The U.S. central bank’s monetary tightening campaign remains top of mind, as we enter a new trading week. Last week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell and top officials signalled that the stiff pressure might remain well into 2023 - the market didn’t react too well to that!

Today, however, the global crypto market cap is up by about 0.60% at $812.94 billion in the last 24 hours. The entire market’s volume in the last 24 hours stands at $21.44 billion, a decline of 23.51 percent.

At the time of writing, the overall volume in DeFi was $1.17 billion, accounting for 5.46% of the total 24-hour volume in the crypto market. Unsurprisingly, the overall volume of all stablecoins was $19.30 billion, accounting for 90.04% of the market’s volume within the same time period.

What you should know

Alternative.Me’s “Crypto Fear & Greed Index” indicated investor sentiment was unchanged from “Fear” compared with the last week’s reading. This was expected, given that investors were preoccupied by the Binance FUD, Fed’s Hawkishness, and the trial of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried

On-chain analysis firm Glassnode stated that Binance had seen $3.2 billion in combined stablecoin outflows last week, as a result of the FUD. Binance accounted for 66% of all stablecoin outflows that were tracked, which is in line with market share.

Binance also stated that auditing firm Mazars had suspended working with cryptocurrency companies including itself. This announcement led to a drop in the valuations of major coins, including Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Despite all the gloom and doom, analysts at Santiment have identified periods like this as a bottom signal, based on historical precedent. Investors would be glad if that proves to be true!

Bitcoin whales have been selling more Bitcoin than ever in a single 30-day period. According to on-chain statistics gathered by Glassnode, these whales have dumped a total of 280,000 BTC during the past 30 days. At present, whales are thought to control roughly 9 million BTC, which is a sizable proportion of the entire BTC supply.

Fresh off the dumps, Bitcoin's price stands at $16,727, with a 24-hour trading volume of $12 billion. BTC has gained about 0.20% in the last 24 hours, with a live market cap of $321 billion.

What you should know

Today, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty target is expected to increase by 3%, according to estimates. BTC’s current mining difficulty is at 34244331613176.18, and the estimated 3% increase would take the mining difficulty to between 35421102548895 and 35421764497396.

This could be a sign that there will be less Bitcoin in circulation, and a short term price boost to reflect the reduced supply - provided demand remains stable.

Ethereum (ETH) is currently trading at $1,182, down nearly 6% in a week. The negative market sentiment and Binance FUD caused massive selloffs in the last week, which affected ETH. However, analysts believe Ethereum’s price can rebound to over $1,300 againas the market recovers.

At the time of writing, it boasted a trading volume of $3.9 billion in the last 24 hours. It still holds a live market cap of $161 billion.

‍What you should know

Today, PeckShieldAlert revealed that 2 dormant addresses have transferred almost 22,982 ETH worth 27.2 million to 2 new addresses. This Ethereum originated from Genesis and Poloniex in 2016 and 2018, respectively. Moreover, the last movement of Ethereum in the wallet addresses was in October 2018.

On-chain analytics platform Lookonchain also reported that 2 addresses that have been dormant for 5 years became active on Sunday and transferred 22,983 ETH. The two new addresses now have almost 13,105 ETH and 9,878 ETH, respectively.

In the last few days, altcoins have been unable to take advantage of the indecisiveness in Bitcoin’s price.

The best performer of the day is Toncoin (TON). The Open Network’s native cryptocurrency continues defying expectations amid the raging crypto winter and is up 6% on the day and 35% on the week. On the other hand, XCN lost the most, down 11% in the past 24 hours. 

BNB has posted a recovery, gaining 0.47% in the aftermath of the Binance FUD. Asides that, the likes of Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), Polygon (MATIC), and many others are firmly in the red today.

XRP, Ripple’s native token price has dropped by around 10% in the past 7 days due to increased selling pressure in the market. This can be partially attributed to whales moving more than 170 million XRP (approx worth $58 million) from their wallets to crypto exchanges in order to book profits.