What's Driving Token Prices? January 10, 2024

ATOM (-2.7%) - A new Cosmos proposal is currently in the voting stages that will dictate the future of the interoperability protocol’s tokenomics. For some time, Cosmos’s token ATOM, suffered from inflation pressure and could not capture value even though the project is widely used and has multiple app chains utilizing Cosmos’s infrastructure. The proposal aims to reduce inflation to 0% if staking utilization exceeds 67% (i.e. the amount of staked ATOM is greater than 67% of circulating supply). In November, a governance vote reduced staking inflation from 14% to 10%. The proposal was staunchly fought within governance and barely passed, and this latest proposal could face similar opposition.
MATIC (-1.2%) - Yesterday, layer-2 project, Polygon announced that it has partnered with Fox Corporation to build Verify. Verify is an open source protocol for content and image verification. The product is designed for media companies to easily register videos, photos and other content so consumers can verify that the images are not AI- generated and come from actual media sources. Verify launched in a closed beta in August of 2023 with Fox News groups uploading 89,000 pieces of content. The protocol is now open and available to the public and other media companies.
HNT (+5.5%) - On Monday, decentralized wireless provider, Helium, implemented onboarding fees for Helium Mobile hotspot providers. Helium Mobile, which allows users to run hotspots providing 5G wireless access, will now require onboarding fees for hotspot providers. To activate a new hotspot, users must spend a 50/50 allocation of data credits (created from HNT tokens) and MOBILE tokens (the subDAO token of Helium Mobile). Using data credits and MOBILE tokens should lead to greater burns for the HNT token. These fees, which are $20-$30, will likely be paid for by manufacturers of the hotspot devices and will not be passed on to the hotspot user. Currently, the wireless network has 3,600 hotspots live.
BTC (+7.1%) - Yesterday, a tweet from the SEC’s X/Twitter account caused a stir as it proclaimed that it granted approval for “Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges”. The market reacted to the tweet, with Bitcoin quickly trading up to $47K on the news (+1.1%). However, within 15 minutes, SEC Chair Gary Gensler tweeted that the SEC’s X/Twitter account had been compromised and no approval had occurred causing BTC to trade back to ~$45k. The internet had fun piecing together what actually occurred with some speculating that the tweet was in the SEC’s draft folder prompting an exploiter to publish it. While the market is collectively holding its breath on the ETF approval, many signs (such as a press release from CBOE today) indicate we should have approval today (in about the next hour).

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