crypto recap 3/14 - 3/20
crypto recap 3/14 - 3/20
news, notes, funding, charts, and tweets summarizing the past week in crypto
as always, thanks for reading, sharing, and feedback and follow me here
tl;dr: BTC & ETH are embracing their massive tailwinds while APE may become the global currency, L2s (specifically ZK enabled) are approaching their moment, and NFTs releasing tokens creates alt season 2.0.
majors v BTC as of 8am Saturday morning
funding & news:
ConsenSys raises $450M @ $7B valuation, to convert funding to ETH and release redesign of MetaMask sometime later in 2022; MetaMask 30M+ users
Former Facebook stablecoin Diem devs form Aptos, raise $200M @ $1B+ valuation to build new L1 with live devnet and hopes to launch mainnet in Q3
Optimism, L2 ETH scaling, raises $150M @ $1.65B valuation
VC firm Foresight Ventures plans to invest $100-$200M in Web3 startups over the next three years
Mina, ZK enabled L1, raises $92M to boost growth of developers in ecosystem
Spartan Group launches Spartan Labs, a $100M Web3 venture-building studio
Hex Trust, a crypto custodian based in Hong Kong, raises $88M series B
LFG, Luna Foundation Guard, to burn $365M worth of $LUNA to mint 372M $UST to purchase more “exogenous collateral” for $UST backing
Guantlet, DeFi risk management, raises $24M @ $1B valuation
BAYC deck leaked involving plans to launch land sales, APE token, and MetaRPG gaming metaverse after previously looking for $5B in funding and purchasing the IP rights of CryptoPunks and Meebits
BAYC launches $APE token — currently @ ~$13.5
Layer Zero, cross chain asset swap protocol, launches Stargate on 3/17
Spotify plans to add blockchain tech and NFTs; Zuck confirms Instagram NFTs
Magic Eden, Solana NFT marketplace, raises $27M series A
HSBC, global financial services, partners with The Sandbox, acquiring a plot of land for sports, esports, and gaming enthusiasts
Polygon based NFT collection Crypto Unicorns raises $26M through token sale
C2X, $LUNA gaming platform, raised $25M in token sale, valuation @ $500M
DCG spins off Luno Expeditions to invest in crypto/fintech with ~$250M
Oxio, token powered telecom platform, raises $40M series B
Treehouse, DeFi analytics firm, raises $18M in seed funding
Ethereum successfully merges on Kiln testnet ahead of long anticipated merge from PoW to PoS — June seems to be the rough consensus for merge
FanCraze, cricket NFT platform a la NBA Topshot, raises $100M
Joyride Games, unity powered blockchain gaming platform, raises $14M
Stellar launches $30M developer fund to match startups in its ecosystem
Coinbase releases Coinbase Pay natively integrating with Coinbase Wallet
Coinbase adds support for Solana based tokens, to add dapp connections and NFTs soon
thoughts & notes:
Layer Zero & The Multi-Chain Future
Layer Zero, one of the most exciting projects in crypto, launched this giving further support for the multichain future. Layer Zero is a messaging protocol allowing one-click complex transactions across multiple chains with native chain assets and pools.
Bridges are currently the most used application of getting funds from chain X to chain Y but they face several transactions, cumbersome UX, and fractured liquidity the “Bridging Trilemma” Layer Zero claims to have fixed. The ideal bridge solves the trilemma referring to:
Instant Guaranteed Finality, Unified Liquidity, & Native Assets
The entire Cosmos and IBC network, which has been covered as a meta narrative in previous recaps here several times, also supports the multichain, application specific blockchain future and we’ve seen RUNE, AVAX, LUNA, and AAVE regain attention this week as they announce cross-chain developments
L2 Scaling & The Merge
As I wrote in the Zero Knowledge Landscape earlier this week, the L2 funding and development is accelerating rapidly. You can see a broad recap of the recent developments that have taken place there and add Optimism raising @ $1.65B valuation & Mina raising $92M this week.
It’s been almost a year since many were calling for L2 summer, but with the merge looking likely to happen in June, it seems increasingly likely we get L2 summer and ETH/BTC pull the market forward ramping into it.
NFTs Launching Tokens
Highlighted by BAYC releasing $APE this week and the NFT ecosystem correspondingly pumping, we *should* see this playbook recreated many times in the coming months and years. While many of these will go to zero, the strong brands and teams will last and create an insane frenzy within the NFT ecosystem. There’s deeper thoughts to explore on how exactly it will play out (and to position yourself) that we’ll cover in the coming weeks.
$APE stimmy in full effect and as usual @GiganticRebirth was months early. NFTs launch tokens, profits are sticky to the ecosystem, repeat. NFT marketcap v tokens suggests the wealth created from NFTs is just beginningCompare the market cap of NFT projects to some prominent meme tokens -SHIBA reached 60 billion cap at peak -Not a single NFT has a 1 billion dollar cap [exception BAYC] Altcoins 2.0 seem overvalued relative to NFT growth; I predict tokenization of NFTs to eat into alt2 volume https://t.co/X4gwshrw0T
GCR @GiganticRebirth
good & bad coins:
$RUNE — +51%
RUNE, similar to Aave, continues to ship and build. They launched the activation of synthetics on 3/9 and investors await the integration of $UST and ThorFi while the THORSwap roadmap was revealed
$AAVE — +39%
As one of the OG DeFi innovations, Aave continues to ship features and upgrade the protocol as evidenced by the release of Aave v3 this week
$MINA — +30%
MINA announced a $92M capital raise led by FTX and 3AC as they board the ZK hype train and investors continue scrambling to gain exposure to the burgeoning ZK ecosystem that I wrote about last week.
$AVAX — +23%
AVAX launched a ~$300M multiverse program on 3/8 to stimulate the growth and development of their subnets along with the yet to fail “long the coin going into the conference narrative” (s/o Darren). AVAX is hosting the Avalanche Summit next week in Barcelona and it’s safe to assume there will be announcements to follow next week stemming from that.
$LUNA & $ANC — LUNA +2.5%, ANC -16%
in a week where market sentiment and rallies where seen across the board, LUNA was a laggard despite the announcement of burning 4 million LUNA to mint $UST and purchase “exogenous collateral”
LUNA will be one of the most watched ecosystems of the next year as there are main high profile traders/investors wagering millions of dollars, directly against Do Kwon & through the market, that the LUNA ecosystem is unsustainable (links to the burn and wagers below) all while they keep building & integrating into other ecosystems as seen by the RUNE and AVAX announcements this week.
around the ecosystem:
the king, Ansem, releases his quarterly must read report
Arthur with another amazing, tad hyperbolic, must read article
never investment advice but seriously please read Ansem and Arthur this weekend if you haven’t
Avi lays out his thoughts on the current market and where we’re headed
JavierAng with a great thread detailing the vast & developing NFT ecosystem
Jon is back with another great NoSleep Reading List
Congressman Ritchie Torres of NY writes a good article on the progressive case for the embracing crypto and highlights the insane NY Bit License rules
0xfoobar lays out thoughts on some privacy enabling protocols
tweets of the week:
