Market Trend｜El Salvador Banishes Tax On Tech Innovation, FTX Gets Approval To Sell LedgerX For $50 Million

Across the past week, the cryptocurrency market has endured a mixed bag filled with minor losses and gains throughout the top 100. With this minimal amount of movement, the news side of crypto has been filled to the brim with relatively bullish news. In the past week, El Salvador has announced a bill that removes tax on technological innovations, including cryptocurrencies. In addition, Coinbase’s stock has soared following strong Q1 2023 revenue growth. In more topical news, FTX has been granted approval from the bankruptcy court to sell LedgerX for $50 million.

The Latest News

El Salvador Banishes Tax On Tech Innovation

El Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, has recently signed a law that eliminated taxation on technological innovations in the country. The Innovation and Technology Manufacturing Incentive (ITMI) revealed a broad spectrum of sectors where tax removal applies – which includes crypto.

This initiative is set to encourage crypto miners and crypto firms to migrate their operational base to the country as this new law will promote innovation and growth without the high levels of taxation seen throughout nations such as the USA.

Illustrative Art (Image Courtesy of Getty Images)

Coinbase Stock Soars After Revenue Growth

This past Thursday, Coinbase released its Q1 2023 shareholder letter, which emphasized its commitment to revitalizing the current outdated financial s and expanding access to cryptocurrency, outlining their aspiration to bring one billion people into the crypto eco. The report marked a turning point for Coinbase as they demonstrated their commitment to cutting costs, enhancing operational excellence, risk management, improving product innovation, and regulatory clarity.

As a result, Coinbase reported a 22% quarter-on-quarter growth in net revenue, a 24% Q/Q decrease in total operating expenses, a net loss of $79 million, and a return to positive Adjusted EBITDA of $248 million. Following the letter release, Coinbase stock closed at $49.22 (+1.51) on Thursday. However, COIN has since surged to around $53.35 (+8.39%), which has beat analysts’ estimates in net price growth.

FTX Gets Approval To Sell LedgerX For $50 Million

In a recent development in the ongoing FTX bankruptcy proceedings, The bankruptcy Court of Delaware has authorized the exchange to sell its LedgerX branch. The LedgerX branch of FTX is not bankrupt and its sale is part of a broader initiative to help the bankrupt exchange manage its repayment proceedings to its creditors. The approval from the court comes less than two weeks after the failed exchange announced that it had reached an agreement with an affiliate of Miami International Holdings to sell LedgerX in a multi-million dollar deal.

LedgerX is set to be purchased by M7 Holdings LLC for $50 million imminently.

Current Project Trends

Based on data provided by CoinMarketCap, the top-gaining project across the past week was KIWIGO (KGO), an asset that acts as a native token for the business service provider platform KIWIGO. As a result, KGO has accelerated by 613.10% in the past 24 hours and a notable 490.86% across the past week.

The Current BTC Trend

Weekly btc price Data (Data Courtesy of Coinmarketcap)

Across the past week, Bitcoin’s valuation has declined by 0.75% after a week thwarted by significant volatility that has volleyed it above and below its 7-day SMA threshold and between the $27.8k and $29.8k zones. Entering the week at around $29.53k, Bitcoin immediately decelerated and sunk to around $29k, plummeting sharply below its 7-day SMA before further descending into the upper $27.8k zone. It wasn’t until the late hours of the 4th that BTC began to regain its footing and push closer to the $28.8k threshold and trade at an average of $29.1k – yet it still remained shy of its 7-day SMA. However, with this increased volatility and negative trading trajectory, it is plausible that BTC may further decline in the coming week.

In light of this, Bitcoin’s MVRV (market value to realized value) sharply spiked mid-week, yet it has fallen steeply for the remainder of the week. has continued to decline over the past week. Entering the week at 1.446, it rose to a weekly high on the 2nd at 1.45, before sharply declining throughout the remainder of the week and closing at 1.447. However, in spite of this decline, BTC’s MVRV remains only minutely lower than the week prior, suggesting BTC’s valuation is continuing to move away from the undersold territory and that its true value is being realized.

7-Day BTC MVRV Data (Data Courtesy of Blockchain.com)

The Situation of ETH Staking

As of the 5th of May, the state of Ethereum staking remains positive, which can be attributed to the impressive price performance across the past month, which has led it to increase by over 10%. This increase comes in light of the recent deployment of the Shanghai Upgrade, which allowed all validators with staked Ethereum to progressively redeem their tokens and subsequent yield earnt. This led to a price increase prior to the deployment and immediately in light of, as well as an improvement within the community sentiment. However, with ETH bobbing between the upper $1.8k and lower $1.9k zones, ETH appears to be being pushed downward by the $2k resistance zone, with ETH failing to fully test this zone in recent weeks. This suggests that the positive repercussions of the Shanghai Upgrade may be beginning to falter.

(Data Courtesy of Dune)

Here are some key figures from across the past week to consolidate this:

Total validators: 620,473
Depositor Addresses: 90,200
Total ETH Deposited: 16,353,927
Liquid Staking Percentage: 33.84%
Staked Share Of ETH Supply: 16.77%

The Current Macro Situation

Economists Expect Economic Rebound In Asia

As economists are divided by global economic recovery, many analysts have confirmed that they expect the economic recovery to be most probable across Asia. Some analysts have attributed this to China’s upcoming reopening, which they expect to drive a significant rebound for the country and to further bolster economic activity across the entire continent. More than 90% of chief economists expect at least a moderate growth in both East Asia and Pacific and South Asia. However, three-quarters of chief economists still expect weak or very week growth in Europe, thus emphasizing the geographic disparity in global economic performance this year.

The Current Web3 Trend

The Web3 industry is experiencing an unprecedented boom in recent months, with the surge in AI technology, interoperable crypto platforms, and the on-ramping of Web2 platforms to Web3, all propelling substantial growth for the Web3 industry. This current interest in Web3 has been reaffirmed at Consensus 2023, where businesses and moguls alike expressed their interest in Web3, despite the increasing American Web3 regulatory challenges.

The annual blockchain conference attracted over 15,000 attendees, 220 sponsors, and 410 speakers in Austin, Texas, thus demonstrating that in spite of the US cracking down on crypto adoption and ically restricting the growth of US crypto companies, many still remain keen on the technology and its utility. Caitlin Long, founder, and CEO of Custodia Bank, addressed this in an interview with Cointelegraph, stating: “We’ve seen during crypto winters before where Consensus gets overrun with high time preference people and companies (for example, multiple Lambo’s parked out front of the New York Hilton in 2018), and in bust years the low-time preference people and companies just keep building. This year was the latter.”