No new major FUD this week, Ethereum staked withdrawals live next week - bias is short term sell the news event, ETH holding up better than Bitcoin, dollar at a curious spot, gold near ATH, still no new stables/money entering the ecosystem, total crypto market cap stalled at $1.2T, DeFi TVL stuck at around $50B, ETH on-chain volume unimpressive, DEX volume anomaly. High NFT volume but mostly Blur airdrop farming/wash trading. Everyone seems convinced they know what’ll happen next as if we’re not just sitting at our computers along for the ride. Personal bias leans towards months and months of unexcitingness, crab and ranging while macro stuff/Fed/inflation continues settling, barring anything else blowing up. Just need time. Who knows what kinda fuckery we’ll run into.
Best use of time for most: learning, farming airdrops, researching, refining systems, be ready if wrong and be healthy
Cheers,
- 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:
Bitcoin is chilling just underneath this resistance at $28-29k. It tried pushing up during the week but no go yet. We got daily bearish divergence on the ol’ momentum indicator - price has been grinding upwards but momentum has been diminishing.
Bitcoin dominance is stalled at ~ 47% and hasn’t moved past this level in 2 years.
Ethereum:
With the upcoming Ethereum Shapella upgrade next week, attention and interest has shifted back to ETH, which has been leading over Buttcoin and spiked up to a high of $1900 during the week before falling back. We also see this bearish momentum divergence on ETH. We’re coming to the height of the LSD trade. Biggest question, will this event play out like another sell the news event or will this time be different? Prob a short term sell the news event.
U.S. Dollar:
Looking at the weekly chart for the dollar, we’re in this curious zone. Throughout the 2010s, the dollar wasn’t able to move past this general zone at around ~ 100.
Then in April of 2022, the dollar started spiking up to 114 and has since fallen down to this area at around 100 again. Lots of discussion recently surrounding the future weakening of the dollar and the implications of what that could have for our risk assets.
Reminder that a strong dollar is bad for risk assets and a weak dollar is good for risk assets.
Crypto Market Cap:
$1.173T, basically breakeven with last week’s $1.167T. We’re still unable to move past the $1.2T level. We either pop above this to start a new leg upwards or we dump and poop all over ourselves. It’s sooo annoying how often we find ourselves in these make it or break it zones. This next move is gonna be big… it’ll decide everything going forward…. and then it all just repeats. Bias is towards more ranging.
Coins:
Weekly Gainers:
ACH been showing strength for a while now. STG/LayerZero got some big dick funding, raising $120M at a $3B valuation. Doge isn’t on here but pumped when Twitter changed to using the Doge logo then dumped when they changed back. Doge and Elon related coins are so predictably reactive to Elon news still.
Weekly Losers:
Mask pumped and dumped on Elon/Twitter news. Poor Arbitrum - exactly what is useful about a governance token? They really wasted all that potential and hype with that dumbfuck governance fuckup. At least in the short term because people have the memory of a goldfish and financial markets are cyclical. Even dogshit pumps when the rotation comes around and Arbitrum isn’t dogshit. Scaling Ethereum is important and all - yada yada but my overall view is that crypto is about attention, hype, narratives and stories. Which fall in and out of flavor regularly. The narratives of today are different from those of years before and they will likely be different in the future.
Stablecoin Total Market Cap:
$131.95B, basically breakeven with last week’s $131.92B. This is still the biggest red flag. No new money entering the ecosystem. Who’s buying? Retail sure isn’t back yet. How do we expect to start another leg up in the market without new money? Idk.
Stablecoin Exchange Reserves:
$18.041B, down from last week’s $18.543B. Once again, no bueno. This looks like it fell off a cliff. The last time we were at these levels was in April 2021. You could always attribute this to all the uncertainty around CEXs and there sure has been lots of FUD going around but how high can the market push without an influx of new stables?
DeFi TVL:
$50.29B, up barely from last week’s $49.49B. Here we are again, flirting at this little $50B level. We stayed chilling above it when Terra/3AC collapsed, fell below it when FTX collapsed and now flirting with it again. TVL across the board has been doing pretty well for protocols. Most are looking pretty good on the month.
Checking out some of the chains that did best over the last month, Arbitrum and Starknet stands out
Looking at who did worst over the past month, RIP Polkadot and Cosmos?
Exchange Volume:
$122.95B for the month of April so far vs $983.44B total in March. New month, new tone? April has historically been a good month for crypto but like past performance is not indicative of future results, non?
Dex Volume:
$9.17B for the month of April so far vs $111.96B total in March. We saw this one day with a crazy huge spike in volume on March 11th and then crickets since. Is this the time for decentralization to shine? Eh. Not a lot of other on-chain activity to back this up.
