First Mover Americas: Meta’s Instagram Move Boosts Web3 Tokens

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CoinDesk Market Index (CMI) 1,018.17 −0.5 0.0 Bitcoin (BTC) $20,272 −158.2 0.8 Ethereum (ETH) $1,544 −16.6 1.1 S&P 500 daily close 3,734.61 −25.1 0.7 Gold $1,630 −15.3 0.9 Treasury Yield 10 Years 4.15 0.1 BTC/ETH prices per CoinDesk Indices; gold is COMEX spot price. Prices as of about 4 p.m. ET

Top Stories

Meta Platforms, parent of Facebook and Instagram,said it will use decentralized storage product Arweave to archive creators' digital collectibles. That prompted a 60% price surge in AR, the Web3 platform’s native token, boosting AR's market cap to $838 million and making it the third-largest Web3 token worldwide. The effect rippled through the metaverse: The tokens of Web3 platforms Filecoin and Storj gained 10% and 25%, respectively.

Crypto exchange Huobi Global, one of the largest crypto platforms in Asia, appeared to confirm it plans to move to the Caribbean by retweeting a post by Justin Sun, founder of the Tron blockchain network and an adviser to the company. The exchange, which was founded in China in 2013, is now based in the Seychelles.

On paper, billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency empire is split into two parts: FTX, his exchange, and Alameda Research, his trading firm – both giants in their respective industries. However, a private financial document shows Alameda’s balance sheet includes billions of dollars in FTT, the native token of FTX, blurring the line between the two companies.

Chart of the Day: The Layer 2 Surge

• Adoption of layer 2 blockchains, led by Ethereum, has recently soared, with the number of transactions processed by these platforms reaching a record high of 5.78 million.
• The data from Orbiter.Finance, shown above, measures the number of transactions processed by layer 2 networks over the past 12 months.
• Networks like Arbitrum and Optimism promise fast, scalable and secure networks, as well as a cheaper option, compared with Ethereum's main network.

– Omkar Godbole

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CoinDesk Market Index

Biggest Gainers

Asset Ticker Returns DACS Sector Render Token RNDR +5.96% Computing Ribbon Finance RBN +5.64% DeFi Balancer BAL +4.29% DeFi

Biggest Losers

Asset Ticker Returns DACS Sector Band Protocol BAND -35.03% Computing Arweave AR -33.78% Computing Gitcoin GTC -30.7% Currency

Sector classifications are provided via the Digital Asset Classification Standard (DACS), developed by CoinDesk Indices to provide a reliable, comprehensive and standardized classification system for digital assets. The CoinDesk Market Index (CMI) is a broad-based index designed to measure the market capitalization weighted performance of the digital asset market subject to minimum trading and exchange eligibility requirements.