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Crypto Recaps

Round Tripping

a weekly recap of the crypto ecosystem featuring news, notes, tokens, charts & more

tolks
Apr 9, 2022
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Round Tripping

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as always, thanks for reading and you can follow me here

tl;dr: respect the king, L1 stablecoin APY enabled frenzies, protocols collaborate through collateral purchasing, Lightning Network’s big week, & funding is endless.

image taken 8am Saturday morning

news & funding:

  • Pantera Capital seeks to raise $200M late stage crypto fund

  • NEAR Protocol raises $350M in new funding for continued development; Trisolaris, DEX on NEAR ($TRI), also raises $4.5M

  • Lightning Labs raises $70M and unveils Taro, a protocol to bring stablecoins to the Lightning Network

  • LUNA partners with AVAX to add $100M of AVAX to the $UST reserve, protocols to collaborate on a new gaming subnet announced soon

  • Improbable raises $150M for building blockchain compatible metaverse tech

  • Tesla, Block (formerly Square), and Blockstream partner to mine BTC through solar power in Texas

  • GrayScale’s Digital Large Cap Fund, $480M AUM, adds exposure to AVAX and DOT while removing SUSHI and SNX

  • CertiK, blockchain security firm, raises $88M valuation @ $2B

  • JAN3, fund for advancing BTC and it’s L2 networks such as Lightning and Liquid, raises $21M @ $100M valuation

  • MicroStrategy buys $190M worth of BTC; Luna Foundation buys $231M of BTC

  • Stillmark targets $500M raise for credit fund dedicated to lending capital for companies building within the Bitcoin Lightning space

  • Sky Mavis, creators of Axie and Ronin, raises $150M to refund users effected in the $625M hack and enhance security

  • Coin Metrics, crypto data and research provider, raises $35M

  • Bitstamp set to offer crypto trading services to U.S. banks & fintechs

  • Binance.US raises $200M+ @ $4.5B pre-money valuation to expand new products and services through M&A

  • Parallel Finance, lending/staking on DOT, raises $5M valuation @ $500M

  • Chorus One, staking company, raises $30M to establish Chorus Ventures fund

  • Boba Network, ETH L2 scaling platform, raises $45M @ $1.5B valuation

  • Polemos, gameFi/play-to-earn guild, raises $14M seed valuation @ $100M

  • Moneybox, wealth manager, raises $46M to push/expand crypto offerings

  • eToro, trading platform, announces eToro.art and $20M NFT creator fund

  • Hivemapper raises $18M to continue building decentralized mapping protocol rewarding users for participation a la Helium; mainnet to launch in summer

  • HBAR Foundation launches $250M ecosystem fund to boost brand

  • Community Gaming, hosts blockchain gaming/esports, raises $16M series A

  • GOALS, multi-platform blockchain soccer game, raises $15M seed round

  • ESPN signs partnership with Tom Brady’s Autograph NFT platform

  • OpenSea officially launches support for Solana NFTs

  • Kevin Smith to release new film via SECRET network NFTs and collaboration

thoughts & notes:

BTC Week & The King

While these posts, along with the corresponding Page One articles, usually focus on emerging ecosystems, trending/upcoming tokens, and jpegs the king always controls the flows and broad market direction. BTC Miami took place this week and culminated in a flurry of BTC related news and developments.

  • The first and most important announcement came out of Lightning Network Labs with their announcement of L2 protocol Taro. Taro aims to bitcoinize the dollar by onboarding stablecoins to the Lightning Network & increasing speed. While many BTC holders don’t spend, the ability to have fiat to BTC and back native through the Lightning Network should increase growth & optionality.

  • Tesla, Block, and Blockstream are partnering to mine BTC through solar power, further solidifying the positive BTC energy narrative I previously highlighted with Exxon and ConocoPhillips diverting flared gas to BTC mining.

  • Block, formerly Square, also announced the ability for users who receive their paychecks through Cash App’s direct deposit now have the ability to receive all or partial payment directly in BTC and Block will fully integrate Lightning soon.

  • Shopify, BitPay, Robinhood and numerous others integrate Lightning Network

  • JAN3, fund for advancing BTC and it’s L2 networks such as Lightning and Liquid, raises $21M @ $100M valuation to invest in companies building on BTC L2 networks while Stillmark targets $500M raise for credit fund dedicated to lending capital for companies building within the Bitcoin Lightning space

  • UFC, through partnership with Crypto.com, announces bonuses paid in BTC

What’s Old is New Again

Twitter avatar for @HsakaTrades
Hsaka @HsakaTrades
We're approaching peak DeFi food farm frenzy velocity, this time with L1s & native stables. Time is a flat circle.
Twitter avatar for @nosleepjon
NoSleepJon 💤 @nosleepjon
If Near USN offers more APY than Anchor UST what do you think happens
7:41 PM ∙ Apr 7, 2022
552Likes33Retweets
  • There were several token announcements this week with odes to fallen tokens. Terra is adding more collateral to UST diversifying their recent BTC backing by acquiring $100M of AVAX tokens. FXS all but confirmed that they’ll also be adding diversified collateral to their stablecoin reserves, BAL has activated the ve token model, and NEAR confirmed plans of their native stablecoin.

