Period: 25th July 2022 – 1st August 2022

• The U.S. economy shrank for two consecutive quarters, announcing its “technical recession”. However, the Street rallied instead and the S&P 500 index managed to close above its 4,000 mark, which it hasn't done so since June 9, 2022.
• Ledger, the company that is well-known for its crypto hardware wallet, launched its own NFT project and sold out within 24 hours.

On July 28, the U.S. Commerce Department announced that the gross domestic product (GDP) of the States fell 0.9% at an annualized pace for the second quarter of 2022, following a 1.6% decline in the first quarter. Some economists would consider two consecutive quarters of GDP contraction a technical recession. However, the White House has not declared the country in its recession, even President Joe Biden said it “doesn’t sound like a recession” after the department’s report.

The United States economy is the largest in the world as measured by nominal GDP. So there goes a saying – when the U.S. sneezes, the world catches a cold. Before the release of GDP data last Thursday, both stock and crypto markets rallied as the economists were expecting GDP to rebound at a 0.5% annualized rate growth. Many investors believed that the weak GDP might cause a selloff of risk assets, the market instead rebounded. Last week, the S&P 500 index was up 164.57 points, or 4.15%, back to its position during June and also making its best month since November 2020. Yet Bitcoin didn’t follow suit. As the largest crypto by market value, Bitcoin failed to reclaim its $30K mark, the price in June before the selloff, and found resistance at $24K.

While Bitcoin only had a gain of 5.41% last week, a lot of altcoins soared above 10%. The coin that stood out from all the rest is Filecoin (FIL). Filecoin is a decentralized storage provider in which users can split up their documents and save them around the world on different computers. We are not just talking about a 10% gain, FIL skyrocketed nearly 100% in one week’s time. On July 27, the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW) announced it will be supporting an initiative with Harvard University’s Library Innovation Lab (LIL) called the “Democratizing Open Knowledge” program. With FFDW’s support, LIL plans to explore decentralized technologies that can preserve digital information. Thanks to this good news, the price of FIL is back to double-digit again, since the terrible 24.5% single-day drop back in May 2022.

Despite Ethereum’s price back to its $1,700 mark, the overall sales volume of the NFT market is again declining, especially the blue chips. This is the fourth issue of Coinlive Review and never been one time the top 7-day volume is less than 3,000 ETH. Even though the market is in its winter, the bright side is, enthusiasts are still willing to pay to mint for quality NFT projects. The Genesis Pass launched by crypto hardware wallet company Ledger, requires a mint price of 0.3 ETH (approx. US$500) while its NFT holder is able to gain first access to exclusive collaborations, Ledger hardware, software, services, and most exclusively, a limited edition black-on-black Nano X wallet. It’s just that the price of a normal Ledger Nano X costs only US$119. Nevertheless, 10,000 supply was fully minted out within 24 hours. Ledger wallet users can securely connect through Ledger apps and clear sign their transactions in the newly launched [ LEDGER ] Market (https://market.ledger.com/), which the company claimed to be the world’s most secure NFT marketplace.

Disclaimer: This article is an update on the top-performing crypto & NFT for the past week. Any views, opinions, research, analyses, or other information contained in this piece is provided as general market commentary and does not constitute investment advice. Every investment involves risk, please conduct your own research when making a decision.



Written by: [Coinlive] Nell