Large market cap coins struggled for any meaningful direction, even the expiration of futures contract the previous day failed to prop up the appetite for risk in the cryptocurrency market. It is worth pointing out that despite the stability fee hike by MakerDAO last week to 3.5%, the actual % of ETH coins locked in the credit ecosystem remains unchanged at 2.06%. However, DAI’s price has edged back towards its "peg" and the recovery, driven by proactive governance, should be welcomed by the market and in turn prove supportive for general market performance going forward, especially for ETH.

Tether has come back into focus after it updated its terms on its website, indicating that its dollar-pegged USDT stablecoin may not be backed 100% by fiat reserves. The website reads: “Every Tether is always 100% backed by our reserves, which include traditional currency and cash equivalents and, from time to time, may include other assets and receivables from loans made by Tether to third parties, which may include affiliated entities (collectively, “reserves”).”

However, Tether’s previous terms indicated full-fiat backing: “Every tether is always backed 1-to-1, by traditional currency held in our reserves. So 1 USD₮ is always equivalent to 1 USD.”

Elsewhere, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) has released a report titled “Statement on crypto-assets”. The report points out that the crypto-asset market remains small relative to that of the global financial system, and banks currently have very limited direct exposures. The Committee is of the view that the continued growth of crypto-asset trading platforms and new financial products related to crypto-assets has the potential to raise financial stability concerns and increase risks faced by banks. Interestingly, in its Annual Economic Report published last June, the BIS opined that it is difficult to see if cryptocurrencies solve any specific economic problem yet. Specifically, issues such as scalability and slow transaction speeds were pointed out as the main factors that have impeded broader adoption and utilization of the technology.

Finally, a crypto startup, Carbon, announced their partnership with AZTEC Protocol via their official Twitter. AZTEC Protocol, a privacy tech development firm, will leverage AZTEC’s privacy technology for Carbon’s CUSD stablecoin. The privacy-enabled CUSD is set to go live on the Ethereum mainnet in Q3 2019.

Note:

CME Bitcoin futures will expire on 29.03.19

CME posted 2019 futures highlights:

ADV reached 4,784 contracts, equal to ~$90M notional, or the equivalent of nearly 24,000 Bitcoins

Average daily OI exceeds 4,000, +19% vs Q4 2018

The average number of Large Open Interest Holders (LOIH) held steady at 43

Average bid-ask spread to trade a 5-lot is down to 1 tick

Over 2,100 unique, active accounts have traded since launch

Thank you for reading,

The BeQuant’s Analytics team