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Binance's official website has confirmed a significant acquisition completed on March 31st, acquiring the largest cryptocurrency data provider, CoinMarketCap. While the official acquisition amount has not been disclosed, it is generally believed to be valued at up to $400 million. According to Crunchbase data, this marks Binance's fifth major acquisition.

CoinMarketCap is one of the most popular sources of cryptocurrency data in the industry. Despite concerns of potential wash trading, the website is still used by 37 million users monthly, as reported by SimilarWeb.

However, the industry's reaction to this acquisition is mixed. The combination of an exchange and an independent data provider naturally raises concerns about future impartiality among users.

Andy Cheung, former COO of OKEx and now founder of the crypto derivatives platform ACDX, has expressed strict criticism of this acquisition. He stated, "I can understand the potential massive future gains from this deal. But let's face it, when you run an exchange and are the largest holder of BNB at the same time, how do you make investors believe that CMC's rankings and volumes are genuine?"

Source:

• https://www.blocktempo.com/the-sandbox-sells-3400-ether-worth-of-virtual-land-in-five-hours/
• https://decrypt.co/24031/binance-to-acquire-coinmarketcap-in-400-million-deal

Leading U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced on April 1st that it has deposited $1.1 million worth of USDC stablecoins into the liquidity pools of two of the most popular decentralized finance (DeFi) applications on Ethereum, Uniswap, and PoolTogether.

"We aim to provide critical infrastructure with USDC to enable decentralized finance to grow and compete with existing financial products."

Source: https://blockcast.it/2020/04/02/coinbase-deposited-1million-in-usdc-stablecoins-into-the-pools-powering-two-of-the-most-popular-defi-apps/

Balancer, a non-custodial asset portfolio manager and liquidity provider, announced the launch of its token trading and fund pool management Dapp on April 1st. Essentially, users can trade ERC20 tokens on the platform, similar to Uniswap. Balancer allows users to create their own pools and maintain fund balance by providing liquidity to traders. Within three days of its official launch, the liquidity of the decentralized asset management/trading protocol has reached $190,000, distributed across 16 different pools, with a trading volume of $16,000.

Source: https://decrypt.co/24106/balancers-new-dapps-could-rebalance-defi-landscape

Despite the belief that the movements of cryptocurrencies are related to stock markets, this assertion has not been realistic since March 14th. Following the consecutive two-day plunge on Black Thursday, the cryptocurrency market led by Bitcoin has gradually stabilized. Bitcoin price stood at around $6,000 last week, and as of the deadline, it has risen back to $7,000, also driving the uptrend of major coins like Ethereum. Despite the Federal Reserve's series of market rescue measures, the U.S. stock market has been fluctuating during this period. In contrast to the Dow Jones Index, Bitcoin has risen by 34% from 3/13 to the deadline, while the Dow Jones Index has shown relatively flat fluctuations.

Source: https://decrypt.co/24478/stocks-bitcoin-go-opposite-directions-week

AAVE has recently integrated support for more web3 wallets, namely WalletConnect and Ledger. Since its mainnet launch, they have been continuously optimizing user experience, such as integrating a fund overview page to help users better understand the volatility of any asset on the platform. This intuitive dashboard includes essential information such as the collateralization ratio, liquidation penalty, fund efficiency (utilization), etc.

Regarding the grant program, in the broad crypto ecosystem, many projects utilize their resources to nurture new startup teams within their own network. On April 2nd, AAVE also launched its first grant program based on aDai. Analysts believe AAVE can maintain its lead in the broad DeFi field as they have a strong grasp on community development and are likely to cultivate the next generation of financial innovation within their community.

Source: https://defirate.com/aave-grants/

Lending is a form of DeFi that should not be limited by its platform. However, almost all lending applications are currently developed and used on Ethereum. Due to immature cross-chain technology, lending built on Ethereum can only revolve around ERC20 tokens. Among all ERC20 tokens, those with sufficient circulation and utility are limited, with ETH being the main one. Due to these limitations, lending projects face significant constraints in practical development.

However, many projects are trying to address these issues, attempting to bring more assets into the lending market. Kava is one of them. Kava is the first DeFi project supported by Binance Launchpad. Currently, Kava is developing a platform supporting multi-asset collateralized debt positions (CDPs) and prioritizing the creation of stablecoin USDX from BNB, with a lending logic similar to Maker. By choosing BNB as the first supported crypto asset, liquidity is the primary consideration. With 31 existing BNB applications, Kava is tapping into the value of the entire Binance ecosystem.

However, there are risks involved, such as the high concentration of BNB holders, which could lead to market manipulation in the secondary market, and the combination of the decentralized lending protocol Kava with the centralized token BNB faces scrutiny on finding a mutually beneficial balance.

Source: https://www.chainnews.com/articles/083295473344.htm

Despite the global economic downturn, USDT has recently seen a significant increase in issuance. According to the industry news aggregator Unfolded, the asset's market cap has exceeded $6 billion, with an increase of $1 billion in just the past two weeks. In an industry valued at less than $200 billion, such inflows are significant.

Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of derivatives exchange FTX and Bitcoin quant fund Alameda, pointed out that the recent surge in USDT demand may have three reasons: a large number of "Asian" (especially Chinese) OTC traders acquiring USDT, increased demand for USDT as a hedge asset against BTC, and people selling BTC for USDT to reduce risk.

Source: https://cryptoslate.com/whats-really-going-on-with-tethers-exploding-supply-crypto-exec-tells-all/

Celo is an open platform dedicated to providing financial tools that anyone with a mobile phone can use. The platform's initial focus is on addressing financial inclusivity issues: 1.7 billion people worldwide lack access to financial services, making the path to prosperity more challenging. Therefore, Celo aims to create a financial environment where transactions can be made with just the recipient's phone number, similar to Libra, both hoping to create a global, universal token and consumption model.

On April 2nd, Celo, TrueUSD, and HashQuark jointly held a Celo AMA event, with Celo CTO Marek Olszsewski as the guest. During the Q&A session, he provided detailed answers to various aspects of Celo, including its vision, team experience, competition with Ethereum, and economic model.

Source: https://www.chainnews.com/articles/485282812201.htm

Data for this week is from 3/31 to 4/07, with price extraction time set at 12:00 noon. TVL