Web3 Weekly: Crypto Seems To Stabilize Despite Inflation, Strong Dollar Concerns

This is a weekly feature that will look back at the week that was in crypto, blockchain and Web3, and offer insights and analysis. Check out last week’s here.

“Stability” and “crypto” are not two words normally associated with each other, but hey, these are strange times.

October has seemingly brought some stability to what has been a tumultuous time for crypto, as large cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether seem to have found a level — at least for now.

Bitcoin has remained relatively stable this month, staying above $19,000, but not getting above $20,400. Ether has been above the $1,270 range, but staying below its recent highs seen in August. It, however, saw significant gains Tuesday to put it above $1,400.

While this won’t cause investors to celebrate — certainly not those who bought in high last November — it is an interesting moment in time where crypto seems to be separating from its normal trends.

While the markets have held reasonably strong for the past month, concerns about inflation, interest rates and the strength of the dollar continue to swirl. Those issues have usually rankled the crypto market as investors turn away from higher-risk assets.

However, now crypto seems to be working like an actual hedge against inflation. In fact, it’s resembling a store of value, similar to gold — a correlation many have made over time but the markets have not borne out.

Crypto is perhaps working more like it was supposed to when DeFi originated. Or maybe it’s just a brief blip and high volatility will return.

It’s crypto, so we’ll bet on the latter.

In other news

This was a slow week in the Web3 world, so take a moment and read about the new Web3 unicorns minted last month in our monthly recap here.

Note: Our list includes a Switzerland-based crypto product startup, 21.co, which raised a smallish $25 million round at a whopping $2 billion value — which is so very Web3.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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