Q9 Weekly | Reasons to be Cheerful

5 min readDec 2, 2022

2 December 2022

Given the rough month the crypto industry just faced, we thought it would be worth zooming out and highlighting some of the positive developments in the crypto industry and global markets:

Long term holders of BTC remain unfazed by recent events. 67% of the BTC supply has been held for longer than 1 year.

Source: Messari

Individuals are still accumulating. Bitcoin Shrimps (those holding less than 1 BTC) have added 96.2k BTC to their holdings since the FTX collapsed, an all-time high balance increase.

Source: Glassnode

Global crypto adoption continues and regulatory frameworks continue being approved.

The Federal Reserve says “it makes sense to moderate the pace of our rate hikes”. Positive news for risk assets.

Source: CME

Global inflation is likely to have peaked, key data indicators suggest. Producer price inflation (inflation from the viewpoint of industry and business) has started to fall in many countries.

Source: FT

Commodity and freight rates, a major source of stubborn inflation, are returning to pre-Covid levels ($ per 40-foot shipping container).

Source: Freightos Data

Equities have posted positive gains for the second month in a row — the first time since summer 2021 — as the Fed’s comments fuel hopes that the pace of interest-rate increases will slow.

Source: TradingView

Consumption is strong and back above pre-Covid levels in the US.

Source: FT

After the success of the Merge, we have plenty more Ethereum upgrades to look forward to: The Surge, the Verge, the Purge, and the Splurge are all to come.

Binance has launched an Industry Recovery Fund to support the sector and buy distressed crypto assets.

The number of Ethereum addresses holding 32+ ETH just hit a 2 year high (this is the amount you need to stake ETH directly)

Source: Glassnode

Ethereum is scaling. Since Nov 2020 Ethereum layer-2 (L2) transactions per second have increased 33,550%.

Source: L2 Beat

User adoption of Layer-2’s Optimism and Arbitrum is going parabolic.

Source: Messari

DeFi is flourishing. Following the FTX collapse, amongst those who have benefitted are decentralized finance and lending protocols.

Source: Kaiko

The reports of DCG’s (GBTC/Genesis) death seem to be exaggerated.

Source: Messari

Despite the bear market, Stablecoin volumes are at an all-time high.

Source: Coinmetrics

Applications built on and secured by Bitcoin are thriving. The number of contracts deployed on Stacks grew 60% QoQ.

Source: Messari

The number of wallets addresses on the Cardano network continues to rise.

DeFi is taking market share from CeFi platforms. The top 10 DEXs together are valued at roughly 1.5x the valuation of Coinbase.

Source: Token Terminal

Self-custody and transparency are in demand. New users of Uniswap’s web app reached a 2022 high.

Ethereum dominates, but other smart contract platforms are building for the future of decentralised applications. Ethereum made $72mn in revenues in last 30 days.