Degens pumped the shitcoins and the market is punishing us for our sins. Bitcoin back down to $28k and ETH knocking on $1800’s door. Not the direction a lot of people were hoping for.
Bullish sentiment has waned it seems. Recall we never saw a fresh influx of capital or users. Just the same old money pvp sloshing around. Lots of people are bullish or bearish but many forget the 3rd option - the crab.
Crabbiness, sideways, unexciting price action most likely until all that overhanging macro stuff clears up. Most likely not until 2024. Prob coincides with the halvening. Just need to be patient. Long term direction is most definitely up.
Unless we all pivot to AI or something, idk.
I fully believe everyone will follow the money and opportunity.
A story in 3 parts this week:
Anyhoo. Have a great weekend!
- This grimoire is an open journal of notes, thoughts, data, and a collection of events from throughout the week in the world of crypto. It is designed to be a comprehensive overview of all the goings ons one might need to know to stay up to date with the chaotic, cruel and convoluted game that is crypto. Herein this tome you’ll find no happy wgmi vibes. Just a critical, practical and ground level perspective of the volatile warfield that we know as crypto. There’s lots of opportunities out there. Just gotta pay attention -
Data:
Bitcoin:
Look at this dirty little cocktease. That little breakout got everyone soo excited and then right back down she goes. Very classic behavior. Screw with everyone and make sure no one is happy. I firmly believe no one out there has any idea what’ll happen next. We’re all just along for the ride. Long term direction is up but the path to get there could be filled with all sorts of twists and turns.
Ethereum:
ETH also got everyone’s hopes up and fell right back below $2k. Sorry, bulls. On the positive side, ETH is deflationary and all that jazz. I think it is in people’s best interest to own more ETH in the next several years. Do what you can to grow your ETH stack.
Crypto Market Cap:
That $1.2T zone is giving us a lot of trouble. Looked like we were having a breakout and people started getting euphoric before we tripped right back down again. For the time being, $1.2T is that line in the sand.
Coins:
Weekly Gainers:
Most of the previous strong performers started fizzling. ‘Twas a short run. Still always a good idea to pay attention to strength during a red market.
Weekly Losers:
Too many losers to keep track of when the market is looking red. Lots of the previous strong performers end up puking when the market shifts. Algorand is standing out because it just recently got labeled a security by the SEC. How many more cases like that will we see?
Stablecoin Total Market Cap:
Nothing new to report here. Just gradually grinding our way down to $130B. If there’s anything that’ll serve as an “I told you so” for why the market falls, it’ll be that we never saw any fresh capital entering the crypto ecosystem to support rising prices. It was just the same capital rotating around.
Stablecoin Exchange Reserves:
Nothing exciting either, just more sideways ranging. On one hand, at least it’s not dumping but on the other, it’s always been concerning we never saw any new money entering.
If on the third hand, stables would’ve been flowing onto exchanges, the stablecoin market cap roared back to life, and alts were pumping - then this would’ve been a very good sign.
DeFi TVL:
How sad, it almost looked like we had been ready to move past this pesky $50B zone that we’ve had trouble moving past but we’ve fallen right back to it. DeFi is still taking the backseat for now. Wen DeFi 3.0?
Exchange Volume:
Local volume high was put in on March 18th. Despite prices rallying since then, volume never kept up. We’ve seen low and muted volume for most of the recent price rallies which was also concerning. Price up on weak volume? Not great!
Dex Volume:
Weak, averaging $2-3B per day. Not even the recent shitcoin frenzy did much to meaningfully spike Dex volume.
Ethereum NFT Volume:
Decreasing volume, sales and active wallets. What could be causing that? Did all the NFT people switch gears and start messing with shitcoins? Is Blur season 2 airdrop farming coming to an end soon? It’ll be really curious to see how this area develops during the next bull.
Token Holders:
Verse, Arbitrum, Stargate and Rocket Pool continue being accumulated - same as last week. As far as Arbitrum is concerned, it was able to top out just shy of $1.80 before falling down to the current $1.40 area. Also notice how there’s more OP holders than Arb holders. Will that dynamic change?
Thoughts/Observations/Highlights:
Monday:
Bitcoin is under $30k while ETH is managing to stay above $2k. Memecoins are popping off. Pepe blasted onto the space over the weekend and ripped. Lots of other alts have been ripping as well. Arb, Inj, Rndr, ID, Rdnt, Blur, Rose, Joe, Rpl, Op continuing to show strength. BTC dominance continues dropping. Dollar starts to rise before dropping back later in the day. Stonks looking good. Feeling like shitcoin meme season. Wojak the next memecoin getting the pump.
US Congress to introduce draft bill for stablecoin issuers that can result in severe fines or jail
Anticipation that SEC will clamp down on DeFi exchanges
Silk Road attacker James Zhong receives one year for theft of $3.4B of BTC
Elon Musk planning to build ChatGPT rival and starts new corporation X.AI
Ethereum researcher says staking reveals IP address
MetaMask email address leak affects 7000 users
Aribtrum proposal to return $1B in governance tokens fails
SUI token sale
Mysten Labs buy back $96M stake from FTX
DWF Labs one of crypto’s most active investors and receiving criticism
Binance Futures delisting STEPN, Near and Avalanche BUSD perps
Uniswap DAO approves proposal to deploy V3 on Polygon zkEVM
Cosmos-based Ethermint avoids potential eight-figure hack
Binance to move SHIB, FXS, TWT and 1INCH out of innovation zone
$676M worth of BNB burned in 23rd quarterly burn
ETH options trading volume surges following Shanghai upgrade
Binance and Brazilian Football Federation launch free NFT aimed at attracting new customers
Avalanche daily active addresses soars to new heights
Solana Foundation expanding its capital deployment strategy
Hoskinson discusses plans for zk-rollups for Cardano
Roblox adds NFT like features to game
Yearn gets mixed results on yETH token from community
Chia Network submits registration to SEC for proposed IPO
Tuesday:
Bitcoin back above $30k and ETH holding $2k however showing some weakness today. Shitcoins and alts continue pumping. Literally everyone is talking about Pepe, Wojak and other shitcoins. Some signs of top-like behavior with shitcoins popping off this way and literally everyone talking about it… Concerning when euphoria starts frothing. ETH/BTC has been dropping. Dollar relatively flat but still near multi-year low and area of interest. Gold super close to making ATH. Stonks holding up.
Bittrex charged by the SEC for offering unregistered securities: OMG, DASH, ALGO, TKN
Google CEO believes humanity not ready advanced AI
Elon Musk developing TruthGPT to offset ‘left-wing lies’ in chatbots
1M ETH withdrawn since Shapella
SEC asserts DeFi falls under securities rules
Microstrategy is now using Bitcoin Lightning payments via email
Retail investors can now trade Grayscale Solana Trust
CME Group expands its Bitcoin and Ethereum product offerings
Kyber urges users to immediately withdraw funds due to potential vulnerability
Nike’s Swoosh NFT drop of Air Force 1 sneaker
Starbucks NFT release of First Store Collection
Gala Games will airdrop V2 tokens to users on May 15
Binance Labs 12 innovative projects that are finalists in MVB program
Binance deposit addresses being retired and updated
Arbitrum AIP-1.2 passes
Popsicle Finance introduce WAGMI
Moonbirds to launch TALONS token
Cowswap introduces partially fillable limit orders
Tea shop Boba Guys building on-chain loyalty program on Solana
Wednesday:
Ruh roh. Bitcoin dropped below $30k and ETH fell below $2k. Are we paying for our crypto sins? Did the degeneracy of CT aping into complete shit do this? Gensler got lots of heat for his congressional hearing yesterday. He didn’t have the balls to double down on earlier claims that most crypto counts as a security. Pepe shows strength later in the day and recovers from dump making new ATH.
iOS and macOS users should update after vulnerabilities found in operating systems
Gensler grilled over SEC’s approach to crypto and slams crypto for being non-compliant
Apple launch new savings account in partnership with Goldman Sachs with 4.15% yield
FTX could relaunch with possible $250M funding from Tribe Capital
Coinbase could be looking to move overseas over crypto regulatory crackdown
CME adding daily expirations on BTC and ETH future contracts
Binance lifts restrictions on Russian users
Intel discontinues Bitcoin-mining blockscale chips, no future gens announced
Microsoft building in-house AI chip ‘Athena’
BTC price quote now live on Twitter
GMX remove hassle of bridging with new partnership, mint GLP from any blockchain
Merit Circle and Avalanche launch gaming focused sovereign network Beam
Rocketpool launch Atlas
Lido considers using ARB airdrop to boost activity on Arbitrum
Sui project update on road ahead
Space ID introduce Space ID DAO and token buybacks
Immutable passport opens borders for Web3 games
Uniswap mobile app has some growing pains to get through
Helium moving to Solana
Sweat Economy introduces 1 person 1 vote
Thursday:
Bitcoin back down to $28k and ETH precariously down to low $1900s. Bullish sentiment has waned on the timeline. Bitcoin dominance sideways, ETH/BTC rebounding. Dollar going sideways. Stonks are ok. Lots of people are bullish and bearish but many forget the 3rd option - the crab.
