Crypto Daily Sentiment, Vibe, Topics of the Day -
Monday, February 28th: Bitcoin breaks 40k for a retest. Up to ~ 44k. Nuclear talk keeps floating around. Luna still leading altcoin rally. Evmos launch delayed - said they want everything to go well. Solidly wars narrative forming (Sex, Weve) in Fantom ecosystem. Avax chart looks promising. Platypus pump. Potential Solunavax rotation upcoming? God candle wipes war thoughts from people’s minds almost instantly.
Tuesday, March 1st: First day of month seems to signal a new tone. Cautiously bullish. Market seems optimistic (for now). Oil reaches 7 year high. Btc is running. Btc dominance up. Btc/Eth is down. Eth lagging. Eth retesting 3k area. Jpeg’d is getting some heat for being down. Everyone speculating about Evmos. Bitcoin can’t break ~ 45k - confluent with 200 day ema. New Arthur Hayes article - gud read.
Wednesday, March 2nd: Evmos launch today, people seem disappointed by the airdrop amount. Ukraine doing a donation airdrop - strange? Fed to raise rates 25 bps in March - better than expected. Avax unlock tomorrow - bullish or bearish unlock? Solunavax getting attention again - Hsaka implied tweet. Markets slightly dipped today.
Thursday, March 3rd: Ukraine cancels airdrop, will do NFTs instead. Mark Zuckerberg’s sister releases “interesting” music video. Metamask and Infura seem to block Venezuelan users, in part of sanctions against Russian users. Says it was mistake but still big deal for decentralization. Metamask recent Consys/JP morgan accusations too. 45k zone acting like a wall. Bitcoin stumbled into it and fumbled backwards. Most alts dip. Attack near nuclear plant news coincides with market selloff.
Friday, March 4th: Markets dip again. Fantom-Solid selling off. The word nuclear spooks the market. Daily closes ~ 39k, not promising. ENS domain name game getting some attention.
Saturday, March 5th: Bearishness begins to reclaim the timeline. Lots of discussion around commodities. Oil. wheat, gold in particular are skyrocketing due to global tensions. Controversy over Chimpzoo charging .5 btc for a trading course. Evmos airdrop still being called fumbled but initial high apr(several thousand) is consoling to some. MRI gets shout-out during UFC fight - local top? Mastercard, Visa suspend services in Russia amid invasion of Ukraine.
Sunday, March 6th: Andre Cronje quits contributing to crypto/defi space - heavily affects charts such as yfi, ftm, kp3r. People speculating about the future of defi and the effect one person can have. Azuki bobu mint getting attention. ENS domain sales getting attention. The bearishness is strong today. Weekly close looks horrid ~ low 38k
Narratives update:
NFTs - cooling off or dipping? Murmurings of music NFTs on the rise?
Evmos - currently in progress - mixed initial airdrop reaction.
FOAN - only atom and near charts seem to have any life left - Holding 200 day ema for now. Fantom just took a big hit with Andre leaving - Solid fate uncertain, charts weren’t looking too hot.
SoLunAvax - Hsaka cryptic endorsement. Luna led rally recently, currently retracing. Final Avax unlock not too bad- chart holding 200 day ema. Sol chart looks meh.
Avax subnets - upcoming - Crabada getting attention. PTP wars narrative
Celestia - Modular blockchain design - upcoming
ETH merge/ZK rollups - upcoming
Shitcoins - MRI crazy performance, strong UFC shilling - Local top event recently? Handful of others random meme coins - bro, heart, code7, degen Degens are degening.
