GB Market Commentary 23/09/2021
by Frederick Williams
The cryptocurrency market has rebounded in the past 24 hours as news broke that China Evergrande Group, the second largest property developer in the world’s most populous nation, has taken a step back from falling off a potential debt cliff. While the overall cryptocurrency market is still down for the week, all major tokens saw a significant price bump early morning Asia time, with Solana and Polkadot being the biggest movers in the top 10, each up 17% in the last 24 hours. Market leaders Bitcoin and Ethereum prices were up 5% and 9% respectively, with the worlds largest crypto resuming above $43,000 and Ether reaching $3000 early this morning, Asia time. Cardano recovered 11% regaining its third spot position that it had lost to Tether in Tuesdays market crash and its trading at $2.27 at time of writing.
Evergrande announced yesterday that it has resolved one coupon payment, a Shenzhen-traded 5.8% bond that matures in 2025, that was due today. Global markets and not just crypto responded positively to the news. However, it is still uncertain if the indebted firm can pay a different $83.5 million bond payment due today. Evergrande also has another $475.5 million payment for March 2024. We need to wait for more details.
The wait for the Bitcoin ETF approval from the United States Securities and ExchangeCommission (SEC), has been long drawn out. However, there are chances it might be coming to an end soon. According to Bloomberg’s Mike McGlone, the first Bitcoin ETF in the U.S. could be approved as early as the end of this next month.
The Cardano Summit 2021 is due to take place on September 25-26. The Summit will feature the exploration of virtual worlds combined with a typical conference setup. As expected, being a novel approach to crypto conferencing, expectations for a blockbuster event are high. Doubly so with the promise of “mind-blowing” announcements during the event. If you are a Cardano fan, this could be for you.
Tokenized sport collectables projects have raised almost $1 billion in funding in the space of a week. Dapper Labs, the firm behind the Flow blockchain and the widely popular tokenized basketball collectables, NBA TopShot, announced a further $250 million in funding. French based NFT soccer trading card game developer Sorare raised $680 million in Series B funding led by Japanese fintech giant Softbank. The funding round raised the valuation of the firm to
$4.3 billion. The combined funding for the two firms adds up to $930 million, marking a
significant bet on the sports token sector at a time when some pundits are calling the wider
nonfungible market dead due to declining sales volume and floor prices.