MetaMask refute that OG wallet draining is due to their wallet
Sandwich Bots bag millions in sandwich attacks amid memecoin rally
Deribit launch zero-fee spot trading
Square Enix teams up with Elixir to take Web3 games mainstream
EU Crypto MiCA to be implemented from July next year
A16z introduces Magi, a new rollup client built for Optimism
SUI mainnet launching May 3rd
Flashbots announce SUAVE the future of MEV
PEPE holder turns $250 into $1M
Honk Kong court recognizes crypto as property
Maple offerings allow foreign investors to access US T-Bills
Avalanche Cortina activating April 25th
Tencent Cloud partners with Injective
Romanian government release NFT trading platform on MultiverseX
Balancer propose to deploy on Base
Stakewise introduce Stakewise V3
Aleph Zero introduce $50M ecosystem funding program
SushiSwap pays $200k bounty to recover $600k stolen by hackers
Kaidro webcomic coming to Web3 as a game on Immutable
Chainstack launches Subgraphs
Maverick launches on zkSync
Space and Time add blockchain data to Azure marketplace
Friday:
How quickly things change. We started the week with calls for meme and alt season. Many people said never below this price again, etc etc. And yet here we are with Bitcoin at low $28k and ETH at low $1900. The rest of the market is slumping as well. Unfortunately our playtime got cut short but the longer term view is that the market won’t truly start to shift back to balls to the wall risk-on again until all the macro stuff clears up. Probably in 2024. We’ll have ups and downs in between probably but the most important factor to consider is time.
Do Kwon charged with fake passport charge in Montenegro
EU passes MiCA - first major jurisdiction globally to introduce comprehensive crypto law
DeFi-Focused Layer 1 Berachain raised $42M Series A at $420.69M valuation
Jack Dorsey’s decentralized Twitter rival Bluesky launches Android app
A16z backed Iron Fish mainnet is live
Bancor launches new DEX protocol boasting MEV-resistance
1inch aggregator to launch on Ethereum rollup zkSync Era
Tornado Cash developer Alex Pertsev has been released
PUBG creator to launch NFT metaverse game in 2023
Dydx proposal to revitalize rewards system
Crypto News:
Monday:
Bitcoin millionaires double with rise of BTC price
CFTC chair says Binance intentionally broke rules
Shaquille O’Neal finally served FTX lawsuit
House Committee threatens SEC over missing SBF documents
Do Kwon lawyers received $7M before Terra collapse
Advocacy groups urge Meta to halt plans to allow minors into the metaverse
Celsius preparing litigation against creditor for leaking NDA info
Hester Pierce of SEC states Gensler’s plans to target DeFi undermines First Amendment
Singapore High Court ruled against recognizing crypto as money
Singapore based exchange Bitrue is hacked for $23M worth of ETH, Shib and other assets
Sweden potentially destroyed its BTC mining industry with new tax hike
Bitpay to pay $1M to New york’s financial services
Bitcoin miner Bitdeer sees stock slump following listing
Bhutan quietly accumulates BTC and other cryptocurrencies
Circle exec to join US congressional committee hearing on stablecoin payments
Onramp launches spot Bitcoin trust with multi-party custody
Amber mulls potential sale of Japan subsidiary
Marathon Digital CEO moves ahead with expansion plans in Texas despite Texas Mining Bill
Institutions slowly reentering space as purpose ETFs and hedge fund data seeing new inflows
Hashkey introduce wealth management service
NovaWulf plans to tokenize equity of Celsius after takeover
Fracton Ventures announce DAOTokyo 2023 to bolster DAO growth in Asia
Bank of America sees tokenization of real-world assets as key driver of digital asset adoption
BTSE gains virtual asset services registration in Liechtenstein
ETH Global Tokyo finalists
Parler planning reboot under new owner Starboard Digital Media not Kanye West
Danny Trejo and Mena Suvari join Gala’s Web3 TV series ‘RZR’
Crypto derivative volume continues to rise
Indian Finance Minister emphasized need for global coordination in regulating crypto at G20
Tuesday:
Bybit now headquartered in Dubai
Tom Brady and others ask court to dismiss lawsuit over promoting FTX
IMF denies issuing CBDC Unicoin or involvement with its parent firm
Israel assessing the possible release of a CBDC
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong sells $1.8M worth of stock
