A fair bit happened in the crypto industry overnight, as per. And, as per, we’ll try to give you the gist. Basically, Bitcoin and the market is flat, Coinbase launched something and some tokens are up, some are down.

There you go, you’re welcome. A bit more info? We’ll start with America’s biggest crypto exchange.

 

Coinbase launches Base network

Coinbase has, overnight, announced the launch of Base – a new “layer 2” network (a blockchain built on top of another to scale or provide extra capabilities) with the aim of attracting millions of crypto users in coming years.

Built on the existing Ethereum L2 tech stack Optimism, the aim, explained Coinbase developer Jesse Pollak, is to “onboard one billion users into the crypto economy”.

“In pursuit of this goal, he said, “Base will serve as both a home for Coinbase’s on-chain products and an open ecosystem where anyone can build.”

And by building, he means decentralised apps (dApps), as, according to Will “Lost in Space” Robinson – the VP of engineering at Coinbase – the Base network intends to incubate new projects within the Coinbase company structure at first, with the aim to “progressively decentralise the chain over time”.

Cool, so where’s our free, airdropped token? Nope… unlike other Layer 2s in this increasingly crowded niche of crypto, there won’t be a token.

“We’ve seen a lot of people kind of use tokens to drive activity,” said Pollak.

“But our thesis is that tokens are not the only way to drive activity,” he told US crypto media outlet Decrypt. “Building great products is a great way of driving activity by making things actually useful.”

Nevertheless, the collaborating Layer 2 in this venture, Optimism does have a token economy, and its OP token pumped overnight. The token moved from US$2.36 to $3.01 on the news – a 20% increase. It’s currently pulled back a tad since then, however – see further below.

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.14 trillion, pretty flat since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

Bitcoin (BTC) continues its fairly unenthusiastic politician/dad dance around the US$24k mark for now, then. And Crypto Twitter analysis (which admittedly can be a hell of a lot of confusing white noise) seems to be increasingly all over the shop. A shop filled with bears and bulls blabbing predictions based on lines on charts, fears of rate hikes and recession, and the power of FOMO.

We’ve heard US$30k and $40k BTC predictions for this first quarter or half of the year, and we’ve also heard traders calling for fresh local lows below US$15k.

But here’s a fairly measured response from US analyst Justin Bennett who is watching the US dollar for stocks and crypto directional cues and clues at the moment.

He also notes in a separate tweet regarding the currency markers, “this is not about being bullish or bearish right now. Rising and falling wedges aren’t inherently bearish or bullish, respectively. It’s just a pattern and only offers directional cues with confirmation.” Fair enough.

Meanwhile, as for Ethereum, Ryan Sean Adams from the Bankless crypto podcast and video shows believes the Coinbase Base L2 announcement is bullish for ETH.

 

Uppers and downers: 11–100: Enjin, Stacks and OP pump

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$11.6 billion to about US$484 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)

DAILY PUMPERS

• Enjin (ENJ), (market cap: US$539 million) +13%

• Stacks (STX), (mc: US$1.12 billion) +12%

• Optimism (OP), (mc: US$627 million) +7%

• Synthetix (SNX), (mc: US$825 million) +5%

• Conflux (CFX), (mc: US$617 million) +4%

 

Some reasoning behind some of these pumps, then. As discussed, Optimism is the base layer for, er Coinbase’s Base network and that’s why its OP token has been surging overnight. Some real… “based” info there, right?

As for Enjin, which is one of the leading GameFi, NFT and metaverse-focused crypto ecosystems, it’s a little harder to ascertain what that uptick in price and activity for the ENJ token is about.

The Efinity NFT project and token (EFI), which is built on the Enjin tech stack, was approved by regulators to operate in Japan a week or so ago. That makes it, along with Enjin, one of a small amount of metaverse/gaming-focused approved and regulated projects operating in that region. Maybe it has something to do with that, but we’re reaching.

And regarding Stacks (STX) – the Bitcoin layer 2 network is seeing a surge of activity on the back of the Ordinals non-fungible assets buzz.

 

DAILY SLUMPERS

• NEO (NEO), (market cap: US$904 million) -5%

• Tezos (XTZ), (mc: US$1.24 billion) -5%

• Monero (XMR), (mc: US$2.7 billion) -4%

• 1inch (1INCH), (mc: US$490 million) -4%

• Fantom (FTM), (mc: US$1.38 billion) -3%

 

Around the blocks

Some pertinence and randomness that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse.

Hmm, here’s an interesting rumour spread from “Australia’s crypto queen” Eunice Wong, regarding the developing Web3 music platform Audius…

https://twitter.com/naiivememe/status/1628768835888361472

 

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