Could a green September bring Uptober?

In this week’s crypto highlights, we explore the price movements of BTC, TWT, AVAX, and TRB. Additionally, this recap includes other notable industry news items that occurred over the last seven days. Without further ado, let’s dive into the latest market developments.

Notable price performances

Bitcoin recorded its first green September since 2016

September is historically a bad month for BTC, registering negative returns in most cases over the past 10 years. However, despite relatively low trading volume, BTC managed to dispel its seven-year-long “SepterBear curse,” showing an almost 4% price increase last month, according to Coinglass. 

Notably, the last two times Bitcoin experienced a green September, the rest of the year continued green for the asset as well. The Bitcoin price welcomed October 2023 with its best weekly close since mid-August, temporarily reaching $28,000. This sparked optimism throughout the crypto community about a potential “Uptober.” October is historically one of the best-performing months for Bitcoin, averaging more than 20% returns over the last 10 years.

According to Matrixport, the Bitcoin price broke the descending resistance line, similar to the one in June, hinting that the asset could test $30,000 in the short term. On the other hand, some market analysts consider $20,000 as the next potential target for Bitcoin, suggesting that October could turn out bearish.

TWT’s price became a weekly top gainer among the top 100 digital assets

Amid recently increased geopolitical instability, most altcoins moved to the red zone, but Trust Wallet Token (TWT) was a noteworthy exception. At the time of this writing, TWT was the only cryptocurrency among the top 100 digital assets by market cap to show a double-digit weekly price gain, with an over 20% positive performance.

The major catalyst of this move is thought to be this tweet, where Trust Wallet Token teased an undisclosed announcement. This encouraged speculation in the community about a potential launch of a native hardware wallet, or a release of TWT’s own L1 or L2 blockchain network.

AVAX price took advantage of the DeSo hype, but not for long

A month ago, we discussed a Base-based, decentralized social network (DeSo) project called Friend.tech, which temporarily became the second-largest fee generator. Recently, a Friend.tech-inspired Stars Arena caused a major uptick in activity on Avalanche’s C-Chain network. In the week after its launch, Stars Arena accumulated $1 million in TVL, and recorded over 700,000 transactions.

On Stars Arena, AVAX tokens are used to purchase the “tickets” of other users, with a small cut of fees paid to the platform itself, as well as the users whose “tickets” are bought and sold. As a result, amid the Stars Arena launch, AVAX-denominated transactions have increased by 113%. This helped AVAX temporarily show an almost 10% weekly price increase.

However, on September 7, Stars Arena faced a “major security breach with smart contract,” through which hackers drained around $3 million in AVAX. The platform stated that they plan to re-launch the contract “with all the funds in full,” after undergoing a thorough security audit. This event evaporated around half of AVAX’s recent price gains.

Top rollercoaster: Tellor (TRB)

From August 28 to September 28, the Tellor (TRB) price jumped from $14 to $60, showing a more than 300% price increase, and reaching a two-year high. However, since September 28, the asset has been experiencing a correction, dropping to $47, at the moment of this writing. Prior to this correction, the asset formed a bearish divergence on a daily chart.

Despite the lack of fundamental catalysts, Tellor arguably managed to show this price performance due to speculations on derivatives markets. High funding rates on TRB futures, and increased open interest, indicate that short-term traders are likely to be major contributors to this rally.

Noteworthy market events

The first Ethereum futures ETFs in the U.S. saw their debut

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved the first Ethereum futures exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the country, and nine dedicated products were launched simultaneously. ​​Five of them exclusively hold Ethereum futures, while the remaining four track a combination of Bitcoin and Ethereum futures contracts.

Notably, some of the largest investment firms, including Valkyrie, VanEck, ProShares, and Bitwise, were responsible for launching these ETFs. VanEck also committed to donating 10% of its Ethereum futures ETF profits to Ethereum’s Protocol Guild, for a period of ten years.

Despite significant anticipation surrounding their launch, these ETFs experienced relatively modest initial trading volumes on their opening day, collectively recording approximately $2 million. For comparison, when ProShares introduced BITO, the first Bitcoin futures ETF in the U.S., in October 2021, it witnessed over $1 billion in trading volume on its launch day.

The SEC motion to appeal the XRP ruling was denied

U.S. District Court of New York Judge Analisa Tores rejected an SEC request to appeal the ruling in the Ripple case, which concluded that XRP does not qualify as a security for retail sales. In her ruling, the judge stated that the SEC had failed “to meet its burden to show that such an appeal would materially advance the ultimate termination of the litigation.”

Nonetheless, this decision doesn’t represent a complete setback for the SEC. The judge set an April 2024 trial date for other issues that still require resolution. Following this trial, the SEC may still pursue an appeal of the overall case.

Ordinals’ creator proposed an alternative to the BRC-20 standard

Casey Rodarmor, who is known for developing the Ordinals protocol, published a blog post, proposing an alternative to the popular BRC-20 token standard. According to him, BRC-20 led to excessive “junk” unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) spamming the blockchain. With a new protocol called Runes, Rodarmor proposed a solution that could better align with Bitcoin by avoiding extra outputs. 

However, during a conversation on Twitter (X) Spaces’ “The Ordinals Show,” Rodarmor expressed his hesitancy regarding the progression of the Runes concept. Subsequently, co-host Trevor Owens stepped forward and extended an offer of $100,000 from the Bitcoin Frontier Fund to developers, as an incentive for them to develop a functional Rune application.

ZeroSync implemented the first ZK client for Bitcoin

ZeroSync deployed the first client system for the Bitcoin network based on the ZK-STARK technology. The system empowers Bitcoin users to validate the state of the network without having to download the blockchain, or trust a third party.

According to the Block, ZeroSync’s verifier marks a significant advancement for light clients, as it empowers them to swiftly verify the presence of transactions on the Bitcoin network. This verification process occurs almost instantly, with the client storing only a header chain proof rather than downloading all block headers. Robin Linus, co-founder of ZeroSync, emphasized that this solution “lowers the barriers of entry to participate as a first-class citizen in the Bitcoin network.”

One sentence news

• The SEC delayed its decision on spot Bitcoin ETFs until mid-January 2024 for all applicants, and extended the deadline for spot Ethereum ETFs filings until December 26, 2023.
• BlockFi received court permission to implement its liquidation plan.
• Coinbase will roll out crypto perpetual futures trading to non-U.S. customers, after receiving regulatory approval from Bermuda’s financial regulator.
• According to Bloomberg, Kraken is exploring an opportunity to offer clients stock trading and ETFs listed in the U.S. and the U.K.
• New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Arca filed an application with the SEC to convert Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust into a spot Ethereum ETF.
• MoneyGram announced its plans to launch a non-custodial digital wallet.
• Ethereum developers successfully launched the Holesky tesnet, after a second attempt.
• Ripple terminated its acquisition of blockchain financial infrastructure provider Fortress Trust.

Tune in next week, and every week, for the latest CEX.IO crypto highlights. For more information, head over to the Exchange to check current prices, or stop by CEX.IO University to continue expanding your crypto knowledge.

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