Late Tuesday witnessed another dip in the crypto market, plunging Bitcoin to approximately $25,500 and Ethereum just below $1,600. Although prices have since seen some recovery—Bitcoin hovering around $26,000 and Ethereum at $1,640 as of this writing—the total crypto market capitalization barely maintains its position above $1 trillion.
This recent dip highlighted Bitcoin’s most dismal performance since November. Glassnode data suggests that Bitcoin’s short-term holders, typically more reactive to fleeting price shifts, are predominantly at a loss on their investments.
This downturn implies that a staggering 88% of the supply—controlled by short-term holders (STHs) or entities with wallets that have held coins for less than 155 days—has sunk into unrealized losses. To put this in perspective, 2.26 million BTC out of the 2.56 million owned by these STHs were procured at a rate surpassing the present market value.
In a recent edition of Glassnode’s newsletter, a distinct escalation was noted in the volume of STHs experiencing losses. This surge typically follows marked market zeniths, as evident in May 2021, December 2021, and now. Simultaneously, Bitcoin’s transfer from these STHs to exchanges has accelerated, often indicative of an intent to cash out or leverage as margins in derivatives trading.
These STHs are predominantly in the red regarding their investments, and their sensitivity to price is escalating. Their increasing apprehension and the conspicuous absence of a compelling market storyline underscores the market’s immediate challenges. Despite heavyweight traditional finance entrants like BlackRock and Fidelity, spot Bitcoin ETFs still await approval. Concurrently, rising bond yields indicate tightened liquidity conditions on a broader scale. Collectively, these elements cast a shadow over the market’s future.
The prevalent price instability has also swayed market sentiment towards apprehension, as reflected in the Crypto Fear & Greed Index. At present, the index stands at 37 out of 100—a drop from last week’s neutral 52.
In this climate, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) weighed in, arguing that innovative solutions to payment challenges shouldn’t be deemed ‘risky’ solely due to their novelty. Yet, it also remarked that the allure of cryptocurrencies could be “misleading.”
The Consultative Group of Directors of Financial Stability, comprising representatives from central banks of countries including the US, Canada, and Brazil, posited in an extensive report that while cryptocurrencies have been touted as cost-effective payment alternatives in regions with volatile exchange rates or soaring inflation, they have often intensified financial risks in emerging economies. Hence, they advocate treating them akin to traditional assets.
In addition, the BIS, a leading global banking institution, opined that a meticulous, risk-based regulatory approach towards cryptocurrency will become indispensable, especially if its adoption by mainstream investors grows and its integration with the conventional financial framework strengthens.
Green Amidst Red: SFP Enjoys Uptrend
The crypto market has gone deep red over the past week, with many coins recording double-digit losses. Only a handful of coins have managed to be in green. And among the top 200 cryptocurrencies, SFP is a $196.7 million market cap token, which has been trending upwards, unlike the broad crypto market.
In the past 24 hours, SFP has jumped 7.6% against USD to now trade at $0.53237 while up 8.1% against BTC and 5% against BNB. During this period, the token managed $41.26 million in trading volume, which is an increase of 38.90% from a day ago.
This past week has been a volatile one for SFP. The token started this week around $0.50, and as the broad crypto market dropped on Tuesday, SFP also went down to $0.432 before surging over 23%. The token is currently up about 37% in 2023 so far, while the price ranged between $0.35 and $0.60 this year.
At the time of its launch during the last bull market in Feb. 2021, the SFP token was trading at $1.34. So, while SFP is also up 46.3% over the past year, it is still down 87.3% from its all-time high (ATH) of $4.19 hit in Feb. 2021. However, the lowest SFP has ever gone was in June 2022 at $0.269.
SFP is the native token of the comprehensive non-custodial crypto wallet suite SafePal, which has a total supply of 500 million, of which 369 million are currently circulating in the market.
Out of its total supply, 20% is reserved for the SafePal Foundation, a non-profit that governs the network. The founding team kept 20% and reserved 15% for airdrops, while 15% was allocated to build and market the company’s product and 5% to grow SafePal’s ecosystem, with 10% of it sold in a public sale and 15% in private funding rounds.
Founded in January 2018 by CEO Veronica Wong, SafePal is a hardware wallet, mobile app, and browser extension wallet solution provider. In October 2018, Binance invested in the platform through the Binance Labs Incubation Program, and in the following years, SafePal integrated further with Binance by adding support for its DEX and the Binance Chain mainnet.
When it comes to SafePal’s products, its hardware wallet, the SafePal S1, which was launched in 2019, costs $49.99 and can be controlled by the mobile app, which also functions as a software wallet. The hardware wallet is a mobile-friendly, EAL 5+ secure electronic device that helps protect users’ private keys by keeping them fully offline and has advanced security features like an anti-tamper self-erasing mechanism to remove online attack vectors and safeguard against malicious actors.
SafePal’s mobile wallet, which is a free application available for download on Google Play, Android, and Apple IOS, wasn’t launched until 2020. Meanwhile, its browser extension came in 2022 and is compatible with Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Brave browser. The extension also supports one-click wallet import from other wallet brands, such as TrustWallet and Metamask, for convenience.