  • By far the most interesting development this week is the potential development highlighted by Jon and The Wolf above. We are entering a new era of L1 customer acquisition through stablecoin APYs subsidized by various L1 protocols raising ecosystem funding.

  • Currently, ANC supplies ~20% APY to the Terra ecosystem which lead to massive demand and growth of UST and the LUNA ecosystem culminating in their recent acquisitions of billions in BTC. While we don’t know the APYs and exact mechanics of NEAR’s stablecoin, the confirmation, along with the token developments listed above, could ignite a frenzy of L1 stablecoin APY enabled vampire attacks benefitting the fast moving, plugged in market participants.

token highlights:

FXS — +22.1%

  • FXS continues innovating, most recently by their alluding of buying crypto collaterals. — “FRAX’s balance sheet will reflect the proportion of the stablecoin’s supply in each network” — Additionally, FXS is entering the stablecoin war through their 4pool alliance with LUNA and REDACTED which you can read about in depth here.

NEAR — +17%

  • As mentioned above, NEAR’s price appreciation comes from the confirmation of their stablecoin $USN & the fresh injection of $350M in ecosystem funding.

BAL — +20.4%

  • Balancer activated veBAL to provide 75% of fees generated by the protocol directed to holders who lock their LP tokens of the BAL/ETH pool. The proposal of integrating veBAL to Aura Finance can be seen here along with original announcement of veBAL and the corresponding tokenomics here

ICHI — +95.5%

  • ICHI is quickly becoming a CT topic of discussion as the token has been up only for the past month. ICHI aims to solve liquidity issues in DeFi which you can read about here and see their beautifully drawn tokenomics here

WAVES — -51%

  • covered in past weeks as its ponzinomics were unstable, WAVES and its native stablecoin cracked this week as USDN traded as low as $0.76 at currently sits at $0.98. Pushing Alameda and Tabasco is never a good idea as they’ll TWAP dump your ponzi to the center of the Earth. For more information about the debacle you can see the proposal that lead to the downfall here.

around the ecosystem:

  • Nansen provides a deep dive on the NEAR ecosystem

  • sudoswap releases a blog outlining their upcoming NFT AMM protocol

  • Arbitrum Nitro devnet is now live

  • DeFi Edge back with another good thread, this time on tokenomics

  • Yearn introduces the Tokenized Vault Standard (ERC-4626), read here

  • a great recap of everything DeFi in Q1

  • Route 2 FI with a compilation of threads on how to make it

tweets of the week:

Twitter avatar for @jomaoppa
joma 🤏 @jomaoppa
if Wolf of Wallstreet were about crypto...
3:05 PM ∙ Apr 8, 2022
31,838Likes8,782Retweets
Twitter avatar for @fintechfrank
Frank Chaparro @fintechfrank
In which Citigroup researchers note that USDC and Tether—stablecoins pegged to $1–have underperformed and “struggled” against US equities Bruh lmao
Image
4:12 PM ∙ Apr 5, 2022
6,820Likes924Retweets
Twitter avatar for @ABTestingAlpha
卂乃 @ABTestingAlpha
did not foresee a team blaming inflation for raising mint prices, but i suppose it was inevitable
Image
12:03 AM ∙ Apr 6, 2022
929Likes66Retweets
Twitter avatar for @DegenSpartan
찌 G 跻 じ ( 𝙃𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙞, 𝙎𝙚𝙣𝙥𝙖𝙞 ) @DegenSpartan
defi 1.0 vs ETH past 365 days vseth.info
Image
10:21 AM ∙ Apr 8, 2022
619Likes74Retweets
Twitter avatar for @LynAldenContact
Lyn Alden @LynAldenContact
Good speech from @jackmallers today about integrating major point-of-sale vendors into the Lightning network. Combined with @lightning's recent announcement of BTC/LN-based stablecoins, and @CashApp integration, there's a lot of development on this front.
Twitter avatar for @TXMCtrades
TXMC @TXMCtrades
Strike has officially partnered with Shopify, Blackhawk, and NCR to deliver Lightning powered payments to online and storefront vendors everywhere. Folks will be able to pay for groceries or retail shopping with immediate settlement over Lightning. Cheers @jackmallers https://t.co/6sD7dkhngl
10:01 PM ∙ Apr 7, 2022
1,364Likes214Retweets
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Round Tripping

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2 Comments
xifengxx
Writes xifengxx’s Newsletter
Apr 11, 2022Liked by tolks

good article

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Clintbeast
Apr 9, 2022Liked by tolks

Another great article

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