Oh, the market. Wild, wild, beautiful chaos. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by anything that happens anymore but I am still. I often think to myself, “I sure didn’t have that on my crypto bingo card.”
I still don’t see the bullish metrics I’d like to see. Particularly the stablecoin market cap which shows no new money is entering the space. I’m not convinced the Fed is going to pivot yet due to recent events but I’m ready to accept it based on the language they’ll use at the next FOMC. In the meantime, price is up.
- 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 -
Looking for solid and reliable crypto people to join a small group of degens balls deep in the world of crypto. Only requirement to join is you have to be active and understand the game you’re playing. Apes together strong. Reach out to me on tweeter for invite.
Data:
Bitcoin:
Pure fuckery. Broke down to $19k on the back of USDC depegging, 3 banks failing, regulatory enforcements ramping up. Then a Fed $25B “bailout” that isn’t really a bailout seemed to spark the idea that the Fed will be forced to pivot or break the economy and are effectively turning quantitative easing back on. Ya know, money printer go brrr. Shot us up to ~ $27k which we haven't seen since last June. Now we wait to see how the Fed plays it.
Ethereum:
Shot up to ~$1780 from a low of ~ $1369. Last year, ETH was often leading the market but the game has shifted back to daddy Bitcoin leading the way.
Crypto Market Cap:
$1.119T, up from last week’s $933.85T. Again, fuckery. Broke down below $1T to ~ $917B and then rebounded up back over a trillion where we’re currently chilling. This space is so wild.
Stablecoin Exchange Reserves:
$22.293B, down from last week’s $23.504B. Le stables ain’t flowing back onto the exchanges. But like they should be if the market really was risk-on again, right? Price is going up, who’s buying?
Stablecoin Total Market Cap:
$133.17B, down from last week’s $135.04B. Just keeps grinding downwards. Down 1.21% in the last week. Could it be the USDC hullabaloo? Didn’t seem to affect this very much. One way or another. We saw a crazy impressive rally but no new money entering.
DeFi TVL:
$47.36B, up from last week’s $44.04B. Rest of the market rallied but DeFi TVL wasn’t really affected. In line with what we’ve seen for basically the past year. DeFi ain’t in the spotlight. Financial turmoil should be the golden opportunity for DeFi to shine, non?
Exchange Volume:
$525.21B for the month of March vs $878.42B total in February. Exchange volume did see a boost.
Dex Volume:
.
$89.19B for the month of March vs $75.85B total in February. March 11th saw absolutely bonkers DEX volume. That was over the weekend when USDC was depegging. So that was basically people panicking and most likely caught up in the depeg. Really interesting that it surpassed volume during other chaotic times like when Terra, 3AC or FTX collapsed.
Ethereum NFT Volume:
$768.88M for the month of March vs $1.61B total in February, NFT volume has slowed down alot. Blur hype died down when price went down (typical. Price up, good coin. Price down, bad coin). There’s still more airdrops coming so it’s reasonable wash trading will continue as people continue to farm the airdrop.
Revenue:
Taking a look at which projects had the biggest increase in revenue over the past month with a minimum $1M in revenue per month. Filecoin stands out - they just implemented their own virtual machine and support smart contracts now.
Treasuries:
Top 5 biggest treasuries: Uniswap, BitDAO, ENS, Hashflow and Lido Finance, Hashflow is curious to see here. Got a bigger treasury than most major bluechip DeFi projects. What happened to the Dani Sesta projects we saw with growing treasuries a couple months ago?
Daily Active Users:
Tron and BNB chain are blowing everyone else out of the water but how many of those users are bots?
Token Holders:
Livepeer has 2.33M token holders, blowing basically all these other coins out of the water. Does that seem right?
Thoughts/Observations:
Monday:
Crypto is pumping…. after we just had 3 major crypto banks fail within days of each other and fears of USDC imploding. How could the sentiment change so quickly? The thought process is that they’ll slow down tightening, end rate hikes and therefore we are at the beginning of a new bullish trend catalyzed by this injected Fed liquidity. Market already flipped from pricing in a 50 bps rate hike to 25 bps at the next FOMC.
