital asset threats. The feature, known as the Privacy Preserving Offline Module (PPOM), operates offline to simulate and verify transactions before they are signed, ensuring no data is sent to external servers.

• Google Cloud has integrated Solana into its BigQuery data analytics suite, the 20th blockchain that is supported by the service. This will make it easier to access and make sense of data stored on the Solana network. BigQuery has built-in machine learning and artificial intelligence that helps users generate insights from large databases.
• The aftermath of the 2022 LastPass breach continues with a recent hack leading to the loss of US$4.4 million in digital assets from 80 wallets, impacting 25 individuals who stored their digital asset keys/seeds in LastPass. Stemming from the August 2022 security breach, the culprits gained access to a LastPass employee’s credentials in December and decrypted customer data.