Reminiscences of an Anon: Weekend Thoughts
Looking back: Censorship in Crypto
The crypto markets continue to be cucked by the macro with bitcoin being rejected for now from the 45k area and alts falling in tandem. The Evmos airdrop is being called fumbled by many. A few shitcoins have still been popping off - mri top of the list. Several concerning events took place this week ranging from the Metamask/Infura event restricting users from certain countries, to Switzerland freezing crypto assets to several exchanges being asked to block Russian citizens. All of these actions go against the ethos of crypto which is supposed to champion decentralization as one of its core tenants. Dictating who is allowed to access their funds depending on which country they were born or live in is a troubling step in the direction of mainstream crypto adoption. As adoption increases, will we just run back to the same broken systems we tried to escape from the traditional web2/centralized days? This is a story in the making. Then there was the departure of Andre Cronje from crypto and the immediate effect on the market. The new Solid launch was already feeling iffy and this recent development doesn’t bode well for Fantom. Truly strange that one person can have so much sway on the market with just a tweet. Remember Elon back in May? Why must humans be such emotional creatures. Overall, the sparse bullish movement that opened the week quickly dissipated and now we’re sort of just waiting on events bigger than ourselves to play out. Can’t help but notice lots of people being bearish right now.
Looking forward: Celestia and Modular vs Monolithic Blockchains
While Evmos is the current hot topic, despite many being disappointed by how the airdrop has been handled so far, I like to think ahead to what the future may hold. What will the narrative/meta be in a few months? Many have already been discussing Celestia for a few months now and I’m quite drawn in by this as well. Why? First, it’s important to attempt to identify a real problem in this space, and the proposed solutions to that problem. People will eventually make a narrative fit from there. The issue is blockchain scaling - and this is a real one. It’s one reason Ethereum is currently losing dominance to alt L1 competitors who are attempting to solve the blockchain trilemma using their own engineering designs. One proposed solution is modular vs monolithic blockchain design.
What specifically is interesting about it? What is a monolithic blockchain? To oversimplify things I’ve read on the internet and am now regurgitating, a blockchain has three basic tasks: execution, security, and data availability. For the longest time, a blockchain needed to do all of these 3 tasks themselves, which led to crippling inefficiencies, reflected in the blockchain trilemma as proposed by Vitalik Buterin. Security. Decentralization. Scalability. Three of cryptocurrency’s foundational pillars that all seem to constantly strive to co-exist but struggle to live in harmony. More often than not, creators are forced to sacrifice one aspect for the sake of the other two. Bitcoin and Ethereum, for example, chose to be highly secure and decentralized, trading off scalability; while other chains made different trade-offs - Solana, Avalanche, Luna, Near, Cosmos, etc. In the up and coming modular blockchain era, new and innovative designs claim to no longer be bound to these trade-offs and can allegedly eliminate these inefficiencies and solve the blockchain trilemma using the trick of specialization. The approach - instead of just having one monolithic blockchain, three different types of chains or layers are instead used.
Celestia, formerly LazyLedger, claims to be the first modular blockchain network. It is a pluggable consensus and data availability layer that enables anyone to deploy a decentralized blockchain quickly without the overhead of bootstrapping a new consensus network. Celestia works by applying modular architecture, which decouples a blockchain stack into specialized components. The core functions, consensus and execution, are separated into different layers. The best analogy I’ve heard so far related to modular design is the development of the specialized assembly line which revolutionized the standard of the car manufacturing industry. This innovation of specialization revolutionized mass production since instead of having car manufacturing where workers worked on everything all at once and in the same location, workers mastered one specific task within the assembly line and that was all they were responsible for. In the case of Ford Motors, this allowed for the assembly line to cut the amount of time to make a Model T from 12.5 hours to 93 minutes. The number of daily cars produced rose 10x from 100 to about 1000. This same concept of specialization is what Celestia as well as the upcoming Ethereum merge are attempting to do. While this technology is still unproven, I will be watching the development of Celestia with interest as it seems to offer great promise when it comes to overcoming the blockchain trilemma. Then again, it’s important to remember that it’s just one among many narratives and that words are easy - actions difficult. It’s more than likely that we’ll hear more about modular blockchains in 2022 and beyond.