On-chain Volume:
$14.25B for the month of April so far vs $82.21B in March. Doesn’t really support the crazy DEX volume. Again, no new influx of users or active addresses - or will we only see that at the top?
Ethereum NFT Volume:
$210.46M so for the month of April vs $1.42B total in March. So OpenSea is fighting back against Blur and recently launched their own no fee pro platform to compete. One thing to note is despite the rise in volume, monthly unique traders have continued to fall, reinforcing the idea that there are no new entrants or money entering the space. Just more of the same money sloshing around.
Revenue:
Looking at the top projects based on revenue - let’s pick on Tron. Justin Tron, His Excellency, is such a character. Week in, week out the dude is in the news and Tron has raked in a little less than half the revenue Ethereum has in this time period. Tron is also currently being sued by the SEC. Then there’s OpenSea which has historically avoided issuing a token but with the ongoing Blur battle, is more than likely going to launch a token eventually. They shouldn’t as they can better operate as a business but that’s crypto stuff for you. Tokens are a great way for a team to get paid, at the expense of….
Thoughts/Observations:
Monday:
Arbitrum governance fuckery. Rollbit/Gainzy controversy over the weekend. Doge pumps because of Elon, Binance/CZ interpol warrant rumors spark market panic. BTC barted up to $28.5k and down to $27.2k on CZ news. ETH battling it out at $1800. Cobie tweeted an encrypted SHA256 hidden message and everyone panicked. Even CoinDesk picked up on it and reported the rumor. Overall, rumors move fast. Information flow can be dangerous.
Tuesday:
Bitcoin has been looking a lot more meh lately while ETH has shifted to leading. Bitcoin is stuck around $28k and ETH popped up like it wants to test $1900. Bitcoin dominance looking like it topped out. If Bitcoin falls, will ETH and alts run or is it bad news bears if Bitcoin dumps? Dollar at multi year point of interest and stonks have been grinding up. Doge still holding up from Elon’s antics.
Wednesday:
ETH shoots above $1900, highest since last August. Bitcoin dumps below $28k and rains on ETH’s parade. Both seem to recover later in the day. Sentiment on the timeline is starting to seem doubtful? Short term movements always unsettle people. Bullish spirit dwindling on the timeline. Bitcoin dumping instead of ranging would ruin the plan for ETH and alts to run. MEV narrative has been picking up attention recently.
Thursday:
Bitcoin is stuck in the $27-$28k region and ETH has slid back down from its attempt at $1900. 3AC co-founders’ new OPNX venture saw only $13.64 in trading volume on the first day. You’d expect profit hungry traders to give any new thing a shot if there’s the opportunity to make money but the market sent a firm message on the first day. Today is also Satoshi Nakamoto's “48th birthday”.
Friday:
Bitcoin and ETH both sliding again. Bitcoin back in the $27k range and ETH mid $1800. Mt. Gox repayment window now open and should be carried out by Oct. 31, 2023. Should we be worried about that sell pressure? Add in the U.S. gov will be dumping their Silk road bitcoin 4 more times throughout the year. Poor bulls have their hopes up and no follow through yet. Expectation is more ranging. No crazy new FUD this week at least.
Highlights:
US sold 9800 Silk Road BTC on March 14th and will sell 41500 in 4 more transactions this year
Binance, CZ and others sued for $1B for promoting unregistered securities
3AC founders open rebranded crypto exchange OPNX
Elon Musk asks US judge to throw out $258B lawsuit over his support for Doge
Twitter blue bird logo changes to Doge logo
Interpol did not put a red notice out for CZ despite rumors
Mt Gox creditors window for repayments should be carried out by Oct. 31, 2023
Binance rejected Justin Sun’s offer to buy his Huobi stake
Bittrex winding down operations in US completely by April 30th due to regulatory environment
More crypto companies moving to Hong Kong in face of US regulatory crackdown
Only 0.53% of crypto investors globally have declared their tax
S&P Global plans DeFi push as it seeks to hire a DeFi director
Yuga Labs joins Gucci to announce Otherside-themed jewelry
Coinbase insider trading case with SEC nearing end
Tokenized gold surpasses $1B in market cap
Delphi Labs raised $13.5M for Web3 accelerator
Ralph Lauren store in Miami debuts in-store crypto payments and NFT ‘gifts’
Bitcoin whitepaper can be found on all Macs running macOS Catalina or newer
Dubai tightening regulation against crypto license seekers
