First Mover Americas: Bitcoin Back Over $19K as ECB Goes for Record Interest-Rate Hike

• Price Point: Bitcoin is trading back above the $19,000 mark as altcoins HNT and NEAR surge on the day.
• Market Moves: Ethereum's upcoming Merge will likely be a near-term catalyst for greater adoption of staking on Coinbase’s platform, Goldman Sachs said in a report.
• Chart of the Day: Bitcoin supply per whale has dropped to its lowest since December 2020.

This article originally appeared in First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.

Price point

Bitcoin (BTC) was back trading above $19,000 Thursday, appearing to stabilize at a lower level after its 10-day stretch around the $20,000 mark came to an end earlier this week. The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value was up 2.4% over the last 24 hours and ether (ETH), the second-largest, was up 6%.

In traditional markets, stock futures were wavering after major U.S. stock indexes finished the day higher on Wednesday. The European Central Bank raised interest rates by 0.75 percentage point, the biggest single hike since it began setting monetary policy in 1999.

Winners among the altcoin market were NEAR, the token of the Near Protocol, which recently rose 10%, and FLOW, which traded up 9%. Last week, Ticketmaster announced a partnership with Dapper Labs – the company behind the Flow blockchain. The partnership will enable event organizers to issue non-fungible tokens (NFT) before, during and after live events.

Helium (HNT), the decentralized open wireless network, surged 20% on the day. This comes after the network submitted a proposal to migrate to the Solana blockchain from its standalone blockchain last week.

In the news, Binance announced it is seeking to accelerate transaction times and reduce fees for its BNB blockchain, becoming one of the largest players yet to embrace a technology known as a zero-knowledge (ZK) rollup.

Aave Companies, a development lab overseeing crypto lending protocol Aave, is seeking over $16 million from the Aave community to pay for development work on the platform.

Also, a group of Celsius borrowers wants a bankruptcy court to appoint an independent examiner to investigate the crypto-lender’s financials, but not one working for the U.S. Trustee office.

Market Moves

Crypto Exchange Coinbase to Benefit Near-Term from Staking Revenues After Ethereum Merger, Goldman Says

By Will Canny

The Merge will likely be a near-term catalyst for greater adoption of staking on Coinbase’s (COIN) platform, Goldman Sachs (GS) said in a research report Wednesday.

Coinbase has continued to grow its staking offering and recently announced support for institutional clients, adding staking for Cardano (ADA) and Solana (SOL), and will eventually support ether (ETH) post the Merge, bank’s analysts led by Will Nance wrote.

The Merge, or the switch from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, is the first of five planned upgrades for the Ethereum blockchain, and is expected to happen later this month.

Goldman sees Coinbase generating $250m-$600m in additional staking revenues from ether staking, assuming that around 20%-40% of the ETH on its platform is staked.

Read the full story here.

Chart of The Day

Bitcoin Supply Per Whale Drops to Lowest Since December 2020

By Omkar Godbole

• Supply per whale, calculated as dividing the total supply owned by addresses holding 100 BTC to 10,000 BTC by the address count, has declined to 554.65 BTC, the lowest since December 2020.
• The continued decline suggests low probability of a bull revival in the near-term.
• The metric increases when whales are boosting their aggregate holdings and decreases during distribution events.

Latest Headlines

• Fed Vice Chair Brainard Calls for Crypto-Specific Regulations, Notes Stablecoin Risks: While crypto "has all the same risks that we’re very familiar with from traditional finance,” its quirks need tailored solutions, Lael Brainard said.
• Asset Manager Brevan Howard Reveals Details About Its Record-Setting $1B Crypto Hedge Fund: New SEC filings disclose information about the first two sub-entities of the massive hedge fund.
• Crypto Trading Platform Enclave Seeks to Encourage Safer Markets Through Dark Pools: The institutional product currently supports trading of bitcoin, ether, Avalanche’s AAVE, and Circle’s USD Coin, with more to be added.
• Israel's Markets Regulator Grants First Crypto License to Private Company, local media outlet Globes Reports: Hybrid Bridge Holdings is the first company to receive a permanent license from the country's capital markets authority to engage in crypto-related business activities, Globes reported.