I’m looking for active crypto people to collaborate with. You can reach me at: https://twitter.com/TheoDelarosa_
- Time moves differently in crypto. Crypto is an intricate game filled with various players operating across multiple time frames and with varying agendas. Day in, day out, the pieces are moving all across the board. Sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Here’s a glimpse of what has happened so far this week in our little crypto bubble -
Coin News:
Senior Solutions Architect of Fantom Foundation Anton Nell said he and Andre Cronje will close the chapter of contributing to the defi/crypto space. There are around 25 apps and services that they are terminating on 03 April 2022. The applications—or websites that function as DeFi protocol front-ends—that will be discontinued by Cronje and Nell include yearn.fi, keep3r.network, multichain.xyz, chainlist.org, solidly.exchange, and bribe.crv.finance - source
Algorand announced that developers can take their first step towards trustless cross-chain interoperability with quantum-secure keys for the upcoming State Proof technology. Algorand said Post-quantum secure Falcon Keys is first major milestone. These network upgrades come on the heels of a $20 million incentive program from the Algorand Foundation focused on developer tooling and EVM compatibility - source
1inch Network adds a P2P feature, which facilitates secure crypto swaps between individual users - source
Singapore-headquartered Router Protocol has integrated Avalanche network’s C-Chain to its cross-chain messaging protocol. According to the official press release shared with CryptoPotato, the development will enable users to leverage the Avalanche network by conducting cross-chain transfers and swaps between blockchains such as Polygon, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), and Avalanche C-chain - source
Ethereum's Infura Cuts Off Users to Separatist Areas in Ukraine, Accidentally Blocks Venezuela. Infura says it accidentally changed its settings too broadly after Venezuelans complained of being blocked. The wholesale Infura blockade of "certain jurisdictions" has raised fears that ConsenSys has restricted access to innocent people in a bid to comply with government directives - source
LUNA flips Ethereum, becoming second-largest network for staked value. Data shows that there are currently 226,325 stakers accounting for $29.5 billion worth of locked up LUNA, propelling the network into second place for staked value. Solana leads the staking charts with $35 billion in staked value - source
News:
SEC Targets NFT Creators, Marketplaces Over ICO-Like Sales. The SEC has reportedly sent subpoenas as part of its investigation. The probe is looking into whether NFTs "are being utilized to raise money like traditional securities." The SEC has reportedly sent subpoenas related to the investigation and is particularly interested in information about fractional NFTs, which allow multiple people to hold (and trade) a share of an asset - source
Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Cancels Crypto Airdrop. Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, has canceled Ukraine's crypto airdrop. He has instead announced NFTs to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces - source
The Department of Justice has urged a judge to dismiss a Nashville couple’s bid to take a dispute over taxes related to unsold Tezos tokens to court. In December 2021, the IRS offered to refund Joshua and Jessica Jarrett taxes paid on rewards gained — but not redeemed — from staking on the Tezos blockchain, the couple said. The Jarretts said they would refuse the refund of $3,793, plus $208.03 in interest, opting instead to try for a court ruling in their favor. Industry participants have closely watched the outcome of the case, which has broad implications for the financing of crypto staking - source
Sherlock, a startup that promises to protect crypto projects from smart contract hacks, is looking to raise $100 million in a public funding round next week.The project will open its six-day fundraising window on March 7 at 4 pm UTC, according to an announcement. This follows a previous $30 million guarded launch through a whitelisted round. Sherlock is a security solution for protocols. It connects crypto projects with external audit firms and Sherlock's own security teams, nicknamed Watsons — along with providing tools for smart contract coverage for exploits and bounties on bugs - source
Bitcoin Core's next major upgrade will release around April, and the first RC version (v23) was released on GitHub and major upgrade from Bitcoin wallet Sparrow (v1.6.0) which focused on security and privacy, now supporting BIP-47 - source
Bonfida announced that its Domain Name Service (SNS) will be integrated into FTX. A total of 159,669 Solana domain names are currently registered, meaning that assets can be withdrawn from FTX using the domain - source