Tuesday:
Lotta people seem to be feeling bullish. CPI data came in eggsactly as expected and Bitcoin soared to $26.5k and ETH to high $1700s. People seem euphoric that the bull market is back, the Fed is going to pivot soon and all the bad stuff is behind us. Not convinced yet - need to get something more definitive from the Fed.
Wednesday:
Quieter. Bitcoin and ETH retraced from their euphoric previous day to ~$24k and $1600. Banking situation still looking uncertain with Credit Suisse having some trouble now too. AI coins up on chatGPT4 news.
Thursday:
Price steadily grinding upwards today. Momentum waned tho. Bitcoin ~ $24-25k. ETH ~$1600. Relatively quiet news day. Quiet before the storm. Arbitrum airdrop finally announced tho. It’ll come just after FOMC. If macro turns out good, then launch and airdrop should present some opportunity. If it goes bad….. This was one of the most heavily farmed airdrops out there. What do people who get free money rained out of the sky tend to do with it?
Friday:
Bitcoin pops above $27k and ETH moves into the $1700s. Things are getting interesting. Either the market is right in calling out the Fed and we are so fucking back or lotta people are going to get really screwed over. Leaning towards Fed isn’t gonna budge just yet but willing to flip bias based on their language. Strong opinions, loosely held.
Highlights:
Coinbase paused USDC:USD conversions while banks were closed leading to depeg event
Three banks fail in short succession: Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate, Signature
US Fed announces $25B in funding to backstop banks
Circle had $3.3B of USDC reserves at Silicon Valley Bank. Partnering with Cross River Bank
Signature Bank regulator says it was closed for not providing data
Signature Bank’s prospective buyers must agree to give up all crypto business
Prosecutors were investigating Signature’s association with crypto clients ahead of its collapse
US Banking System’s credit rating gets downgraded from “stable” to “negative”
Credit Suisse $4.7B loss from collapse of Archegos Capital and Greensill Capital
A New York court denied the government’s request to halt the $1B Voyager-Binance.US deal
Binance converting remaining $1B industry recovery funds from BUSD to BTC, ETH and BNB
Binance GBP funding on/off-ramp to be suspended in May
Meta plans to stop working on NFTs and fire 10,000 employees in a second round of job cuts
Meta is working on a decentralized social app
Justice Department investigating Do Kwon and Terra’s collapse
Europol shuts down ChipMixer - seizes $46M in Bitcoin
SBF paid $2.2B from Alameda. Ex-CEO Caroline Ellison only received $6M
Digital asset investment products outflows for the 5th consecutive week totalling $255M
US probing Jane Street, Jump, Alameda over Terra stablecoin bailout group chats
$630M seized by U.S. government. Chinese businessman arrested for $1B fraud conspiracy
YouTube influencers $1B lawsuit for promoting FTX: BitBoy Crypto & Graham Stephan
Arbitrum to airdrop ARB governance tokens to users on March 23
Ethereum developers set April 12 for launch of the Shanghai-Capella upgrade on the mainnet
Euler Finance exploit - more than $185M suspected to have been stolen
Euler Finance's offer to hacker: keep $20M and return 90% of the funds stolen or face the law
Euler hacker sends funds to crypto mixer Tornado Cash
Ethereum final dress rehearsal for Shapella upgrade
AI tokens’ prices soar after ChatGPT-4 release
Solana DEX Orca will restrict U.S. trading activity
Doodles 'no longer an NFT project' and won’t cater to speculators
Coinbase disabled trading for BUSD
DAI depegged to lifetime lows of $0.88
MakerDAO launched an emergency proposal to limit Maker’s exposure to USDC
Coinbase to take unstaking requests a day after the Shanghai-Capella update
Lido expects staked Ethereum withdrawals in May
Uniswap v3 will become free to use after April 1 and launched on BNB Chain
Sunset of Aztec Connect, privacy infrastructure that served as the encryption layer for Ethereum
Shibarium early beta test is live
Filecoin successfully implemented its own virtual machine, enabling smart contract support
Radiant v2 launch
