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MATIC Surges 10% as Polygon's 2.0 Upgrade Draws Closer

Open interest for MATIC trading pairs has risen from $109 million to $160 million in the past 24 hours.

Jul 11, 2023, 4:29 p.m.
MATIC open interest (Coinalyze)
MATIC open interest (Coinalyze)

MATIC, the native token of Ethereum scaling solution Polygon, has jumped 10% from Monday's low of $0.67 as traders anticipate the upcoming Polygon 2.0 upgrade.

The crypto is currently changing hands at $0.73 following a 62% increase in daily volume on Tuesday, with $500 million being traded over the past 24-hours, according to CoinMarketCap.

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Polygon revealed plans for its 2.0 version last month with aims of creating “the value layer of the internet." It also said that it will transition to greater community governance of the protocol and treasury in a blog post.

Matic's aggregated open interest, which is a metric used to assess the nominal value of open derivatives positions, has experienced an even larger uptick over the past 24-hours, rising from $109 million to $160 million, or 47%, according to Coinalyze. That big jump suggests that the rally is being backed with leverage.

It's worth noting that highly-anticipated news events like upgrades can cause volatile price action as an imbalance of leveraged positions have the potential to get squeezed after the event takes place, with astute traders look to capitalize on unsustainable levels of optimism. Ethereum's Shanghai upgrade was an example of this, with prices rising by 16% in the lead-up to the event before returning to parity less than a week later.

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BlackRock exec says 1% crypto allocation in Asia could unlock $2 trillion in new flows

BlackRock logo in front of a building (BlackRock/Modified by CoinDesk)

During a panel discussion at Consensus in Hong Kong, Peach pointed to massive capital pools in traditional finance as ETF adoption spreads across Asia.

What to know:

  • Even a 1% crypto allocation in standard portfolios across Asia could translate into nearly $2 trillion of inflows, highlighting how modest shifts in asset allocation could transform the digital asset market, according to the head of APAC iShares at BlackRock, Nicholas Peach.
  • BlackRock's iShares unit, whose U.S.-listed spot Bitcoin ETF IBIT has rapidly grown to about $53 billion in assets, is seeing strong demand from Asian investors as ETF adoption accelerates across the region.
  • Regulators in markets such as Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea are moving toward broader crypto ETF offerings, but industry leaders say investor education and portfolio strategy will be critical to channeling traditional finance capital into digital assets.