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After seeing some action yesterday, crypto prices are back in the mix today. This week started with Bitcoin price going under $26,000 before recovering and exceeding $26,800 on Wednesday before retracing the entire move.

At the time of writing, BTC has been trading at $26,460 while Ether is exchanging hands at $1,623. Ethereum also reached a remarkable milestone of exceeding $10 billion in revenue within seven years, with the total crypto market back at $1.09 trillion. 

This crypto price action coincides with rising interest rates that sent the 10-year Treasury yield to a fresh 16-year high of 4.63% and the US dollar index hitting a new 10-month high at 106.48. The oil price has also risen to a new 2023 high of $93.53 per barrel.

Rising greenback index and interest rates are putting pressure on the price of not just Bitcoin and the broad crypto market but also the traditional markets, as seen with the S&P 500 declining to a three-month low. According to a Wall Street Journal survey, this has led to 41% of US chief financial officers (CFOs) trimming capital spending plans and 42% cutting back on operational costs. This is up from 30% planning on cutting capital spending and 27% looking to trim operational costs in the fourth quarter of 2022.

The positive momentum in the market also comes amidst the potential government shutdown in the US, which poses a challenge to the Federal Reserve’s interest rate plans, potentially necessitating a reevaluation of their approach. The event is also likely forcing the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to announce delays on decisions for a couple of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as the agency will be working with a small staff if the shutdown happens as it is expected to sap the staffing by more than 90%.

On Wednesday, the Commission extended deadlines on decisions on spot Ether ETF filings from ARK Invest and VanEck. It has also begun consideration of a spot Bitcoin ETF application from Franklin Templeton and Hashdex’s spot Ether ETF after delaying a decision on spot Bitcoin ETF applications from Ark 21Shares and Global X earlier in the week.

Meanwhile, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler maintained his negative stance against crypto in congressional testimony on Wednesday. In remarks before the House Financial Services Committee, Gensler said the securities regulator still hasn’t decided what to do about a judge’s ruling in favor of Grayscale in regard to its appeal for a Spot-based Bitcoin ETF against the agency in August. “It’s still an active consideration of the commission,” Gensler said in his testimony. 

“Our patience is wearing thin,” said the panel’s chairman, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), in his opening statement of the hearing. He also noted the SEC’s “losing streak with the courts” and criticized its “crusade against the digital assets ecosystem,” which the congressman argued is causing confusion and “lasting damage” in the industry.

“Your efforts to choke off the digital asset ecosystem… is clear to all,” said McHenry, who pointed out that back in 2018, Gensler referred to BTC, ETH, BCH, and LTC as non-securities only for his current views on the latter three coins to be less clear. In response, Gensler only talked about Bitcoin, saying the crypto asset “does not meet the Howey test, which is the law of the land about being an investment contract.”

During the hearing, crypto supporter Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) also noted Gensler’s “relentless loyalty to the largest financial institutions” by pointing out his long history of working with banking giant Goldman Sachs, where he accumulated much of his wealth. 

“Despite your years of rhetoric, I’m convinced you are not an impartial regulator,” Emmer told Gensler, adding that he’s busy consolidating his own power at the expense of everyday Americans by “crushing opportunities” and the financial future of the country.

Emmer further highlighted the agency’s losses in court against crypto firms Grayscale and Ripple, which is saying that the Chairman “don’t have the legal authority to accomplish your goal of squashing competition in the financial markets.”

Despite all this, some believe there’s a bullish argument to be made about Bitcoin based on its technical aspects, including the next Bitcoin halving event in April 2024. “We start with the halving, pushing us from summer to fall. That’s the parabolic time when people go crazy and buy with leverage,” said Morgan Creek Capital Management’s Mark Yusko in an interview.

This Time, It’s GLMR’s Turn

Among the altcoins, Terra’s LUNA has been pumping following LUNA’s community passing a proposal that makes them move away with the minting of new USTC stablecoins, which was the supposed-to-be stablecoin of the Terra Luna ecosystem. This is happening while its founder, Do Kwon, has asked a federal court to reject the SEC’s request to question him in the US about the catastrophic crash of his company.

Bitcoin Cash and Maker are particularly outshining all the other altcoins, up over 15% and 19%, respectively, this week.

When it comes to this week’s biggest gainers, the GLMR token made its presence known with a surge of 64% to about $0.269 on Wednesday before losing some of these gains. As of writing, GLMR is trading at $0.235, down 4.4% in the past 24 hours while managing $51 mln in trading volume, which has declined 32.4% from a day ago.

In fact, the token hit its all-time low at $0.160 just last week and is already up 54.8% since then.

The $178.5 million market cap coin has actually been on a downturn since Feb. 21, following a 70% spike in value prior to that in the year. Since then, the price has lost about 60% of its value and is down 30% in 2023 so far. GLMR is also down by 46.7% over the past year. 

The token was first released in the open market in January 2022, only to hit an all-time high (ATH) of $19.50 on Jan. 11, as per Coingecko. However, GLPR’s price has slumped a whopping 98.78% since its peak.

GLMR is the native token of Moonbeam, an Ethereum-compatible parachain on the Polkadot network. The token has a total supply of a little over one billion, out of which about 751 million GLMR are currently circulating in the market. It is used to pay transaction fees and support network operations such as staking and on-chain governance. GLMR holders can delegate their tokens to earn more tokens on the Moonbeam dApp.