UK’s Department of Science, Innovation and Technology exploring metaverse and Web3
Ripple and Montenegro formally sign deal for not yet known national digital currency
Japanese banks embrace Ripple’s MoneyTap payment system
Polygon and Ledger urge EU to amend smart contract rules to avoid centralization
NYDFS adopts regulation to assess supervisory costs for licensed crypto firms
Blockchain Association Freedom of Information Act request into banking collapse
Hong Kong banks are attracting new crypto customers in new push to be innovation hub
NYDFS will charge crypto firms for supervision
Australians lost $148M to scammers in 2022
Oaktree Capital founder calls Bitcoin the ‘Anti-Bank Play’
Pantera alum Joey Krug joins Peter Thiel’s founders fund
Paxful CEO advises to self-custody and avoid US based financial institutions
Head of Galois Capital finalizing next move
Wednesday:
Coinbase new approach to increase transparency on listing new assets
Citadel Securities planning expansion into crypto following fall of FTX
Russian Central Bank allows crypto to be used for international trade
Hong Kong’s CBDC could be on a permissioned blockchain
NFT whale Franklin deletes Twitter after unloading his BAYC collection
Jack Dorsey’s TBD partners with Yellow Card to offer BTC remittance in Africa
Waves founder Ivanov threatens investors when asked about $530M loss
Kraken gets the greenlight to operate in Ireland
UAE securities regulator to start accepting applications from crypto firms
Grayscale Solana Trust now trading on OTC markets
Hashkey Group to launch regulated exchange in Q2
Taylor Swift did due diligence on FTX and opted out unlike other celebrities
Australia installs more Bitcoin ATMs than whole of Asia
CoinDesk Indices partners with Luno in South Africa
Luno will no longer offer services in Singapore after June 20th
Multichain and HK Web3Hub launch $10M acceleration program
Microstrategy stock price doubles in 2023
Bank of England preparing for greater role of tokenization of finance
Polygon wants the EU to know the difference between Permissioned and Permissionless
Machankura lets Africans use BTC with basic mobile phone
Jeremy Cowart to create 10000 photo NFTs in 20 minutes with live audience
Trump drops more NFTs
Thursday:
Russia to allow foreign crypto mining
Tesla keeps $184M in BTC on balance for Q1
Coinbase Bermuda license for offshore derivatives exchange and eyes Abu Dhabi next
Belarus to decide on issuing CBDC by end of 2023
Judge says DOJ can call Opensea NFT case insider trading and sets trial date
US judge sets final deadline for BlockFi’s reorganization plan
Soulja Boy exposed for being involved in multiple crypto scam projects
CoinFLEX founder accuses Roger Ver of betrayal in near bankruptcy
McCarthy proposes $1.5T debt limit increase
Sotheby’s to auction NFTs from bankrupt 3AC
Trezor adds privacy CoinJoin feature to BTC transactions
Voyager, the UCC and the US Government reach agreement
Congress to start from ‘scratch’ on stablecoin regulation
Brexit could act as the catalyst for new crypto law in UK
Friday:
Societe Generale’s crypto division introduce Euro stablecoin to Ethereum
Texas pass landmark crypto bill that mandates all exchanges to provide proof-of-reserves
Brazil investigating Binance over illegal derivatives offerings
US Congressional Committee highlights importance of legislation for stablecoin payments
Delphi Labs unveil new framework for Cybernetic Organization
Bitboy defies court order for an appearance in FTX probe
Bella Hadid NFT co-founder being sued for $77M
Collapsed crypto exchange Thodex boss is detained in Turkey
Famous museum Centre Pompidou creates room to showcase NFTs
Coin/Project Updates:
Monday:
Hundred Finance on Optimism hacked for $7M
Balancer downsizes with staff cuts and restructuring of budget
Team behind STEPN and MOOAR launch AI-NFT creator tool GNT
Filecoin bug bounties are live
TrueUSD use growing
Ripple unveils liquidity hub to bridge crypto and fiat
zkSync Twitter account was compromised and restored again with report on events
DAO Maker exploiter returns after 200 days and sends $600k to Tornado Cash
Stabolut launch new BTC backed decentralized stablecoin USB
Vela refunds nearly $50M USDC to VLP holders
DeFi insurer Sherlock sees reserves fall by 90%
Swapos hacked for $468k
Pitch expands its mission to become Hourglass