The platform serves more than 10 million users across the globe and supports 100+ blockchains with their tokens and NFTs. The platform also offers crypto asset management solutions like cross-chain swapping, trading, and yielding tools for users.
When it comes to SFP, it is a BEP-20 and ERC-20 utility and governance token that powers the entire SafePal ecosystem. The token can be converted seamlessly to gas across chains in the app and used to purchase SafePal products at a discount as well as rewards for education programs. Holders can stake their tokens to earn extra tokens from SafePal’s interest-bearing Earn program.
Each quarter, the platform uses some of its profits to buy SFP tokens from the open market and gives them to the community treasury. The amount to be allocated to the community treasury is decided by token holders.
SFP token holders can create proposals and vote for new features, such as adding new blockchains on SafePal products as well as the Treasury fund usage. However, in order to submit a proposal, one needs to hold more than 500,000 SFP tokens.
Click here to learn all about buying Safepal (SFP).
Latest Developments: SafePal’s Wallet Suite
This week, SafePal released the latest versions of its products: Browser Extension V2.16.0, Mobile App V4.1.1, and Hardware Wallet Firmware V1.0.52. These latest versions come with support for more blockchains, enhanced market data for coins and NFT, and additional integration related to dApps and approval notifications.
Earlier this month, the wallet also announced support for the payment giant PayPal’s newly launched stablecoin PYUSD.
Over the last couple of days, prominent exchanges like Kraken, Bybit, and Crypto.com have also announced support for PYUSD, and so far, 37 million stablecoins have been minted. While the stablecoin has the potential to revolutionize online transactions and may even help in the mainstream adoption of stablecoins, it might face some regulatory challenges.
Meanwhile, late last month, SafePal unveiled the S1 Pro, an upgraded variation of its flagship S1 hardware wallet, which it said at the time was ready for distribution in August. The wallet is built with a premium aluminum alloy body, a stronger, scratch-resistant screen, a camera with adjusted positioning, and longer battery life while retaining the signature air-gapped cold-storage qualities, portability, and security of the S1, with bolstered durability.
This move has been an integral part of SafePal’s ambitious plan to position itself in Japan and other key Asian markets, which the company believes “have tremendous potential but require tailored localization efforts to properly reach users.”
The wallet suite is also progressing on the open-sourcing of its solutions, which is targeted to be completed around the beginning of 2024.
Around that time, SafePal also announced integration with Binance Labs and Gate.io Labs-backed global crypto tax compliance software Kryptoskatt, allowing users to easily complete cryptocurrency tax calculations, reporting, and portfolio management in the SafePal app and browser extension. The tax calculations are based on the public on-chain transaction history based on the user’s selected public wallet address and region filled by them without requiring KYC.
About a week before this, the blockchain agnostics wallet suite offered greater cross-chain interoperability for SFP by migrating part of the supply of SFP tokens from BEP-20 to ERC-20.
With Ethereum being the largest layer 1 blockchain and home to the most amount of assets locked, SafePal migrated 200 million SFP tokens to Ethereum that will provide greater accessibility and liquidity to its native token and its utilities, mutually benefiting both token holders and the platform.
To further strengthen its interoperability, SafePal has also integrated the zkSync Era in recent months, marking its first step into the zk ecosystem. As a result, native tokens on zkSync Era are fully compatible with SafePal software, hardware, and browser extension wallets. Besides zkSync Era, the platform has also integrated other zero-knowledge and EVM networks such as Polygon zkEVM, Caduceus Metaverse Protocol, and Telos into its wallet suite.
Earlier this year, in Feb, on the 5th Anniversary of SafePal, CEO Wong revealed the company’s plans for this year, which included aggregating more asset management services to strengthen the value proposition of wallets as the ultimate Web3 aggregator and gateway by supporting more blockchains, swap/trade/earn/fiat funnels, and adding deeper support for NFT UX scenarios.
SafePal is also focusing on lowering the barriers to onboarding users by supporting more local languages and integrating new solutions to facilitate easier private key custody and social recovery.
Moreover, the idea is to build a safer wallet experience for the masses by continuing to report scams, phishing websites, and fraudulent social media accounts, block malicious 3rd party DApps, provide education for user security, facilitate and work towards the open-sourcing of our wallet solutions, and offering more secure and intuitive wallet options, even for more mainstream users.
Concluding Thoughts
As we saw, the crypto market is experiencing a downturn, and the sentiments aren’t looking good. And we may see more weakness in the coming weeks, something the month of September is known for. However, amidst this, Safepal (SFP) is rising, despite no immediate catalyst at play, but regardless, the wallet provider is constantly developing and upgrading its products and expanding to new markets, which works in favor of SafePal’s token. All this progress can help the wallet gain traction when the retail returns and a new wave of the bull market comes that, in turn, can help SFP gain in value in tandem with the broad crypto market.
The post Safepal (SFP) Up Almost 8% While Other Cryptos Grapple with Double-Digit Losses appeared first on Securities.io.
