[Daily] Are the Ethereum whales swimming away?

Good morning! Welcome to The Daily Moon. The house of the Mouse has bid goodbye to the metaverse. Just a year after Disney made its metaverse plunge, the entertainment company has decided that it’s had enough. Disney’s 50-member metaverse team has been laid off. Curtains down too soon. 

As of Tuesday, 7PM IST

The markets were jittery after CFTC sued CZ. Bitcoin saw outflows on a contagion risk. Ethereum was bearish due to exits by whales. S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell on selling in technology stocks. Back home, Sensex and Nifty ended flat after a choppy session. 

ETH Whales Playing Hard To Get?

Ethereum whales are now emptying their wallets. Curiously, it comes a few weeks away from the large Shanghai upgrade. Last upgrade, the token pumped before the hard fork.

Whales swim awayLarge investors or whales that HODL between 10,000-1,000,000 ETH went on an aggressive selling spree. Why? The answer is fairly obvious. ETH reached its highest value in the past few months and it was a good time to book a profit. 

HOLDers hit pauseA technical metric called Mean Coin Age shows the age of the token on the blockchain or the period for which it has been held. The higher the age, the better it is. Data showed that there was a dip in ETH’s Mean Coin Age. HODlers stopped HODLing.

Any positives?Around the time that whales made a beeline to sell, ETH supply outside exchanges had a momentary rise. It meant that ETH tokens changed addresses but were not sold. Glassnode data shows that 17.86 million ETH has been staked, a 4% increase over the previous month.

Solana’s Endless Woes 

It started with Sam Bankman-Fried’s bankruptcy. But Solana’s troubles refuse to end. The altcoin has seen a drop in NFT volumes on one hand and a slump in DeFi and dApp activity on the other. 

Didn’t it recover?The absolute numbers aren’t bad. Solana’s been up ~102% since the start of the year. But it is still 92% lower than its all-time high of ~$260 in November 2021. There are two reasons for it: 

1. NFTs’ poor interest: Not Solana’s fault per se, but there’s a general NFT slowdown. Solana’s NFT volumes dropped 37% over the weekend.   

2. DeFi users dormant: The number of active DeFi users on the Solana network fell. So the total value locked automatically fell too, another bearish indicator. 

Where’s it headed?Solana saw a ray of hope when investors shifted to crypto after SVB’s collapse. In the past week, it saw inflows worth $4.8 million, topping the altcoin list.

CZ’s Nightmare Comes True 

Regulatory uncertainty just won’t leave. The bank collapses and frauds aren’t helping, sure. Now Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao is being investigated for trading violations that could bring more scrutiny and delays.

US firms make the moveGiven this lack of clarity, US crypto firms are increasingly moving to other, friendlier jurisdictions — Switzerland, the UK, Australia, and Europe all are more progressive when it comes to regulation. None are perfect, sure, but even pro-crypto lawmakers see these as moving forward. 

No NFT for the Royal MintThe UK has its own issues with crypto. While it's moving ahead with its digital pound, it seems to have dropped plans for a Royal Mint NFT. Make your mind up, guys!

Metaverse Through Metaverse

Fashionistas still like the metaverse. They like it three times over. That’s why they’re attempting to hold a metaverse fashion show across three platforms. Interoperability FTW. 

Metaverse Fashion Week 2023This is the second edition of the event, and the organisers have decided not to keep it exclusive. Unlike last time, when it took place exclusively on Decentraland. This year, it will also be held on Spatial, another metaverse platform. And through Over, a decentralised augmented reality (AR) layer. 

So, is it all interoperable?Not really. But that’s the ultimate dream, isn’t it? Part of the reason to spread it out is also perhaps not-the-same hype around the metaverse anymore. There’s also Lighthouse that will help attendees see where their contacts are in real-time.

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