This week is a very important one for the cryptocurrency market, with several important events scheduled. The release of the FOMC minutes, the Eigenlayer update, and the announcement of Arbitrum’s new staking program are all on schedule.
Investors and observers are watching these events closely to assess their potential impact on asset valuations and overall financial trends. Let’s take a closer look at what happens next.
FOMC Minutes: What’s Next for Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Markets?
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is scheduled to release meeting minutes at 14:00 Eastern Time on August 21. The FOMC decided to keep the federal funds rate unchanged from 5.25% to 5.50% at its July meeting. The decision was in line with market expectations and underscored the Fed’s cautious stance on inflation.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell hinted that interest rates may be cut if inflation continues to trend downward. The market has priced in the possibility of a rate cut in September and expects further cuts before the end of the year.
Historical data from 10x Research shows a strong correlation between Bitcoin’s performance and inflationary trends. Typically, when inflation falls, Bitcoin rises and vice versa. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $58,575, down 1.45% in the past 24 hours.
Arbitrum’s new staking proposal stARB token
On August 16, the Arbitrum Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) approved a proposal to introduce ARB staking on Ethereum Layer 2. The proposal received overwhelming support, with 91% of participating voters supporting the measure.
By introducing ARB staking, governance will only actively use approximately 10% of the ARB tokens currently in circulation, or approximately 100 million ARBs out of a total circulating supply of 1 billion. This new measure aims to increase voter participation and ensure that the DAO’s decision-making process is more secure and representative of the wider community.
The staking mechanism will introduce stARB, a liquid staking token that provides automatic compounding and is compatible with various decentralized finance protocols. Initial staking rewards will come from multiple sources generated by the DAO, including sequencer fees, MEV fees, validator fees, token inflation, and diversification of funds. The staking system is scheduled to launch at the end of August, with further updates and specific timelines to be released in the coming weeks.
Eigenlayer expands ERC-20 token support
EigenLayer, a well-known heavily staking protocol, has announced that it will soon launch permissionless token support on its mainnet. The update, scheduled for later this week, will allow users to re-stake all ERC-20 tokens, expanding the number of assets that can help secure the decentralized network.
“This feature is currently in a short permissioned testing phase on the testnet. EigenDA will be the first AVS to test and use permissionless token support. The mainnet deployment is a protocol-level update scheduled for this week. Try again UI support for users will be added later in Q3.
This expansion will be another milestone for Eigenlayer, which dominates the DeFi market. As of this writing, it is the second-largest DeFi protocol with approximately $12.4 billion in total deposits, according to DeFiRama.
