Daily News | Rune Speculation Boosts BTC Trading Fees; Worldcoin Launched L2 Network WorldChain; Jupiter's Second Round of LFG Launchpad Voting Starts

2024-04-18, 04:20

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## Crypto Daily Digest: Rune speculation drives up BTC trading fees; Worldcoin launched a Layer-2 network World Chain; Jupiter's second round of LFG Launchpad voting starts
First, let's examine the trading activity of <a href="/price/bitcoin-btc" target="_blank" class="blog_inner_link">Bitcoin</a> ETFs. According to Farside Investor data, on March 6, Grayscale Bitcoin spot ETFs (GBTC) had a cash outflow of $133.1 million. Meanwhile, iShares Trust Bitcoin Spot ETF (IBIT) inflow of $18.1 million, Bitwise Bitcoin Spot ETF (BITB) outflow of $7.3 million, ARK 21Shares Bitcoin Spot ETF (ARKB) outflow of $42.7 million, and WisdomTree Bitcoin Spot ETF (BTCW) net inflow of $6.6 million.

Runes is a new protocol proposed by Bitcoin developer Casey Rodarmor. Its main idea is to implement alternative token transactions on the Bitcoin network. Like BRC-20, Runes aims to allow new tokens to be traded on the Bitcoin network. Runes will use the UTXO model, meaning it should be a more effective token issuance implementation to reduce network congestion.

According to data from CryptoSlam, the Rune Expectations market has achieved great success, with token PUPS (currently BRC-20) trading in millions of dollars per day this month. This is the second most NFT/BRC-20 series in the past seven days. Each BRC-20 PUPS token will have ownership of the PUPS Runes token, which will be converted once Runes is activated.

All these rune hype activities have naturally pushed up the transaction costs of Bitcoin. The 7-day moving average of average online transaction costs has risen from $4.11 at the beginning of this month to the current $12.17.

Worldcoin is about to launch its own L2: World Chain. Worldcoin aims to become the largest financial and identity network. Shortly before the beta release of Worldcoin in July 2023, the team believed that the <a href="/price/ethereum-eth" target="_blank" class="blog_inner_link">Ethereum</a> roll-up was mature enough and migrated to the OP mainnet, including approximately 2 million world coin users.

However, after its actual launch, Worldcoin believes that there are still many areas that need improvement. Although Worldcoin was the first large-scale application to be launched on Ethereum L2 (still the largest application to date), the L2 ecosystem is still in its early stages for large-scale applications.

The World Chain is an OP Stack chain with the main goal of expanding its scale. In the near future, the goal is to increase the Gas limit of Layer 2 blocks significantly. Worldcoin believes that L2 can provide a new trade-off space and hopes to actively explore using Reth as a "native L2" execution client to improve performance in large-scale production environments quickly.

In addition to improvements in the execution layer, World Chain is also exploring other data availability (DA) layers, including DA similar to Plasma.

The DeFi aggregator Jupiter on <a href="/price/solana-sol" target="_blank" class="blog_inner_link">Solana</a> is voting on the next set of candidate projects for LFG Launchpad, and the projects that pass the voting will be launched in May and June. There are six project candidates, including the liquidity aggregation protocol Sanctum, shared network UpRock, decentralized energy network Srcful, integrated DEX project MonkeyDex, AAA level game Nyan Heroes, and on-chain reputation system Solana ID. This round of voting will end on April 21.

Voting to select the best project to launch on Jupiter is crucial, as participating in DAO governance will earn 0.75% of its token supply, regardless of which project users vote for or whether it is ultimately launched.

## Market Trends: BTC once fell below $60,000, less than two days away from Bitcoin halving
Yesterday, Bitcoin briefly fell below $60,000, while BTC spot ETFs experienced net outflows for three consecutive days. Meanwhile, the exchange rate of Altcoins did not fall with the decline of Bitcoin, and their relative performance was relatively strong. Less than two days away from Bitcoin halving.

