Market Overview

September has been a pretty negative month with the overall market seeing its value decline by 7%. The fear and greed index slipped back into extreme fear and now sits at fear. However there are reasons to be positive. Firstly the Chairman of the Fed, Jerome Powell, told congress he did not intend to ban crypto currency, although he said stablecoins needed greater regulatory oversight. Secondly, the massive recent negativity surrounding China’s ban on crypto looks to have been overdone as usual.

It is evident that the Chinese crypto enthusiast has no intention of letting the crypto revolution pass him by. It appears as though they have started trading through DEX’s as witnessed by the surge in trade on Dydx. Finally the Chair of the SEC said that he supported a bitcoin ETF, another positive step forward for the industry. So all in all a positive week.

Trending

Regulators target DeFi

The SEC is investigating Uniswap Labs, the organization behind the leading DEX Uniswap. It is early days yet but is a sign of things to come. That news was followed by the announcement that New Jersey had served a cease and desist order on Celsius, a leading yield farming platform which advertises, ‘earn 17% yield on your crypto’. Alabama and Texas are also looking at doing the same. Both Celsius and Uniswap rolled out the same statement that they are willing to work with regulators. Finally, Coinbase was told in no uncertain terms that if they continued with their plans to launch a lending platform the SEC would sue. Whilst Coinbase continued to deny that lending represented a regulated activity, they had no choice but to shelve or bin their proposals.

Check out our Staking and Yield Farming Review which sets out our thinking on these regulatory actions and what strategy investors should follow.

The UK’s Post Office enters crypto

Yes you heard it right! The Post Office announced that its app can be used to connect to a decentralized exchange called Swarm Markets, from there vouchers can be purchased that are redeemable for crypto. British politicians were up in arms about the announcement. The fully diluted market cap of Swarm is a modest $70 million, could be worth a closer look assuming the unhappy politicians don’t get their way.

That old chestnut — China

The recent stumble in the crypto market was blamed on China’s now outright ban of crypto no doubt to protect it’s digital yuan which it is rolling out. This should be no surprise. China has been tough on crypto for some time, the only surprise is this didn’t happen sooner. Crypto will do just fine without China.

Binance again

Every month there is never any shortage of negative stories to write about when it comes to Binance’s trials and tribulations. This month saw the announcement that both the IRS and the DOJ are investigating. It is reported that this is for market manipulation and insider trading. Binance also announced it was withdrawing from yet another market, Singapore. We do hope that investors who use Binance’s central wallet have started to move their crypto into their own wallet.

Robinhood and PayPal

Robinhood announced that they were rolling out a crypto wallet with transfer features allowing customers to store crypto and move in and out of their apps. The market considers Robinhood a serious threat to Coinbase’s business with this move. Meanwhile back in the grey and damp UK PayPal announced they were introducing crypto trading services through their PayPal accounts. Of course there is a limited selection of coins available including the Bitcoin fork Bitcoin Cash valued at a ridiculous $10 billion.

Cardano introducing its own stablecoin

September saw the launch of the much anticipated and long overdue smart contract functionality on the Cardano blockchain. Named the Djed, it is an algorithmic stablecoin as compared to one backed by fiat. Its new stable coin is expected to make transaction costs on the Cardano network cheaper and more predictable. Its announcement comes at a time when US regulators are considering regulating or banning stablecoins.

Finally…

There is talk that the SEC is investigating Tether, the leading stablecoin player. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone following the shenanigans at Tether over their total lack of transparency since inception. There have been multiple reports of investigations into breaching banking and security laws.

Inside Track podcasts

We continue to build our library of interesting content from emerging projects and technologies in the blockchain space. Inside Track is the best way to learn about cryptocurrency from experts in the field as well as discover emerging projects from NFTs to DeFi, from memecoins to launchpads.

This month’s podcasts include:

• Lunch Money — The blockchain based business review platform described as the Yelp of the blockchain.
• Petrachor — A smart contract platform designed for the mass market allowing users to mine using their mobile phones,
• Haven — A privacy coin that combines privacy with stability.

View all Inside Track Podcasts here.

Staking and Yield Farming

Each week we provide the latest APRs from leading staking and yield farming platforms together with news from the industry.

Staking and yield farming has been a major driver in the huge growth in the DeFi sector. Investors are being enticed by the massive APRs on offer. Totally new projects tempting investors with returns of 10,000+ % are able to attract a deluge of money from investors who don’t seem concerned with the high risks involved. Our weekly review looks at the best platforms out there and the ones to avoid. We attempt to weed out the platforms that we think won’t stand the test of time.

You can read our weekly reviews here.

You can also watch our YouTube video here which takes a deep dive into the world of staking and yield farming and attempts to explain the most complex issues.

You can sign up to receive your weekly review here.

Monthly Moonshot Portfolio

It was another strong month for our Moonshot portfolio recording a 16% increase for the month which compared to an overall market increase of 8%. You can review our latest portfolio of 20 cryptocurrencies here and check out the projects we removed and the ones we added.

Articles

Below are a few of the articles we published last month which you may like to catch up on:

• Solana v Cardano

Finally…

Don’t forget to follow us on our Telegram channel where you will discover new investment ideas and receive updates as they happen.

Not Financial Advice

This article does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy in any way. Always do your own research and never invest more than you can afford to lose. Investing in cryptocurrencies is high risk, and you could lose 100% of your investment. The article should be treated as supplementary information to add to your existing knowledge.