Ribbon Finance’s launch of on-chain options exchange, Aevo
Yuga Labs opened the minting of its newest NFT collection, HV-MTL
Stargate Finance no longer reissuing STG tokens
Avail, modular blockchain optimized for data availability related to Polygon
Uniswap v3 proposal passed to deploy to Avalanche
Crypto News:
Monday:
Circle - $3.3B of USDC reserves are with Silicon Valley Bank
USDC will remain redeemable 1 for 1 with U.S. dollar, Circle says
Binance launched a large number of stablecoin trading pairs
Pantera Capital used Silicon Valley Bank as a custodian
Bybit or client fund no exposures to either Silvergate or SVB
DraftKings faces lawsuit for allegedly selling unregistered securities
OpenSea users may have been exposed to a new deanonymization vulnerability
Nissan files 4 new web3 trademarks, trials sales in the metaverse
Brevan Howard takes over Dragonfly Capital Crypto Fund
Mastercard and Visa are still signing new debit card deals with crypto startups around the world
Ark picks up more Coinbase stock, adding $6.4M
SEC denies VanEck Bitcoin spot ETF for a third time
The Pokémon Company hiring a Web3 Expert
Bankless new 2.0 launch
South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT created a Metaverse Fund
Moonbirds whale sells almost 500 NFTs on Blur for significant losses
Tuesday:
BlockTower Capital funds had exposure to Silvergate
Gemini had no customer funds at Signature Bank
Coinbase, Celsius and Paxos disclose funds in Signature Bank
Silicon Valley Bank UK arm acquired by HSBC for one pound
3 addresses connected to FTX and Alameda moved around $145M in stables to exchanges
Bitcoin Miner Marathon still has access to $142M at Signature Bank
BlockFi, Circle, Avalanche, Yuga Labs, and Proof had exposure to Silicon Valley Bank
DeFiance Capital completed the first close of a $100M liquid token fund
Dogecoin, Zcash, Litecoin resolve possible exploit; 280 other chains may be at risk
Worldcoin unveiled its identity protocol, which people can use to prove they’re real online
NFT artist Beeple opens digital art gallery in Charleston
CZ denied that Binance was trying to acquire CoinDesk via CoinMarketCap
Wednesday:
EU policy makers play down fears of SVB contagion
Anchorage Digital strategic layoffs - 20% staff, ~75 people
Web3 data warehousing platform Space and Time partnership with Korean gaming firm Wemade
Blockchain firm RockX unveils institutional liquid staking platform Bedrock
Kraken reassures customers and urges users to self-custody and diversify
Coinbase opens local bank transfers for Singapore users at no cost
CFTC new advisory committee in response to recent events
User swaps $2M for 50 cents via Kyber Network
Tari Labs won a temporary restraining order against Lighting Labs' Taro protocol
MakerDAO voting to limit dai volatility during market emergencies
Crypto therapist reports sharp rise in people seeking addiction help
Blockchain.com suspends operations of Asset Management Arm
Thursday:
U.S. Federal Reserve is activating its long-awaited real-time payments system in July
Goldman Sachs filed a patent for blockchain tech it hopes to integrate with settling mechanism
Bank of Israel promotes CBDC as a smooth cross border solution
CBDC research project reveal positive results for cross-border payments
U.K. Taxpayers will have to record their crypto gains separately as of next year
VC-Backed NFT Social Platform Metalink Launches Mobile App
UK taxpayers must file crypto profits separately from 2025
Russia found to be using Tether to evade sanctions
Bitzlato founder held without bail as more sanctions evasion comes to light
Web3 security company Ironblocks building a protocol monitoring product
Saudi Arabia’s first licensed NFT marketplace gets Animoca Brands and Polygon as backers
EU parliament passes smart contract regulation under Data Act
Beeple and XCOPY headline the next two Sotheby’s NFT auctions
Art trading platform LiveArt announces NFT membership card linked to exclusive drops
Fidelity crypto goes live, millions have access to BTC and ETH
DegenZoo uses AI to create Logan Paul’s game without him
Ark continues Block spending. Adds further 13.7M across three funds
French Collective GXRLS Revolution aim to bring more women into NFT art
