LQTY, the native token of stablecoin lender Liquity, jumped 35% Tuesday after it was listed on Binance’s Innovation Zone. That’s a venue where users can trade new tokens that are likely to have higher volatility and pose a higher risk than other tokens, according to Binance’s website. At the time of writing, LQTY was trading at a 10-month high of $1.82 as trading volume surged by 382%, according to CoinMarketCap. The token rose 45% earlier this month after a New York regulator ordered Paxos to stop minting its centralized dollar-pegged cryptocurrency BUSD. Liquity is an Ethereum-based platform that offers interest-free loans in the form of the LUSD stablecoin for users who deposit ether.
Cryptowatch
Metaverse project Gamium’s native token GMM also rose on Tuesday, surging by 340% after the project announced deals with Facebook parent Meta Platforms and telecommunications firm Telefonica. Gamium will work with Meta and Telefonica on the Metaverse Activation Program, an initiative launched to help and scale Web3 startups, according to an announcement on Monday. Startups will have access to proprietary technologies provided by Meta AI, and they will also be given commercial support by both Meta and Telefonica.
Coinbase will suspend trading of binance USD (BUSD) starting March 13 because the stablecoin doesn’t meet its listing standards, the U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange announced in a tweet Monday. “Our determination to suspend trading for BUSD is based on our own internal monitoring and review processes,” a spokesperson told CoinDesk. “When reviewing BUSD, we determined that it no longer met our listing standards and will be suspended.” The suspension affects Coinbase.com, Coinbase Pro, Coinbase Exchange and Coinbase Prime. Users will still be able to access their BUSD funds and withdraw them at any time, Coinbase said.
Market Insight: Crypto’s Depth Problem
Liquidity conditions in the bitcoin and ether markets continue to worsen, and the situation is now more alarming than it was three months ago. That has traders worried about abrupt price swings in the crypto market.
Liquidity refers to the ability of the market to absorb large buy and sell orders at stable prices.
The commonly used metric for assessing liquidity conditions is 2% of market depth – a collection of buy and sell offers within 2% of the mid-price or the average of the bid and the ask/offer prices.
More significant the depth, the more liquid an asset is said to be, and vice versa.
Data from Paris-based crypto data provider Kaiko shows bitcoin’s 2% market depth for USDT pairs aggregated from 15 centralized exchanges has slipped to 6,800 BTC, the lowest since May 2022, surpassing the post-FTX collapse low. That’s significantly down from the October highs above 15,000 BTC. Ether’s 2% market depth has more than halved to 57,000 ETH since October, led by Binance.
The chart shows daily inflows into bitcoin whale addresses since July 2022.
Large wallets have consistently accumulated coins on dips, as represented by the blue-shaded bubbles on the above chart. Since Thursday, the number of coins held in these wallets has increased by at least 21,000 BTC.
“We see strong conviction on display by Bitcoin whales that resemble late bear market/early bull market behavior as we continue to see large inflows into whale-style Bitcoin wallets,” analysts at Bitfinex said in their latest weekly report.
– Omkar Godbole
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