New crypto Blur rises 10,000% on debut

The BLUR token, the crypto of NFT aggregator Blur, was launched on February 14, 2023, exactly one week ago.

The instant boom of the Blur crypto

The launch took place on Huobi, with the BLUR/USDT exchange pair.

The initial price was $0.01, but on launch day it went up to $9.90, which is currently the all-time high.

Very likely, both prices were too high, one too low and one too high, so much so that the very next day the selection narrowed down quite a bit. Furthermore, starting on February 16, it started to lateralize around $1, so that the price even today is around $1.2.

In other words, on the day of launch itself, it registered an incredible +98,000%, but this lasted for a very short time, followed by an almost instant -90%. Taking as a reference the value around which the price subsequently lateralized in the following days, the gain over the launch price was approximately +10,000%.

However, it is worth mentioning that the first boom lasted less than an hour, so it was almost impossible to actually buy it for $0.01.

In fact, just over an hour after listing the price was $0.7, so it would be best to take this as a benchmark.

The declining trading volumes of crypto BLUR

Also, the very short initial boom occurred with $2 million in trading volume on Huobi, while the following -90% with $5 million.

In addition, the daily trading volumes for now have been steadily shrinking day by day, as after $31.5 million on the debut day, they fell to $24.5 million the next day, and then fell to $10 million yesterday.

Meanwhile, the ERC-20 token has also been listed on other exchanges alongside Huobi. It has not yet arrived on Binance, and currently the largest trading volumes are on OKX.

On its debut day, trading volumes on OKX were already much higher than on Huobi (102 million vs. 2), peaking the next day with $218 million in trades. Yesterday they were down to 75.

The second largest exchange by trading volume on BLUR is Kucoin, with $25 million on debut, and a peak of $43 million on February 16. It is now down to $22 million.

It is worth noting that the declining volumes on the exchanges suggest that market makers expected most of the trading to take place in the first few days. Nevertheless, trading on Coinbase increased in the following days, suggesting that the composition of BLUR investors and speculators is changing.

Blurred NFT

Blur is an NFT aggregator with significant NFT trading volumes. Despite the fact that the token was launched only last week, the platform has actually been around for a while.

The most popular NFT collection on Blur is Bored Ape Yacht Club, but it is not the most traded. The most traded is Otherdeed, followed by Mutant Yacht Club.

Among the most popular on the platform is also Clone X, while the one that performs best in terms of price is the Open Edition.

Blur bills itself as “the fastest NFT marketplace,” with the tagline “Execute trades faster and make more money on Blur.”

It therefore seems more aimed at speculators than artists, so much so that it has no fees on trades. Currently, it claims to have almost 150,000 users.

During the so-called “Season 1”, 360 million BLUR tokens were distributed to the community out of the existing 388 million, and now Season 2 has begun.

The situation in the crypto markets

BLUR’s debut on the crypto markets has been associated with other interesting movements over the past seven days.

One of the most interesting is the rising prices of some major cryptocurrencies, primarily BTC and ETH, just as several public authorities have initiated some tough regulatory actions.

For example, the SEC has formally charged Terra’s founder, Do Kwon, with fraud, and has proposed new custody rules that could make it more difficult for investment firms to work with crypto companies.

In other words, right now, it really seems that crypto markets want to send a clear signal of strength and resilience after everything that has happened in the last year.

For example, Coinbase’s trading volume is still higher than Uniswap’s, despite predictions that DEXs were on the rise after the various problems experienced by many CEXs, especially FTX.

Instead, Coinbase, which is the largest US CEX, shows that users continue to trust centralized exchanges, so much so that its cumulative exchange volumes in these first weeks of 2023 amount to more than $185 billion, compared to Uniswap’s $93 billion. In other words, roughly twice as many exchanges take place on Coinbase as on the world’s leading decentralized exchange.

In contrast, in 2022, Uniswap’s trading volumes were roughly equal to those of Coinbase, but this trend appears to have been only temporary.

Problems for BNB

In contrast, Binance’s cryptocurrency, BNB, underperformed in February.

In fact, the problems Paxos had with BUSD (Binance USD) continued to weigh on the exchange, which experienced massive outflows last week.

Notably, the price ratio between BNB and BTC fell to its lowest level since August 2022. Instead, until November 2022, BNB mostly outperformed BTC, but with the failure of FTX, this ratio began to fall.

In addition, the liquidity of BUSD on Binance continues to deteriorate compared to USDT.

Compared to February 1st, the market depth of 1% for the top 8 pairs in BUSD by market capitalization has decreased by 31%, while those in USDT have only fallen by 1%.

However, it is not necessarily the case that the loss of liquidity of the BUSD pairs on Binance favors those of USDT, because it can also either move to other stablecoins, or simply disappear.

In fact, it is important not to forget that BUSD is the reference stablecoin for DeFi on BSC (Binance Smart Chain), so it is possible that the liquidity of the DeFi protocols on BSC will simply decrease without it moving to other stablecoins.

The token on FTX debt

On February 6, Huobi listed another token, a so-called “FUD token,” which claims to represent a claim on FTX debt. That debt is reportedly held by a DAO, and Tron founder Justin Sun tweeted the attestation. This is a debt of tens of millions of dollars.

The DAO then issued FUD tokens for a consideration of $20 million, but Huobi suggests that it could be between $20 million and $100 million.

If the debt is more than $20 million, the DAO will transfer the remaining FUD to the holders.

Right now, the price of the FUD token is around $13, down sharply from the original $100.