Australian Treasury and Reserve Bank held private meetings with Coinbase
Friday:
YouTube influencers $1B lawsuit for promoting FTX: BitBoy Crypto & Graham Stephan
Euler hacker responds to plea of victim. Sends 100 ETH instead of the initially lost 78 ETH
European Central Bank unsure about upcoming rate hike due to Credit Suisse crisis
Gensler pushes for proof-of-stake tokens to be considered securities
BlockSec prevents $5M from being stolen on Paraspace
SBF wants FTX to prioritize covering his legal fees
Playboy lost $4.9M on their Ethereum holding from NFT payments
Sam Altman’s Worldcoin signs outsourcing deal to ramp up production of iris-scanning orbs
Ledger launched browser extension
Market data provider Kaiko to relocate its Asian headquarters to Hong Kong from Singapore
ETH Denver plans to go global
Coin/Project Updates:
Monday:
Compound v2 Pause Guardian temporarily disabled USDC supply transactions
Aave freezes stablecoin trading on Avalanche V3
PeopleDAO Community Treasury on Safe exploited for $120,000
Stargate Foundation is recommending the DAO NOT re-issue the STG token
Brave Browser now lets users sell crypto within the wallet
MapleStory introduces MapleStory Universe
Astroport mainnet launches on injective
RabbitX mainnet is here
Wormhole launches Aptos NFT bridge
GHO risk monitoring dashboard
AcrossProtocol updates roadmap
T3rn wins Polkadot Parachain Auction #41
Tuesday:
Euler Finance Incident Post-Mortem
DYdX voted to reduce trading rewards by 45%
Gearbox V3 Teaser: ReDEFIning Leverage and Lending
Sei launching the final version of testnet, Atlantic-2
Ex-Babel Finance CEO released the HOPE stablecoin
Binance.US will delist Helium (HNT) and JasmyCoin (JASMY)
Stellar linking to Polkadot and its sister network Kusama via the newly built Spacewalk bridge
Gnosis Chain bounties for solo stakers
Unstoppable.nft - secure domains with UD Parking
The Iron Fish Mainnet launch is delayed until April 20th, 2023
Feedgenie - a fully customizable terminal to receive actionable news in real time
deltaDAO, Membrane Finance, and Polygon Labs bring EUROe to the Gaia-X Web3 ecosystem
Wednesday:
Ethereum has burned more than 3M ETH since EIP-1559, worth more than $9.09B
Bitfinex and Binance walking back support for Stargate Finance’s plans to reissue its STG
Binance continuing zero maker and taker fees on the BTC/TUSD spot trading pair only
Coinbase adding Uniswap and Aave to Base blockchain
Euler hack affected protocols: Angle, Balancer, Yearn, and Alchemix
MetaMask fixes privacy issue that linked accounts together in latest update
Celestia - The Blockspace Race network is now live
Cosmos Hub released Replicated Security, allowing other chains to lean on its network security
Metamask record volume of swaps amid the demise of Silvergate, SVB and Signature Bank
NounsDAO passed a proposal to create an animated film featuring its NFT characters
Uniswap v3 deployment on KAVA passes phase 2 of 3 unanimously
Cryptio partnered with Protocol Labs, to help Filecoin miners meet audit obligations
Blockchain data verification network KYVE mainnet launch
NFT Forever Project - trustless, perpetual storage for NFTs possible with Filecoin’s new VM
Introducing Capsule, a better way to sign transactions
STRDY airdrop announcement
Thursday:
New Ethereum Standard ERC-4804 launched
Starknet DAO heads towards first governance vote
Drama surrounding the codebase of the upcoming Shibarium blockchain
Poolz token vesting contract hacked
Coinbase suspending trading for RLY, YFII, MIR, OMG, LOOM, & REP
Solana art platform Formfunction is closing down just one year after raising seed funding
FactorDao: A DeFi management solution
Salesforce launched Salesforce Web3, an NFT management platform
MEV Capital offers Uniswap hedging strategy
DeFi Exchange mStable has 3 options: merger, acquisition or sunset
Unilend Finance V2 launching testnet on Polygon on March 20th
CLV Wallet now supports BTC Ordinals
Unstoppable Domains releases web3 domain names for Polygon
Metamask improvements allow for more control and transparency on mobile and extension
Pyrometer security tool launches
Volt Protocol V1 is being deprecated
Saddle proposal to set gauge emissions to 1.5% over next 6 months