Brazilian bank BTG Pactual launches the world’s first bank backed stablecoin
Arbitrum proposal drama concerning the selling of 750M Arb tokens despite DAO vote
Arbitrum Foundation to use a different methodology following controversial AIP-1
Solana-based Rollbit Coin faces scrutiny over crypto influencer promotion tactics
Amazon NFT marketplace could feature NFT art and artists such as Beeple and Pudgy Penguins
Opensea launched no-fee ‘Pro’ market place with NFT rewards
LayerZero raised $120M at a $3B valuation in Series B funding
7000 players successfully converged in Yuga Labs’ Otherside Metaverse ‘Second Trip’
Ethereum MEV bots lose over $25M in sophisticated attack
Manifold building liquid staking platform and secures 25000 ETH deal with Cream Finance
Ethereum projects band together to launch MEV blocker to share profits with users
Lido V2 update
Avalanche launched subnet that can be customized for financial institutions
LooksRare V2 is live
Polkadot registers trademark for blockchain communication platform
Coinbase now backs pushback against sanctions targeting Tornado Cash
Ava Labs partner with Korea’s SK Planet to expand in Asia
PancakeSwap V3 launches On BNB Chain and Ethereum following Uniswap license expiry
Euler saga of stolen funds over as hacker returns everything
Justin Sun says Tron is exploring ways to integrate zk-EVM
Aave eyes expansion to BNB Chain, Starknet and Polygon zkEVM
DefiLlama added unlocks tracking
Dydx v4 private testnet has launched
Crypto News:
Monday:
Do Kwon prosecutor elaborates on how he got caught
Binance US transitioning to using new banking partners
POAP founder hacked for nearly $4M RPL
Galaxy Digital CEO states that crypto industry is under assault
Terra co-founder Daniel Shin arrest denied to prosecutors due to Shin being low-flight risk
The Block gets new CEO and staff layoffs planned following ties to SBF being revealed
3600 Bitcoin ATMs went offline in March
Justin Sun admits he is no longer an ambassador to Grenada
Justin Sun possibly held talks to sell stakes in Huobi Global but denies claim
Justin Sun offers to buy 41500 from US Government
Kraken sponsors F1 car with Bitcoin whitepaper
Trump NFT sales spike with news of historic indictment
National Futures Association standards for members who deal in digital-assets commodities
Bermuda to still service crypto companies
Terra logo still found on Washington Nationals uniform
People’s Bank of China believes crypto lacks effective regulation and is a risk to customers
ZeroSync and Blockstream to broadcast Bitcoin ZK proofs from space
Italy bans Chat GPT over privacy concerns
Tax experts give insight into how the IRS plans to tax NFTS
According to researchers more than 50% of Bitcoin mining using renewable energy
Kaiko CEO believes crypto center will move to Hong Kong due to regulatory crackdown
Gofaizen & Sherle launch service to obtain crypto license in Dubai
Amount invested in digital-asset products continues to climb but has slowed down with VCs
Bitcoin options volume and OI oared in March and indicate renewed appetite for risk by traders
Portion of FTX scammed clients want exchange to revive
Charles Hoskinson predicts nation-states will adopt Cardano sometime this decade
Bitcoin report by US space force major becomes Amazon best seller
Inflation in UK hits new high and no immediate end in sight
Drastic surge in oil price following unexpected move to cut output
Tuesday:
Binance market share drops 16%
DOJ seized $112M tied to cryptocurrency schemes
Japan warns that 4 large exchanges are operating in country without proper registration
WonderFi, Coinsquare and Coinsmart crypto exchanges are planning on merging
Golf tournament The Masters will see generative AI augment the event
KuCoin wallet rebrands to Halo Wallet
South Korean authorities seize $160M in assets tied to Terra employees
Bitcoin’s correlation to Gold tightens in March
Bakkt finalizes $155M acquisition of Apex Crypto
A16z appoint Jason Rosenthal as operating partner
Circle VP comments on UK banks actively unbanking people and companies over crypto
FIFA debuts AI-powered world cup soccer game
Survey shows Russian households prefer crypto over gold
Senator Warren advocates for CBDCs instead of Bitcoin
People in emerging countries more likely to trust AI according to study
According to Barclays exec no crypto clarity as regulators though it would die
Istanbul Blockchain Week planned to return in August
Wednesday:
Bitcoin crosses 800M transactions in 2023 Q1
Australia’s Central Bank pauses interest-rate increases
Former Gemini exec launches tokenized T-Bill vault OpenEden
MetaMask latest extension allows for all ERC-721 and 1155 tokens to appear
