PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD

- BTC ($11,867): +2% / +64%
- ETH ($435): +11% / +232%
- LTC ($63): +11% / +52%
- XRP ($0.30): +4% / +56%
- Crypto Market Cap ($375B): +5%  / +96% 
- BTC Dominance: 59%

STABLECOIN MARKET CAP CHANGE: WTD/YTD

- Tether ($10.0B): 0% / +142%
- USDC ($1.2B): +5% / +129%

THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO

- JPMorgan is reportedly investing $20 million into Ethereum studio ConsenSys, as part of what could be a $50 million investment round. ConsenSys could also merge with JPMorgan's blockchain development unit Quorum. Link. 

- More than $13.5 billion in trading volume has gone through decentralized exchanges in 2020. Less than $3 billion had been traded in all of 2019. Uniswap captured more than half of DEX volume. Link. 

- The total value locked in DeFi passed $5 billion this week, with protocols like Aave, Curve Finance, and Yearn.Finance leading the charge. Link. 

- The number of Ethereum network transactions more than doubled in 2020 and is now virtually identical to the January 2018 all-time high. The surge in usage has led to an increase in gas fees; Tether has been identified as the single largest source of Eth gas spending (14% of gas fees in August came from Tether). 65% of gas spent in August so far has gone to the operations of smart contracts outside of stablecoins; Uniswap was one of the largest gas consumers, given it's one of the most active smart contracts. Ethereum 2.0 is in the final stages of testing and is expected to lower gas costs by increasing transaction processing. Link. Link. 

- Decentralized exchange Curve Finance, used for swapping between stablecoin assets has been seeing increasing interest and volume in the lead up to the release of its CRV governance token. Yield farmers were so impatient for the token to launch that someone found the code on GitHub and decided to launch it themselves. The Curve team decided to go ahead with the launch.
Curve mitigates slippage for trading pairs like USDC <> DAI that are pegged to the same value so many look to it for stabilizing their native tokens. Liquidity is supplied by LPs on Curve's exchange, who earn 0.04% in interest and trading fees by leaving their assets on the exchange. At launch CRV made 5% of its total supply claimable by LPs subject to a 1 year vesting period. Link. 24H volume for CRV is $68M on a $3M market cap. Link. 

- YFI, the governance token for yearn.finance, continues to rise even after its team described it as "a completely valueless 0 supply token" last month. YFI soared above $6k after Binance listed the token.
Yearn.Finance is a DeFi protocol that lets its users earn interest on crypto deposited with smart contracts; it is the 6th largest DeFi protocol with $585 million wrapped up in its smart contracts. YFI came out at the end of June and was followed soon after by Aave and Compound. When YFI launched there was only $1.68 billion locked up in DeFi, and today there is almost $6 billion locked in DeFi smart contracts. Link. 

- Defi platform Yam Finance launched its YAM token with no tests or audits of the protocol, but with a lot of emojis meant to capitalize on the recent hype and memes of DeFi tokens. The team received over $400M to hold in its smart contracts overnight, but ended the next day after the team found a bug on its code. YAM token jumped to over $150 and is now trading below $1. The launch is being nicknamed "YAMpocalypse". Link. 

- Coinbase is launching a lending business. Customers will be able to borrow up to 30% of their bitcoin holdings or up to $20,000. Coinbase will charge borrowers an 8% interest rate. Link. 

- The DoJ seized millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency from groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda and ISIS, the largest seizure of terrorist-bound crypto assets ever. Link. 

- MyEtherWallet announced integrations with DeFi protocols Aave and Ren. DeFi lending protocol Aave has the fourth-highest amount of value locked into it, roughly $543 million. Ren allows users to users to plug non-ETH assets like Bitcoin into DeFi protocols. Link. 

- Walmart announced a cash-back loyalty rewards program in partnership with StormX. Walmart shoppers can now earn between 4% to 14% cashback in crypto for shopping at Walmart. Link. 

- The token sale for DApp platform NEAR Protocol was postponed after CoinList, the exchange hosting the offering, went down around the launch time. When the sale finally happened the exchange faced a number of technical problems. Link. 

- Facebook has launched a new product group to promote "payments and commerce opportunities" with David Marcus, Libra's co-creator, in charge of the division. The group, called Facebook Financial, will run its payments projects including a planned Facebook Pay. Marcus is also in charge of Novi, the in-house wallet for Facebook's anticipated Libra token. Link. 

- One million South Koreans have foregone their physical drivers license in favor of a blockchain-powered digital alternative that can be used with a smartphone app. Link. 

- China is expanding its pilot for the digital yuan to 9 more cities across the country. China's major state-run commercial banks are already conducting large-scale internal testing of the digital wallet designed for the official launch. Shares of digital currency-related stocks surged on the news. Link.