OKX Becomes the Official Cryptocurrency Exchange Partner of Manchester City. OKX has joined the growing number of digital asset trading platforms partnering with prominent representatives of the sports industry - source
The US food chain giant Shake Shack is reportedly offering its customers BTC as a reward for spending money at their burger chain using Cash App. Supposedly, users will be able to receive 15% of their purchase back in the form of BTC on any Shake Shack purchase that they make with a Cash Card debit card that’s available to Cash App users - source
Lugano, a city in southern Switzerland, has introduced Bitcoin and Tether in addition to its own LVGA Points token as legal tender. The initiative was backed by the collaboration between Tether Operations Limited, the tech company behind the largest stablecoin by market capitalization, USDT. Tether and the City of Lugano plan to work toward the shared goal of scaling the city’s blockchain capabilities and transforming Lugano into a major hub for European DLT adoption - source
Switzerland Says It Will Freeze Russian Crypto Assets. This historically neutral country hasn't just joined the European Union in sanctioning Russia—it's going after Russians' crypto, too. A senior official with the finance ministry tells the Financial Times freezing crypto assets was necessary because Switzerland wants to protect the integrity of its blockchain industry - source
Metaverse:
Following a record-shattering month of NFT trading volume for leading marketplace OpenSea in January, trading volume across the wider NFT market cooled in February, based on data shared from multiple sources. Overall NFT trading volume fell after January’s record-breaking month, but some networks are seeing gains amid the wider slump. Ethereum trading fell 33%, says DappRadar, while Flow and Avalanche recorded increased NFT volume in February - source
Global music brands Billboard and Universal Music Group are partnering to launch an NFT based project for licensed art and access to real-life prizes. Also involved is Unblocked, a crypto startup backed by Jay-Z, Dapper Labs and others. ChartStars is an NFT based project of digital collectibles built on the Flow blockchain. This is Billboard's first scalable NFT project geared toward music fans. The collection will be comprised of artist-focused digital artwork that celebrates the achievements and milestones of the Billboard Charts. The items will feature officially licensed art including short visual clips from music videos and album photos - source
Bob Dylan and Miles Davis NFTs Planned as Sony and Universal Join Solana Marketplace Snowcrash. The agreement is just the latest example of big labels diving into Web3, with Warner recently announcing a deal with blockchain gaming company Splinterlands. Sony Music is planning to work with Snowcrash to “develop a range of opportunities for our recording artists with a focus on delivering accessible, user-friendly experiences for both creators and fans,” - source
Animoca Brands’ metaverse gaming subsidiary The Sandbox has partnered with South Korea’s Cube Entertainment in an ambitious bid to spread Korean culture to the rest of the world via the development of digital assets. The two companies said they wanted to spread Korean culture through the metaverse. The partnership will focus on a collaboration for expanding business - source
Treasure, the biggest marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Arbitrum blockchain, has been hit by an exploit. Treasure advised users to “delist everything” through messages posted on its Discord server, and said the marketplace had been paused. Its representatives later added that they believed they had identified the issue. According to the data by blockchain security and data analytics company Peckshield, more than 100 NFTs were swiped. The hack was due to “a bug in distinguishing ERC721 and ERC1155 in buyItem(), which mis-calculates the price of ERC721 as ERC1155 with the (untrusted) given 0 quantity.” - source
Michael Jordan’s Solana Athlete App HEIR Drops First NFTs. The 6 Rings NFTs are inspired by the NBA legend’s career, and serve as access passes to the Web3 fan engagement platform. The 10,010 NFTs are being sold for 2.3 SOL apiece, or about $221 - source
OpenSea Bars Iranian Users as US Sanctions Talk Ramps Up. Twitter users complained about their accounts being deactivated without notice. The U.S. sanctions in question are against the Iranian government, which prevent U.S. companies from providing goods or services to any user based in Iran. OpenSea is a U.S. company headquartered in New York and incorporated in Delaware - source
CVS Health has filed a trademark application that signals potential plans to offer NFTs and healthcare services in virtual reality and augmented reality, according to a trademark filing posted on February 28. The CVS filing is on a 1B basis, which is a trademark filing is in place for future use but does not necessarily mean there are immediate plans, with plans to offer digital and virtual goods and prescription drugs, and health services in virtual and augmented reality - source