BlockSec launches collaborative testing toolkit for private forked chains
MonkeyDAO plans to buy rights to popular Solana Monkeys for $2M
Fracton Protocol surpasses $3B in trading volume
MBLK to launch this week via IDO
Community Gaming firm confirms layoffs amid slump in crypto gaming sector
Port3 Network and Jump form partnership
Olympus DAO vote to buy more ETH for treasury to back OHM token
Trump NFTs earn up to $1M from sales
Zipmex savior V Ventures fails to deliver 100% of payment
Tuesday:
SushiSwap update on exploit
Lamina building for the Open Metaverse
Rainbow app targeting customer UI and ease of understanding
Obol Labs alpha release phase
Enso Finance V2
Array introduces new project on Abitrum and zkSync
Evmos tackle and fix Ethermint problem
Taiko alpha-2 testnet deprecated
Wednesday:
Defilama launch governance and NFT dashboard
Core DAO partners with Bitget and MEXC to launch $200M ecosystem fund
Gnosis spent $5M on validator incentive program for decentralization
PancakeSwap leaders propose cutting CAKE inflation to 3%-5%
Asymmetry launch with novel solutions to LSDs
Jumper introduce Bridge Insurance
LiFi working with InsurAce to provide bridge insurance
Ripple’s new liquidity hub excludes XRP for the time being
Iris Network 2.0 upgrade completed
Maverick launch on zkSync and users can claim Mava IV free NFT
Safemoon hacker to return $7.1M and keep 20%
Blocsec introduce Phalcon Fork toolkit for Web3 developers
Blockdaemon launch new wallet
Thursday:
Ethereum unstaking requests now face 17 day wait
Binance update on Eth 2.0 staking withdrawals
Bitcoin core developer leaves team
Full Bitdeer report for 2022 released
Euler Labs head of risk resigns following events of attack
Agility sees deposits climb to $276M
Lukso Genesis Validators are on their way
Cubist launches hardware-backed key management platform for web3 infrastructure
Gitcoin total $1.25M of Core Round matching pool funds for next beta round
Angle is reopening with agEUR being back on track and release new proposal
Internet Computer setting up shop in Hong Kong
Friday:
MakerDAO approve transferring max of $500M in USDC to Coinbase for 2.6% yield
ApeCoin community approve $1M donation to Ethereum development
Flashbots rolls out MEV-Share to distribute profits with Ethereum users
Offchain Labs announce validator performance tracking
ENS and Moonpay partner to create fiat on-ramp
Carbon launches on Ethereum Mainnet
Wintermute plugs into CoinRoutes smart-order routing system
Binance will be a node operator for Polymesh
Aptos release core delegation pool functionality through the release of AIP-6
NFT platform Zora is launching a magazine
0x launch new suite of APIs for developers and Web3 markets
Multi-collateral RAI fork on Optimism HAI is announced
Fundraises:
Monday:
Tradier raised $24.6M in Series B funding
Distyl AI announce alliance with OpenAI and raised $7M
Tonic.xyz raised $5M
EVEN raised $2.2M
Protec Labs raised $1.5M in seed round
AiONE raised $1M
Natix Network raised $3.5M seed round
Tuesday:
DWF Labs invested over $60M into EOS
Fractal raise $6M
Mediaeval Empires raised $3M
Protecc Labs closed $1.5M seed round
Ecoterra raise $1.3M
Pear Protocol raised $1.25M
Vycolend raise $0.5M
Cobo invest in Particle Network
Bixin Ventures invest in Pendle
Wallet Guard announce pre-seed fundraise
Wednesday:
Unchained enroute to raise $60M in ongoing Series B funding
Thursday:
Hashport raise 1.2B Yen in latest round
Karate Combat secure $19M
Swaap close $4.5M seed round and announce v2 launch
Natix raise $3.5M
Friday:
Binance Labs invests in Gomble
P2P.org raise $23M in Series A
Shield raise $2.1M in pre-seed
Research/Reads:
Panoptic Options Trading Strategies Series: Part 1- The Basics - source
Learning MEV and REVM - source
Meta’s Botched NFT Plans - source
Why Privacy Failed - ZK Part 2 - source
Namada: Unifying Privacy - source
The Endgame for Polygon: An AMA with Sanket, Head of growth at Polygon - source
Into the Cosmos: The App-Chain Thesis Enters Ethereum - source
Venture Funding Events in Web3 - source
Exploring the upcoming MOVE Gemini Sui Ecosystem - source
Why Is My Binance Deposit Address Being Retired - source
Beginner’s Guide to Consensus Mechanisms - source
Navigating the Dark Forest: Unraveling the Mysteries of the MEV Market Landscape - source
Arthur Hayes - Exit Liquidity - source
Reach out to me on tweeter