The market is green and this is why!
Green candles, Huobi going under and a new memecoin on the block.
Hi crypto buddy!
Vanessa from buidlbee here 🙋🏽♀️ and as usual I bring you a fresh list of trending topics from the crypto market. Here’s what you missed today:
The grass is greener on the 2023 side 📈
Huobi is going through a lot 😓
Memecoins have a new face and it’s feline-friendly 🐱
Green candles light the way
It looks like the crypto coins made a New Year’s resolution to only go up, but as we all know resolutions can be quite fleeting. For the first time in a really long time, the market is bursting with green candles, and don’t we just love to see it! 🥳 If you take a look at our market price summary chart above, all the major cryptocurrencies saw a positive increase within the past 24 hours.
At the time of writing, market capitalization peaked at $805 billion, with the two big brothers of crypto — Bitcoin & Ethereum — trading at $17,200 and $1,300 respectively. The sleeping dog of Zilliqa, ZIL, also took the most significant jump from $0.01741 to $0.02676 while Solana (SOL) and Optimism (OP) both rose by 21% each!
So the next obvious question is if the trend is here to stay or if it’s simply just that…a trend. What really caused the seemingly bullish market today? Here are a few reasons we can point to:
The U.S. is making strides in the battle against unemployment and inflation! On January 6, the official labor market released data that showed a decline in unemployment from its previously reported (December 2022) figure of 3.5%. Furthermore, Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank’s President, Rafael Bosti, reaffirmed the country’s plan to bring inflation down to the target of 2% and we expect an official follow-up and updated figure on January 12.
Back in November, the U.S. foreign trade deficit shrank by 21% to $61.5 billion, which The Wall Street Journal says is the lowest it’s been since September 2020.
So in summary, the better the economy the better the crypto market! 💁🏽♀️ Investors took well to the recent news and so we can say these may be the reasons the gods of crypto decided to shine their graces today. It’s not just crypto however, even stocks and bonds caught onto the trend on January 6. Forbes says the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 680 points/2.1% (the biggest daily gain since November 30), while S&P 500 and NASDAQ gained 2.3% and 2.5% respectively.
Gold is also not left behind as XAU/USD approaches a seven-month high of $1,875, its highest level since last June! In fact, it seems like every asset joined the bandwagon, except for the losers of the day: Gemini Dollar (GUSD), TrueUSD (TUSD), and UNUS SED LEO (LEO). No shade to those who have investments in the aforementioned crypto though 😏
Although we can’t say the winter is over yet, crypto investors and traders are staying positive. On the other hand, Blockworks Research shows that crypto experienced a 77% decline in the total value of all assets locked into DeFi protocols (TVL) from $270 billion at the start of the year to $60 billion as of January 9, while the market cap fell 67%, from $1.35 trillion to $437 billion, excluding BTC.
Personally, I choose to remain hopeful and continue envisioning the long-awaited holiday I’ll take when we finally go BULLISH! 🏝🍹
FUD strikes again and Huobi is its next victim
The fourth largest crypto exchange, Huobi is apparently not immune to all the FUD that’s recently been in the air. The Chinese company is not only cutting down 20% of its staff, but its linked assets — USDD, TRX, and HT — are experiencing a crazy amount of volatility. By the way, Tron is an affiliate project of Huobi.
In usual fashion, Justin Sun (shadow owner of Huobi) has come out to assure everyone about the tippy-top security of their funds. Hmmm, sounds familiar doesn't it? 🤔 Also keep in mind the company first denied accusations of the now-confirmed laying off of staff.
“Once bitten, twice shy” is the new motto of crypto investors because as of the last 24 hours, about $90 million have been withdrawn from Huobi! Employees of the exchange have also been silenced and forbidden to share any information and at the same time, new strict conditions for contract extensions were introduced. A coincidence? I beg to differ, my friend! 🧐
Here are some additional important things to note concerning the recent news of Huobi Global:
According to DeFiLlama, the net capital outflow from Huobi in the last 24 hours was $85 million. In the last 7 days, the outflow was $135 million.
Huobi will cancel all bonuses at the end of the year and plans to lay off up to 600–800 people out of 1,200.
Huobi closed internal employee communication groups and feedback channels.
Justin is changing employees’ salary payments from traditional fiat to USDT/USDC while other reports say he refuses to pay them at all.
Individual users are reporting that Justin Sun is storing fiat at Silvergate Bank, which is experiencing problems, all the while Huobi’s security systems have been allegedly compromised.
The future of Huobi Global still remains unclear as the exchange is yet to lose a critical volume of liquidity but still backs up assets with its native token HT. Basically following in the footsteps of now-bankrupt FTX 😳 In any case, better safe than sorry I always say.
What a Shiba Inu can do, a Wiki Cat can do better
The Binance Chain-based (Ethereum-compatible) memecoin, Wiki Cat (WKC) was created in March 2022 and since then it’s been a sleeping dog…or shall we say cat 😅 However, in the past 24 hours, alongside most of the crypto market, the token saw a remarkable 400% growth!
At the time of writing, the cool cat is trading on CoinMarketCap at $0.00000000721 with a market capitalization of $4.3 million. On the meme front, WKC finds its competition with the well-known Shiba Inu or Solana-based BONK which grew by 4444% in 12 days thanks to a superb marketing strategy.
Wiki Cat’s origin story is weak, to say the least, as very little was known about this token up until the start of the year when its founder, Sir Mapy finally started giving his creation some limelight. Furthermore, about 31% of the total number of tokens has already been burned, thereby increasing the value of the altcoin while the rest were sent to PancakeSwap.
It is also hopeful the coin gets listed on Binance by summer as its founder talked about WKC being on the exchange’s asset base as of June 2022. Wiki Cat was created for SMC DAO, an organization with the goal of creating an NFT platform, WikiCat Club, where users would be able to store, buy, and sell unique non-fungible tokens in a peer-to-peer way.
The meme cat token has some notable features, including the community having no claim on holders’ coins and a forever-locked pool of liquidity which creates more transparency in the ecosystem. There are five phases in the project’s roadmap with no set deadlines. The first of which has been concluded; consisting of the launch, over 500 holders (currently at 4000), a website launch, contract auditing by Solidity.Finance, and over 1,000 Telegram members (currently at 10K).
WKC is also listed on CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko, alongside PancakeSwap, CoinTiger, and Latoken. Here’s how you can get your share in the furry family as written by Binance. If you’re a lover of cats and want to invest in more cat-related projects, you should definitely check out Cat Token (#1529 by market capitalization and trading at $0.09336 +4.37% in 24 hours) and CATCOIN (#3601 by market capitalization and trading at $0.000000001199 +5.6% in 24 hours.
There you have it! A quick and straightforward rundown of all the important things that happened in the crypto industry today. Don’t forget to like, leave a comment, and share with your fellow crypto friends and cat lovers 😻