As for GLMR’s latest price action, it was yet again the result of exuberant Korean traders, as the native token of the Moonbeam protocol is the newest one to gain a listing on the leading South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Upbit.

The trading platform announced at the beginning of this week that it has opened the GLMR/BTC trading pair. Currently, GLMR/BTC on Upbit accounts for 26.70% of the token’s global trading volume, with GLMR/USDT pair on the world’s leading crypto exchange, Binance leading with 45.8% share, as per Coingecko. The token is also available on other major exchanges such as Kraken, Crypto.com, HTX, Kucoin, Bybit, Gate.io, and OKX.

Now, even three days later, GLMR/BTC on Upbit is in 16th place in terms of the exchange’s volume share at 1.16%. Korean traders on Upbit are currently most interested in Loom Network, ThunderCore, STP, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin, and XRP. 

As a major South Korean trading platform, a listing on Upbit always garners significant attention and price spikes for crypto assets. This listing resulted in a spike of 2400% in the trading volume of the token. However, since then, the price has been showing some weakness. For GLMR’s price, on the upside, resistance is present around $0.3, right below the 200-day simple moving average. 

Click here to learn all about investing in Moonbeam (GLMR). 

Moonbeam’s Move Towards Decentralization

Moonbeam is a smart contract platform that was launched last year after completing its three-phase process. It actually won the second parachain auction on the layer 1 blockchain Polkadot. 

The platform makes it easy to build applications on the Polkadot blockchain, and these applications make token economic models, issuance schedules, governance, or incentivizing nodes secure and easy to execute. Meanwhile, Moonbeam’s Ethereum compatibility allows developers to leverage existing Solidity smart contracts and dApp frontends to it with minimal changes.

This way, Moonbeam combines the best of both the familiar and easy-to-use Ethereum and the scalable, interoperable architecture of Polkadot, allowing for cross-chain connected applications. Hence, it is designed to service the assets and users on a single, specific chain.

In addition to all this, Moonbeam has its own consensus mechanism, with the collator node operators producing blocks that are verified and finalized by validators on the Polkadot relay chain.

Most recently, the crypto project team announced an airdrop to reward its most active customers and community enthusiasts. As per this, the first generation of GLMR delegators started getting their commemorative “I Delegated” NFTs. Every GLMR holder who delegated their tokens before Sept. 22 is eligible for an NFT airdrop. This initiative is designed to encourage the holders for the next rounds of delegation. 

Earlier this month, the network announced the procedure of delegation, inviting all GLMR enthusiasts to support this move to achieve the ultimate level of decentralization.

Through voting delegation, the platform aims to allow users who lack time or expertise to have a say in governance and ensure a broader representation of community interests. Moreover, it amplifies the voices of those who share common interests, concerns, or values. 

“Delegates are empowered to actively participate and make informed decisions that influence the trajectory of the network through increased voting power. They play a crucial role in ensuring inclusive governance, promoting increased participation, leveraging expertise, and driving well-rounded decision-making,” noted Moonbeam.

The project even created a matchmaking survey to help token holders find the right person to delegate their tokens to and empower the entire community to make informed decisions about the future of the network.

Currently, there are 150 entities that are acting as delegates, according to data provided by Moonbeam’s official delegation portal. The majority of these delegators joined the ecosystem recently in July-August this year with the most influential communities of delegates, including dozens of entities.

Among these, dev0_sik is the biggest one, with 63 total delegates who have collectively delegated 266.57K GLMR tokens, providing it with a voting weight of 1.80%. Its operator defines itself as an early Moonriver and Moonbeam supporter who was selected as one of the Launch-Collators on these platforms and has been securing the network ever since.

Moonriver, a community-led sister parachain on Kusama, is a companion network to Moonbeam and provides a permanently incentivized canary network. Any new code first ships to Moonriver, where it can be tested and verified under real economic conditions, and once proven, it is shipped to Moonbeam on Polkadot. Moonrise’s native token MOVR has a market cap of $34 mln and is trading at $4.13, down about 33% year-to-date (YTD) and more than 99% from its $494 peak in Sept. 2021.

When it comes to the protocol’s development, back in May, Moonbeam Network (GLMR) allowed the largest Ethereum DEX Uniswap (UNI) to land on the Polkadot ecosystem. At the time, the network also launched the Prime Protocol in order to establish the first cross-chain decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, which allows users to manage their assets across multiple chains from a single location.

Concluding Thoughts 

The crypto king, Bitcoin, is currently facing resistance at its 50-DEMA, with the market calling for a $30,000 level. But for that, the largest cryptocurrency has to maintain the $26,000 support level. Meanwhile, the wider DeFi lending and borrowing sector has been witnessing growth, which can be attributed to the rise of real-world assets (RWA) as well as the use of liquid staking tokens as collateral. Total deposits in liquid staking protocols have grown 5,870% since Jan. 2023, reaching $919.0 million by the end of August, as per a recent CoinGecko report.

As for GLMR, the Upbit listing has ignited optimism for the token within the cryptocurrency community. And as Moonbeam pushes forward with its vision of facilitating dApps, its token and platform move towards achieving broader recognition and adoption.

Click here to learn all about buying Moonbeam (GLMR).