Regarding macroeconomics, the US stock market experienced a significant decline, with technology stocks leading the decline. The market has been significantly affected by the weakening expectation of the Federal Reserve's interest rate cut.
## Market Hotspots:
Gate.io launched a new coin, OMNI: After the launch of OMNI, its price has dropped by 50%. Omini is a cross Rollup interoperability protocol built on the Ethereum re-staking protocol EigenLayer, aimed at integrating the liquidity of different Layer2. In the context of a general decline in the entire market, on-chain trading is also decreasing.

Public chain SUI rose sharply: According to market news, the cooperation between Sui Network and its ByteDance subsidiary led to a sharp rise in public chain token SUI prices.

GameFi sector's GHST surged: According to official news, GHST will launch a Base Chain and develop its own Layer3 network, significantly increasing GHST prices.
In summary, the overall market shows a downward trend, but some hot sectors and projects still have seen an upward trend. Investors need to monitor market trends and make cautious decisions closely.

## Macro: High-interest rates continue to threaten the global market; The United States, Japan, and South Korea launched a trilateral protocol on currency intervention
On April 18, the political situation and high-interest rates continued to pressure the market, with investors believing that US interest rates would remain high at 4% for the long term. Due to uncertainty about interest rates and profits, investor sentiment remained low. On Tuesday, US central bank officials, including Federal Reserve Chairman Powell, no longer guided when to cut interest rates but stated that monetary policy requires longer restrictions.

On April 17, due to investors evaluating the Federal Reserve's interest rate stance and a series of weak financial reports at the beginning of the earnings season, the US stock market experienced a volatile decline on Wednesday. The US dollar fell slightly overnight, while a "trilateral protocol" was reached between the United States, Japan, and South Korea, agreeing to "close consultations" on the foreign exchange market in the first trilateral financial dialogue, acknowledging concerns from Tokyo and Seoul about the recent significant depreciation of their currencies.

The trilateral protocol is likely to open the door for intervention measures to slow down the rise of the US dollar in Asia.

The performance of the three major indexes is as follows: the Dow Jones index fell 0.12%, the S&P 500 index fell 0.58%, and the Nasdaq index fell 1.15%.

According to the Federal Reserve's Brown Book Economic Activity Survey, economic activity slightly expanded from late February to early April, but businesses are concerned that progress in reducing inflation will halt.

CME's FedWatch tool shows that the market has begun to largely digest expectations of the Federal Reserve's interest rate cut in June, with expectations for at least a 25 basis point rate cut dropping to 16.8% and expectations for a July rate cut dropping to 46%.

Due to the strong auction of 20-year treasury bonds, the yield of treasury bonds fell further from the previous day's high in several months, and the stock market recovered its decline, of which the latest price of 10-year treasury bond was about 4.59%.

On Thursday, Asian stock markets slightly rose in mixed trading, while the US dollar took a breather as investors reassessed interest rate prospects and the bond market stabilized. The MSCI Asia Pacific stock index, the most widely used outside of Japan, rose 0.4%, but the regional trend is uneven. The Nikkei Index in Japan fell 0.4% and has fallen 4.3% this week, possibly marking the largest weekly decline since December 2022.

Regarding commodities, Brent crude oil futures rose 10 cents, or 0.11%, to $87.39 per barrel, while US crude oil futures rose 2 cents to $82.71 per barrel. Due to demand concerns, the two benchmark indices fell 3% on the previous trading day. Part of the reason is the easing of concerns about Iran's oil sanctions and the lack of clear response from Israel or the United States to Iran's weekend attacks.

The price of gold is slightly below last week's historical high of $2,366 per ounce.

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<div>Author:**Sherry S. & Icing**, Gate.io Researcher
<div>Translator:Joy Z.
<div class="info-tips">\*This article represents only the views of the researcher and does not constitute any investment suggestions.
<div>\*Gate.io reserves all rights to this article. Reposting of the article will be permitted provided Gate.io is referenced. In all cases, legal action will be taken due to copyright infringement.
</div>