After July’s green candles, August 2022 resumed a downward trend for crypto-assets across the board, the team at Kraken noted in a new report.
Bitcoin, Ethereum and the rest of the crypto market “saw negative returns for the month.”
Prices of BTC (-14%) and ETH (-8%) “decreased after July’s gains.” Metaverse (-23%) and DeFi (-21%) “led sectors to the downside.”
NFT market activity also “slowed last month, with average daily users and average daily transactions falling -13.5% and -13.4% MoM, respectively.” NFT volume also “fell with average daily volume dropping -7.7%.”
The report from Kraken also mentioned that the crypto industry “made headlines on August 8, as the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Tornado Cash, an Ethereum coin-mixing tool that privatizes transactions on the network.” Four days later, the Netherlands’ financial crimes investigation unit “arrested an alleged Tornado Cash developer.”
The report further noted that whale activity for ETH “was higher than whale activity for BTC.”
Ethereum saw “a significant increase in the number of whales but a slight decrease in the total amount of ETH they held.” The number of Bitcoin whales “inched higher while their total BTC holdings decreased slightly.”
August’s downturn “didn’t deter big names in the space as they continued to make headlines.”
BlackRock launched its first private trust offering that “gives investors direct exposure to the price of BTC.”
Wall Street giant Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC) “started live-testing private blockchain technology to aid in clearing and settling transactions.” DTCC clears “almost all trades carried out on the $40T U.S. stock market.” CoinFund Ventures launched “its first fund of $300M to invest in companies in the crypto sector showing commercial traction.”
Over the same period, Ethereum developers “successfully executed the third and final test Merge on the Goerli network in preparation for the long-awaited Ethereum 2.0 update, the Merge.” Shortly after, the Ethereum Foundation announced that the Merge is “on track for rollout sometime between September 10-20, 2022.”
As mentioned in the update from Kraken, crypto-assets “underperformed in August compared to previous months as the industry faces headwinds such as the Tornado Cash sanctions.”
Inflation fears also “continued to linger in August, further impacting crypto performance.”
However, these events have “not prevented TradFi institutions from further exploring crypto and branching out into the industry, nor have they stopped fundraising efforts and investment in NFTs and GameFi applications.”
ETH whale activity ‘increased in August, likely in anticipation of the Merge.”