Tencent files for patent related to virtual concerts in Metaverse. Chinese tech colossus Tencent has continued its foray into the Metaverse after filing a patent for virtual concerts, flying in the face of warnings from Chinese banks and regulators. The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) took a strong stance against the Metaverse and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) in November, stating that it would track them with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) tools. However, according to the Chinese news outlet The Paper, more than a thousand Chinese companies have submitted over 16,000 metaverse-related trademark applications - source
Recording artist Billie Eilish is joining the metaverse as her company Lash Music LLC has filed a pair of trademark applications for her name and the Blohsh logo with the United States Patent and Trademark Office - source
Defi:
Gal Gadot Participates in $2.6M Funding Round for AdaSwap. AdaSwap’s developing DEX is backed by a dozen VCs and angel investors. It will include both DeFi integration and an NFT marketplace - source
Brazil’s central bank selects nine CBDC projects to move forward in innovation challenge. This exercise aims to research possible use cases for a digital Brazilian real, and the technical feasibility of various methods for getting there. According to the project’s published timeline, an implementation phase will run between March 28 and July 29. The central bank has previously indicated plans to decide on the finalized version of a CBDC in 2024, following the innovation lab in 2022 and pilot projects in 2023 - source
DAOs:
Ukraine DAO’s Flag NFT Sells for $6.75 Million. The auction of the non-fungible token depicting the Ukraine flag raised 2,258 ETH. Launched last month, Ukraine DAO is the brainchild of Alona Shevchenko, a Ukrainian activist living in England. Shevchenko says that Ukraine DAO came together after she connected with members of the digital artist collective PleasrDAO and Nadya Tolokonnikova, founder of the conceptual protest art group, Pussy Riot - source
Raises:
Funding Roundup: $1.34B Invested in Crypto Companies and Funds This Week. The total money invested this week came from over 20 deals and funds, PitchBook data showed - source
Polymer Labs announces $3.6M Seed Round. Polymer Labs is building secure and reliable IBC (inter-blockchain communication) infrastructure. The round was co-led by Distributed Global and North Island Ventures and included participation by Digital Currency Group, Coinbase Ventures, Tendermint, Advanced Blockchain AG, The LAO, Taureon, Wintermute Trading, Longhash Ventures, Signum, UOB Venture Management, and other angels - source
Tenderly, a startup that aims to make it easier for web3 developers “of all skill sets” to build blockchain products, has raised $40 million in a Series B round of funding just months after closing on its Series A. The financing is yet another example of the rapid succession of funding rounds in the blockchain infrastructure space and fintech space in general - source
Rarify, an NFT infrastructure startup, has closed a $10 million Series A funding round led by crypto investment firm Pantera Capital at a $100 million valuation. Other investors included Eniac Ventures, Greycroft, Hyper and Slow Ventures. Rarify offers infrastructure to help companies add non-fungible tokens (NFT) to their platforms. Rarify currently offers commerce API infrastructure for marketplaces and applications to build end-to-end NFT experiences. The company also provides real-time API access to historical data for NFT assets across multiple blockchains that companies can use when building decentralized finance and marketplace products - source
Subspace Labs, a developer of Subspace Network, announced the completion of a US$32.9 million strategic financing round led by Pantera Capital. Subspace is a new eco-friendly, scalable layer-one blockchain that is able to serve as an infrastructure layer for the entire Web3 ecosystem. From NFT based gaming and metaverses to cross-chain applications, Subspace brings smart storage at Internet scale Investors: Coinbase Ventures, Crypto.com, Alameda Research, ConsenSys Mesh, KR1, Hypersphere Ventures, Stratos Technologies, Alumni Ventures Blockchain Fund, GSR Ventures, Eniac Ventures, Bixin Ventures, Definancex, Candaq, Vendetta Capital, Illusionist Group, NGC Ventures, Cabin VC, Gate Ventures, OneBlock Capital, and Automota Network - source
CoinList has announced the Axelar Token Sale. The Axelar Token Sale begins on March 9, 18:00 UTC with one sale option. Price: $1.00. Min/max: $100 min, $750 max. Lockup: Tokens unlock on/around May 11, 2022, followed by a 9-month linear release. Supply: 50M - source