Osmosis V15 update and features
Friday:
Introducing the Space ID Token Sale on Binance Launchpad
Tether market cap doubles after recent events
Proposal calls to extend Canto liquidity mining incentives
Cosmos SDK - Twilight, the v0.47
Cardano new node version v.1.35.6, with functionality called Dynamic P2P networking
LinksDAO win bid to purchase golf course
Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster joins the VeVe Marketplace
MakerDAO passes proposal to increase investment in US Treasury 150% from $500M to $1.25B
Nym unveils zero-knowledge anonymous credentials, zk-nyms
Binance will delist HNT and WABI
CatchKing project ended
MultiversX Bridge live: interoperability with Binance Smart Chain
Nexus Mutual V2 live on Ethereum mainnet
The Smurfs’ Society partners with Pools
Impossible Finance IDO 17 with Arken Finance
Siren migrates to Arbitrum
Yearn release full disclosure related to Euler hack
Sturdy airdrop
New partners join Sui Move accelerator
Hyper Oracle whitepaper
Telepathy, the first decentralized and secure zkSNARK interoperability protocol for Ethereum
Fundraises:
Monday:
Gyroscope unveils $4.5M in funding as it prepares to launch ‘unique’ stablecoin
Tuesday:
Jungle, a web3 gaming studio, raised $6M seed funding co-led Bitkraft and Framework Ventures
Walker World raised $750K from Merit Circle
Wednesday:
Wallet infrastructure startup Capsule emerged from stealth with funding from a16z, Geometry
Digital fashion house DressX raised $15M to expand its virtual and augmented reality wearables
DWF Labs invested $10M in infrastructure provider Orbs Network through a token sale
Stablecoin issuer CNHC raised $10M in funding led by KuCoin Ventures
DEX startup Alex raised $2.5M to build out DeFi on Bitcoin's rails
Blockchain infrastructure developer Smooth raised $2M in seed funding
Entre raised $1.6M seed funding to build a community-focused network for the future of work
Metaverse payment platform Tilia gets new strategic investment from J.P Morgan
Thursday:
Payments processor Stripe secures $6.5B in funding at $50B valuation
Ibanera raised $18.5M
Cathie Wood’s Ark raised $16.3M for new private crypto fund
Metalink raised $6M
Staging Labs raised $1.1M
ShowMeta raised $840K
Nuqtah raised seed funding
Cypher Capital Group invests in Wallchain
Animoca Brands Japan commits to invest in SmartRetail Group
Friday:
Former Ledger chief of staff aims to raise $25M fund for NFT art
Paradigm funds auditing DAO Code4rena with $6M token purchase
Soul Wallet raised $3M to bring self-hosted crypto wallets to the next billion
TeleportDAO raised $2.5M to launch secure and trustless infrastructure
Blueberry Protocol raised $1.2M seed round
BRAVO READY strategic investment from Aptos
Research/Reads:
Ether a Security? | That Could Have Huge Ramifications for Crypto, Legal Expert Says - source
Cherry Crypto | In Search of DeFi Fixed Rates - source
Ongoing series on Uniswap liquidity pools, concentrated liquidity, and fee dynamics | Discrimination of Toxic Flow in Uniswap V3: Part 4 - source
Top 168 angel investors in web3 | Angel Investor Database - source
Moats in the age of token warfare | Revisiting Aggregation Theory - source
HashKey Capital Report | Top 5 Tech Trends to Watch in 2023 - source
Based rollups | Superpowers from L1 sequencing - source
Decentralized Science | The Future Of Medicine Is Tokens - source
Base | Coinbase's plan to go 'on-chain native' is a smart play for fees - source
$6.9T budget plan | Biden’s Tax Hike Proposal and What It Means for Bitcoin 'Wash Sales' - source
Binance Research | Monthly Market Insights - March 2023 - source
Predictions on rates, the macro and future asset bids | Hello, plumber? - source
A debate from the 2008 financial crisis resurfaces | Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank Reignite ‘Moral Hazard’ Dilemma Bitcoin Was Designed to End - source
Glassnode | Three Fallen Banks - source
Government interventions doesn’t yet resemble the large-scale, taxpayer-involved rescue in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown | Is This a Crypto Banking Bailout? - source
BlockFi, Circle, Avalanche, Yuga Labs, and Proof | Silicon Valley Bank Contagion - source
