Bitcoin Market Analysis (August 4, 2022)

[Yesterday's resumption] Federal Reserve officials made hawkish remarks again, extinguishing expectations of interest rate cuts next year one after another. Kashkari said that the possibility of the Fed cutting interest rates next year is very small, and the more likely scenario is to raise interest rates and then keep them unchanged. Daly said a 50-basis-point rate hike in September is reasonable, but a 75-basis-point hike might be more appropriate if inflation keeps surging, adding that the market is ahead of its time for a rate cut by the Fed next year. Bullard believes that the Fed should let the policy rate reach 3.75% to 4% during the year, which means that the Fed will raise interest rates by 150 basis points by the end of the year.

Combining the content of the speeches of officials the day before yesterday and yesterday, it is not difficult to see that they unanimously believe that inflation has not slowed down, and fighting inflation is still the top priority of the Fed. The U.S. economy is not in recession, and the Fed still has room to tighten policy further. The market is ahead of expectations for a rate cut, and there will be no clear answer in the next month or two. Still leaning toward sharp rate hikes.

The above is all the statements made by the Fed officials to the market recently. So how does the market interpret it? We saw that the US stock market went up in the college entrance examination last night. The Dow closed up 1.28%, the Nasdaq Composite and the S&P 500 closed up 2.59% and 1.53% respectively. The Nasdaq closed at its highest level since May 4. The U.S. dollar index once approached the 107 mark, reaching a maximum of 106.84. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond rose sharply in the U.S. market, breaking through 2.85% at one point, and now remains around 2.7%. The macro level of August is an information gap period, so as far as the current market is concerned, no news is the greatest good news. This has been repeatedly mentioned in the morning paper before. Whether it is the traditional financial market or the currency circle at the macro level, It's all the same trend.

In response to the theft of SOL wallet yesterday, SlowMist released an analysis of the Solana attack. According to the data provided by the Solana Foundation, about 60% of the stolen users used Phantom, about 30% used Slope, and the rest used Trust Wallet, Coin98 Wallet, etc. , IOS and Android were not spared. When analyzing Slope Wallet (Android, Version: 2.2.2), it was found that it used sentry's services. Sentry is a widely used service that runs on "o7e.slope[.]finance". Sentry's service collects sensitive data such as mnemonics and private keys from the Slope wallet and sends it to o7e.slope[.]finance/api/4/envelope/ when the wallet is created, and finds Version:>=2.2. The sentry service in package 0 collects mnemonics and sends them to "o7e.slope[.]finance", while Version:2.1.3 found no obvious behavior for collecting mnemonics or private keys. Slope Wallet(Android, >= Version: 2.2.0) was released after 06/24/2022, so Slope users after that date are affected. For the other 60% of users who use Phantom Wallet, after analyzing the Phantom (version: 22.07.11_65) wallet, it is found that Phantom (Android, version: 22.07.11_65) also uses the sentry service to collect user information, but no obvious collection assistance has been found so far. The act of remembering words or private keys.

In the first half of 2022, market participants spent 963,227 ETH on NFT minting on the Ethereum blockchain (involving over 1.09 million wallets, if free NFT minting is included, the number of participating wallets is about 1.5 million), approximately $2.7 billion. It is reported that more than half of these ETHs remained in NFT projects, accounting for 50.7%, and the remaining 45.7% went to non-physical wallets.

Ethereum testnet Sepolia will undergo a merged Execution Layer (EL) upgrade at block height 1735371 (expected on August 17). This upgrade will cause disconnection of clients on the execution layer that have not been converted to PoS, and node operators need to upgrade the execution layer clients before this. The Ethereum Foundation said similar upgrades are expected once Goerli and the Ethereum mainnet transition to PoS.

Miners’ BTC holdings increased significantly in July by 6,885 BTC, and their total balance was 1,865,272 BTC as of July 29, a record high, and Bitcoin miner reserves have fully recovered from the outflow/sell-off that occurred in June. The top 10 exchanges hold a combined 7 million ETH, the highest level since May 2021.

Crypto VC firm Hashed has confirmed it lost more than $3 billion in the LUNA crash. Hashed had bought 30 million LUNA tokens in the early days and was worth more than $3.6 billion at one point in April. Earlier news, Hashed may lose more than 3.5 billion US dollars in the LUNA crash.

[Bitcoin market analysis] Last night's surge in U.S. stocks did not lead to the rise of the broader market in the currency circle, but one thing is certain is that the hype and merger event has not ended. Recognized hot concept sectors have enjoyed gratifying gains, such as LDO, which has hit a new high.

We have survived the most difficult first half of the year. In fact, there are still quite a few opportunities left for us in the second half of the year, such as the related tracks and sectors caused by the merger of ETH. For example, the positive impact of ETH's merger on ETH itself. Such as the second half of the World Cup is expected and so on. These are some lucrative hot tracks.

At the 4-hour level, Bitcoin is still in an adjustment trend, and there is no obvious support signal in the current trend. We might as well pay more attention to the ETH merger event. At the 4-hour level, Bitcoin’s lower support is around 22,000, and its upper resistance is around 24,000.

[Risk Reminder] Digital assets fluctuate greatly and the risks are extremely high. Please participate with caution, put an end to the full-cow stud, and refuse loan leverage.