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has invested $70M in Lido Finance, a staking provider. Lido is an effective, decentralized staking platform. It offers one of the easiest ways to stake ETH and other PoS assets today. In addition, a16z is also staking a portion of their ETH holdings with Lido - source
metaENGINE, a Web 3 gaming platform, has raised $4 million in the seed funding round co-led by Lemniscap and Jump Crypto. Polygon Studios, Insignius Capital, Future Fund, CoinDCX Ventures, Efficient Frontier and others participated in the funding round - source
Praxis, a city-building startup, has raised $15M in a Series A funding round led by Paradigm. Investors: Apollo Projects, Alameda Research, Three Arrows Capital, and Robot Ventures, and others - source
ArDrive, a file storage app, has raised $17.2 million in a funding round to build a decentralized alternative to accessing the Arweave permaweb. Investors: Blockchain Capital and Sino Global - source
Coinlist announced its CoinList Seed Winter 2022 Batch, with over 1,000 startups participating, and the following list was selected: EthSign, Exorde Labs, Immortal Game, Mesha, Paychant, Smoothie, t3rn. Many of these companies presenting at CoinList Seed have gone on to raise from top tier investment funds including Electric Capital, Pantera Capital, Multicoin, Placeholder, Blocktower, and many have launched their tokens, protocols, or dApps across the crypto ecosystem with widespread adoption- source
Mechanism Capital co-led a $2.5 million pre-seed round for Diagonal, a platform aiming to make it easier for Web 3 companies to process subscriptions. MetaCartel Ventures, The LAO, Coinbase Ventures and other investment firms joined the funding round; angel investors Ryan Selkis, Anthony Sassano and others were also involved. Diagonal’s team is working on developing a public beta, which they plan to initially release on Ethereum layer 2 blockchains Polygon, Arbitrium and Optimism. Diagonal’s service is based on infrastructure from Superfluid, whose tools enable Ethereum-based apps to initiate streams of payment between parties that settle instantaneously with limited gas fees - source
Calendar:
US CPI print - Thursday, 10 March - source
FOMC rate decision meeting - Wednesday, 16 March - source
Avax Summit Conference March 22nd - 27th, 2022 - source
Data:
According to avascaninfo and avax devdata, the AVAX public sale of Option A2 (60million in total) will usher in the last 15% unlock at 8:00 on March(UTC+8), with an unlocked amount of 9m AVAX. The public offering price of Option A2 is $0.5, which is 162x the current return - source
Riot Blockchain announced that it produced 436 BTC in February and held about 5,783 BTC. The company currently has 38,310 mining machines, and it is expected that by January 2023, the hashrate reached 12.8 EH/s - source
Korean virtual asset service providers (VASPs) took in substantial net profit last year, amounting to more than KRW 3.3 trillion (US$2.78 billion) from trading activity, according to a survey from a unit within the country’s main financial regulatory agency - source
Bitcoin activity soars as SWIFT bans Russian banks. The supply of active BTC—as measured by movement in the past <24H—has soared to around 565k BTC. This is the highest level seen in over a year. In fact, only 2 events have seen higher activity: Black Thursday in March 2020 and in May 2020 - source
Ethereum miners brought in $1.19 billion in revenue in February. Most of these revenues came from the block subsidy ($1.09 billion) and only a small portion from transaction fees ($109.77 million). The numbers reveal a decrease in revenue totals for the third month in a row, with a month-over-month decrease of 15.3% between January and February. Total revenues were $2.07 billion in November 2021 and have been going down since. They hit an all-time high in May 2021, with a total of $2.4 billion - source
According to Glassnode, institutions have recently been building up Bitcoin exposure by buying discounted GBTC. There were obvious buying operations after entering December. ARK currently holds nearly $500 million in GBTC shares. GBTC discount rate is still nearly 30% now - source
According to etherscan data, the Average Gas of the Ethereum chain reached 39.1 Gwei on March 5, a new low since July 2021, and the Min Gas Price was only 12.9 Gwei - source
According to Glassnode, the number of bitcoins held by the Purpose Bitcoin ETF has reached a new high. Since 2022, despite the gradual decline in market conditions, the number of bitcoins it holds has continued to grow, from 29,494 to 34,613, an increase of about 5,000 bitcoins - source
While the worldwide search interest for the keywords “metaverse” and “NFT” boomed in the last quarter of 2021, Google Trends data shows that the hype may have started to fizzled in February 2022.Google Trends shows that in the last 12 months, searches for “metaverse” gained traction from October to December 2021. However, since the beginning of 2022, the search interest has continued to drop, hitting its lowest point in March - source
not finanshy advice