1401 developers from 100 different countries | Solidity Developer Survey 2022 Results - source
Fan Tokens | A Bet on Your Favorite Soccer Team? - source
Ethereum on-chain perspective | Thread discussing weekend’s events - source
$USDC, $USDT, $CRV, $DAI, $FRAX, $MIM, $LUSD, and $TUSD | How various tokens reacted to the recent bank run - source
TON blockchain | A group of related whales mined 85% of TON supply - source
Bitcoin Ordinals | How to create and sell NFT on Bitcoin - source
Web3's Multiplayer Era | Technologies convergence : AI and crypto new perspectives - source
Move-to-Earn Has a Ponzi-Economics Problem | M2E Business models : SweatEconomy Vs Stepn - source
Proposes a new dynamic challenging period and decentralization paradigm for Optimistic Rollups | Challenging Periods Reimagined - source
WuBlockchain |Why OpenSea and Arbitrum Should Not Issue Token and What’s the Function of Token - source
How ERC-4337 is changing on-chain interaction | The Wallet of Tomorrow - source
Can blockchain technology combat rising AI concerns? | AI can be defeated with cryptography - source
Blockchain as a geopolitical tool | Blockchain is the answer to Russia’s settlement issues - source
How to protect your wealth | What is crypto contagion, and how does it affect the market? - source
Start Accumulating Bitcoin | Are you too late to Bitcoin? - source
Securities, pricing, risk, volume, liquidity, timeframe | Primary vs. secondary markets: Key differences - source
Not your keys, Not your crypto | When Will Crypto Learn From the Mistakes of Banks? - source
Cryptographic technical research paper | Vulnerability in implementation of SHA-3 - source
5 important properties of security, goals and tools | My Hitchhikers’s Guide to Security by head of research at Immunefi - source
Nansen |"All for One and One for All" - An on-chain distribution model for the Arbitrum community - source
Arthur Hayes claims the Fed just conducted $4.4T of quantitative easing | Kaiseki - source
Game Theory | Learning the art of Game theory (to enhance trading cryptocurrencies) - source
Powerful tools in addressing MEV and censorship | Encrypted Mempools- source
Latency is still a major principle in the world of MEV | Defining the Latencies involved in the MEV Strategies- source
How decentralized prediction markets work | What is Gnosis- source
Understanding Bank Health | 9 Critical Metrics to Consider - source
The degree in which asset prices move together or against each other | The Investor’s Guide to Crypto Correlation - source
The State of the Art | Ethereum Virtual Machine Language Design - source
Breaking it down | Is Ether a Security? - source
Predicate for the SEC to charge many of the other cryptos as securities | Is crypto a commodity or a security? - source
Twitter:
CZ on bank bailouts causing dilemmas - source
Delphi Digital timeline of SVB’s collapse - source
How the Fed and US policymakers are handling SVB - source
Unusual selling behavior from Silicon Valley Bank and insiders - source
Long term bullish thesis playing out for crypto - source
Barney Frank admits Signature was closed to kill off the last major pro-crypto bank - source
Speculation that U.S. banking crisis was a ploy to push CBDCs - source
Euler Finance exploited for almost $200M - source
Indices for crypto - source
Mario Nawfal dramarama - source
Blur signatures are now being used to steal NFTs - source
Bitcoin vs alts - the key to making it - source
Significant drop in M2 money supply - source
The history of and evolution of money by Nnova - source
Credit Suisse down 96.7% of all time high - source
7 CMC data-driven portfolio simulations + 6 key conclusions - source
Airdrop season is back - source
How the money flows in crypto market - source
Shibereum is a ripped chain from Rinia, they forgot to change chain ID - source
Surf’s deep dive into stablecoins. Includes potential of decentralized alternatives - source
Yuga Labs Value Accural Case Study - source
Deep dive into stablecoins and $LUSD - source
Ex-KGB officer provides tips on security and protecting assets - source
Megathread on state of Optimism - source
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