Coinbase Ventures joins liquid staking protocol Rocket Pool’s Oracle DAO
Trump arrested and pleads not guilty to 34 felony counts and Trump NFTs surge
Tron launches Dominica Metaverse Bound Token with Huobi
Proposal to rename gas to mana as Vitalik originally intended
Binance Compliance Chief discusses how challenging job is
France and Sweden banks partner to create digital bonds trading platform
NFT sales near $2B in March
Anti-Bitcoin mining bill gets unanimous approval from Texas committee
Bitkeep user base grows despite multiple hacks
POAP to soon begin charging commercial clients
Thursday:
MobileCoin exec and Cash App founder Bob Lee fatally stabbed
Crypto could help save people billions of dollars each year in remittance fees
CoinFLEX founders make offer to Rober Ver to settle alleged $84M debt
Microstrategy buys 1045 more BTC
Tether ‘unequivocally reiterates’ no exposure to Signature Bank
PostFinance partners with Sygnum Bank to offer crypto
‘District 9’ director launching Web3 game on Avalanche subnet
‘Lollipop’ NFT racing game coming to Polygon from filmmaker David Ayer
Pfizer backed VitaDAO vote to create for profit to fund longevity research
Decentraland Metaverse Fashion Week sees attendance plummet
New generation of DEXs will be order book based
ANZ Bank completes Australian CBDC use case for carbon credit trading
North Carolina county advances temporary crypto mining ban
Friday:
Bitcoin and Nasdaq SPX still highly correlated
Treasury Department in latest report states that criminals prefer fiat to crypto
Robinhood settled with state securities regulators for $10M
Binance Australian derivatives AFS license canceled
UN report states that North Korea stole upwards of $1B in crypto
Decrease in unique wallets involved in crypto gaming
Japan approve web3 white paper to promote industry growth in country
India targeting 1M CBDC users in three months
Unreleased David Bowie recording to debut as music NFT
US Treasury sees potential benefits of DeFi following assessment
‘Bitboy’ Ben Armstrong faces legal action from FTX class action lawyers
Shaquille O’Neal nowhere to be found to get served court documents related to FTX lawsuit
Bitstamp launches crypto lending in Europe and UAE
Germany getting closer to tokenized digital shares
Tether supply reaches $80B for first time in a year
Coin/Project Updates:
Monday:
Rollbit address community concerns
Dune LLM roadmap
Rocket Pool announce April 18th for Atlas launch and benefits of upgrade
Scammer using “address poisoning” attack scams users of $1.3M ARB tokens
On-chain analysis indicates whales holding Arbitrum token continue to hold despite DAO fiasco
Uniswap v3 launches on Metis L2
Optimism release RetroPGF round 2 results
Osmosis token update
TUSD stablecoin daily volume surges passed $1B after Binance boost
Tender Finance announce emission incentives for borrowers
Allbridge pool hacked with loss of $570k and offer hacker bounty
Level DAO vote on emissions adjustment ends with most in favor
Synthetix generates $730k in fees ahead of allocation of OP tokens for traders
Raini Studios debut Lords of Light Game utilizing crypto culture and memes
Doodles plan to scale to millions of NFT avatars and update amendment
Update on Polkadots use of treasury for marketing
Digits DAO update on strategies for 2023
XRP trading volume surges on South Korean exchanges
Stakewise v3 introduces vault
Thena introduces liquid staking derivatives
Quoll Finance partners with Wormhole
Element Finance rebrand to DELV
ZKX public testnet is live
SithSwap is now live on Starknet
Mugen Finance announce cross-chain swaps v1 release to public on Layer 0
Scroll announce winners of global hackathon
Evmos release thread on upgrades in V12 release
Mesh report on Gnosis ecosystem is live
Tuesday:
Arbitrum addresses proposal drama and having already sold tokens
zkSync TVL doubles in 4 days and reaches $100M
Ethereum deposit contract holdings exceed 18M ETH
Dogecoin surges 20% with Twitter logo replacement and overtakes Cardano
Euler surges 15% after protocol recovers all stolen funds
Pancake Swap v3 now live on BNB and Ethereum
Dune launch Dune SQL
Aave to launch on Starknet
Huobi and Gala Games give $50M to victims of pGala scheme
Ankr partner with Zetachain
Injective launched liquid staking for first time with Stride
Internet Computer issues liquid Bitcoin for faster and cheaper BTC transactions
Frakt bonds now live
Shade Protocol launching ShadeSwap April 12th and ShadeLend launching one week after
UniDex introduced Magma testnet
All Bridge attack due to logic flaw and BNB Chain identified hacker following on-chain analysis
Kokomo Finance rugs another $1.5M after initial rug of $4M
