Trakx Weekly Update: September 25

Key Crypto Market Figures

CTIs Weekly Performance

Last week was a bit of a mixed bag in the world of crypto. The positive tone that defined the first half was interrupted by a slightly more hawkish Fed (no immediate rate hike – as expected - but the updated dot-plots suggested the tightening cycle is still not yet complete), which weighed on the market leaders and contributed to a 2% pull-back in the Top10 Crypto CTI. Despite this weakness, four to the Trakx CTIs posted positive weekly returns, with the Top10 Defi CTI the best performer, up 3% over the past seven days. The weakest performance was seen in the Diversifier CTI, which recorded a 5% decline.

The boost to the Top10 Defi CTI was attributable to double digit percentage points gains by LINK and CRV. Helping boost demand for LINK was news that Chainlink, a decentralized blockchain oracle, had launched its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) on Arbitrum One, a Ethereum Layer-2 scaling protocol. This new set-up should help boost cross-chain development by providing dApps within the Arbitrum network with a way to securely send and received digital assets on different blockchains. Meanwhile, CRV, the utility token of the Curve DAO Defi protocol, gained 16% after on-chain data showed a whale aggressively accumulating the CRV and transferring them to Convex, a platform that boosts rewards for CRV stakers.

Another alt-coin that experienced strong price gains was ImmutableX’s IMX. Its price jumped 14% last week, helping the NFT/Metaverse CTI to post a 1.1% gain on the week. The trigger for the rally was the listing on the IMX token on South Korea’s Upbit exchange. However, sentiment towards the Web3 gaming platform was already on the rise after its zkEVM Testnet, a zero knowledge rollup that improves scalability as well as providing development with access to the security and network effects of the Ethereum network, went live last month.

Unfortunately, it was no all good news in the world of decentralized crypto. Mixin network, a peer-to-peer wallet service, over the weekend revealed that it had suffered a $200m hack after the database of an unnamed third-party cloud service provider used by the network was attacked. In response Mixin has temporarily suspended deposit and withdrawals services and stated they will only recommence “once the vulnerabilities are confirmed and fixed”.

Sources: Trakx, Coingecko, Alphavantage

Market Trends

• Chainlink's CCIP Protocol Goes Live on Arbitrum as LINK Price Sees +9% Weekly Gains: CoinCodex.
• What’s behind Curve Finance’s mass token exodus?: AmbCrypto.
• NFT Platform ImmutableX's IMX Token Surges 35% With Upbit Leading Volume Growth: Coindesk.
• Mixin Network founder says just half users' assets are safe after $200 million hack: TheBlock.
• PayPal Brings PYUSD Stablecoin to Venmo: Decrypt.

Trakx News

• Lionel Rebibo was interviewed by Coinaute (in French).
• Ryan Shea was quoted in an article by Joanna Wright at DLNews about CBDCs.

Trakx CTIs Performance

Sources: Coingecko and AlphaVantage

*Return of bitcoin is calculated since 01/05/2020, while CTIs performances were calculated since their respective launch date.
**Includes simulated performance.
***The risk signal is determined according to the historical volatility level, the higher the riskier.