Bitcoin (BTC) has come under pressure since spot exchange-traded funds (ETF) began trading in the U.S. last Thursday. Data tracked by Paris-based Kaiko shows the selling pressure has been concentrated on Binance, the leading crypto exchange by trading volumes, OKX, and Upbit. Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency by market value, changed hands at $42,700 at press time, representing a 12% drop from the high of $48,975 reached Thursday. The price drop seems to have stemmed from traders taking profits on long (buy) positions initiated in anticipation of ETFs’ debut. An indicator called the cumulative volume delta (CVD) shows traders from Binance led the so-called “sell-the-fact” pullback in bitcoin. The CVD tracks the net difference between buying and selling volumes over time, offering a total of net bullish/bearish pressures in the market. Positive values indicate excess purchase volume, while negative values suggest otherwise.

(Kaiko)

HashKey Group, which operates the Hong Kong-based crypto exchange, has “nearly” met its $100 million fundraising target, the firm said on Tuesday. HashKey announced the fundraising round in August, shortly after it won a license from Hong Kong’s security regulator to offer retail crypto trading. The firm did not disclose the investors in the round and now has a valuation of $1.2 billion post-raise, giving it a “unicorn” status. Unicorn is a term used to describe private companies with a valuation of $1 billion or more.

Crypto issuer Circle saw a surge in remittances flow through Asia via its USDC stablecoin, the company said in a new report highlighting how the cryptocurrency is used beyond speculative trading. USDC is a cryptocurrency pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar, and backed by liquid cash and cash-equivalent assets. In 2022, $130 billion worth of USDC flowed into Asia, the report says. According to Circle, the Asia-Pacific region accounts for 29% of all global digital currency value received compared to 19% for North America, and 22% for Western Europe. These volumes are also made up of remittance transfers, a big deal for emerging markets with a large diaspora, such as the Philippines. In the report, Circle highlighted how it has partnered with Coins.ph – an exchange based in the country – to try and capture some of this business, worth around $36 billion a year.

Manta Pacific, the native layer 2 of Manta Network, has replaced Coinbase's (COIN) Base as the fourth largest scaling solution, according to data source L2Beat.

As of writing, the total value locked (TVL) on Manta Pacific stood at $845 million ahead of Base's $753 million. Total value locked refers to the notional value of tokens deposited in a decentralized finance protocol. The metric is widely used to gauge the popularity of DeFi protocols.

Layer 2s are secondary blockchains built on top of the primary/native blockchain to reduce bottlenecks and improve speed. Last year, Manta Pacific made the move to become a zero-knowledge rollup.

Zero-knowledge rollup is a secondary network that relies on zero-knowledge proofs, a type of cryptography that has become one of 2023’s hottest blockchain trends, partly due to the technology’s ability to provide fast “finality” or settlement of transactions.

- Omkar Godbole