Omni Yield is live where yield can be earned from any chain, powered by Layer 0 and Stargate
Uniswap V3 Business Source License has officially expired and now anyone can fork it
Wednesday:
Arkham Intelligence partnered with Avalanche
Sentiment exploited for $500k on Arbitrum, Officer’s Notes details hack
Astar Network to launch smart contracts which support two virtual machines
Binance Fan Token launches FC Shakhtar Fanverse
Fantom adds De.Fi security tools
Hop proposal to launch on Polygon zkEVM
Balancer tease something big
Olympus DAO proposal to deploy Cross-Chain native OHM
zkBridge Mainnet Alpha is now live on BNB Chain
Seedify launches ChainGPT
Alchemix launch Frax vaults
Metis release 2023 technical roadmap
Archive Node is sunsetting
Announcing Superfluid Subscriptions
Aliquo introduce $ASSET an ERC-721 based reserve asset
Unbound Finance to allow for stablecoin borrowing against Uniswap LP positions on Arbitrum
Maska Network acquires team behind RARA
POGs 90s milk caps game launches on Ethereum
New zkSync native dex Merlin provides report on project
Boba Network bug bounty is live
Paxful has been suspended
1500 BNB returned to All Bridge rest of the amount given as white hat bounty
Thursday:
Cowswap announces MEV blocker
BNB Smart Chain announces Mainnet Planck upgrade
Aave released proposal for v1 offboarding plan
Camelot has been decreasing user profits
Bounce Finance integrates with Kava
Bitcoin STAMPS gaining on Bitcoin Ordinals
RabbitHole introduced new reputation system for industry
Lyra released governance v2 overview
Update on Rook DAO treasury split
RoseonX and DWF partner
Impossible and Arken Finance announce buyback protection program
Friday:
Reddit Gen 3 collectible avatars dropping next week
Doge price dives as twitter logo reverts
zkSync deny 921 ETH stuck forever in smart contract
EigenLayer Stage 1 Testnet
Introducing Dinero, an overcollateralized stablecoin backed by Ethereum blockspace
Aragon launch new DAO toolkit on Polygon
Solana NFT minting gets cheaper
GMX and dydx compete for top decentralized derivatives position
Sentiment receive back 90% of hacked funds
Lagrange announced Lagrange State Committees
Braavos announced new security feature
Euler publish redemption plan for Euler users
Masa announce soulbound ID token for Coinbase’s Base Network
Avalanche’s Cortina upgrade goes live on testnet
OKX delisting multiple trading pairs
Fundraises:
Monday:
Alchemy Pay raised $10M from DWF to expand in South Korea
Granary Finance raised $5M from DeFi community
PoseiSwap raised $1.5M in strategic funding
Ensemble raised $1M seed round
Tuesday:
Li.Fi raise $17.5M
Re7 Capital and Republic Crypto go live with $100M fund
Wednesday:
Swissborg raised $23M
Polychain leads $15M funding round for Polyhedra Network
BitValue Capital invested $10M in IOST
Nibiru Chain valued at $100M after $8.5M seed funding round
Satsuma raised $5M
Modular blockchain Astria raised 5.5M and introduction
Ecosapiens raised $3.5M
Crypto payroll company Franklin raised $2.9M seed round
Ens Vision raised $1M
GoJoe raised £1.2M
Thursday:
DWF Labs invest $16M in RACA
Netherlands based exchange Finst raise $4.4M
M^ZERO $22.5M funding led by Pantera Capital
Friday:
Research/Reads:
How will Ethereum’s multi-client philosophy interact with ZK-EVMs? - source
Rollups on Solana and EIP-4844 - source
Options Series Part II -Exploring Different Pricing Approaches and Tokenomicss - source
Humanness in the Age of AI - source
A New Value Accrual Model for Ethereum - source
Upgraded Fake Wallet Scams: Beware of Multi-Signature ‘Fish Farming’ - source
Solidity Security Compendium - source
Sequencer Decentralization and Liveness - source
Introducing zkTree: a zk recursion tree with ZKP membership proofs - source
Exploring Developments Around Liquid Staking Derivatives - source
Twitter:
Thread on decentralizing the prover in zk-rollups - source
EVM Discovery of $400M of unaddressed inefficiency- source
Deepdive on real world assets coming to crypto - source
Insight into Arbitrum DAO vote - source
Stark’s ecosystem and projects to interact with for potential airdrop - source
How aggregators work and why they are necessary at EIP 4337 - source
Latency tricks on different exchanges for profitable HFT strategies - source
Useful graphic framework for trading - source
Deepdive on the game theory of airdrops and decentralization - source
Overview of important on-chain metrics for March - source
Security tool to scan potentially dangerous contracts - source
LSD following Shanghai - source
App to read contract addresses much easier - source
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