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Round Tripping

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Crypto Recaps

Round Tripping

a weekly recap of the crypto ecosystem

tolks
Feb 16
12
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Round Tripping

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tl;dr: Gary’s trying to protect, BLUR launches, market doesn’t care about your news, MKR announces Spark, AAVE’s GHO stable to testnet & Tether profits $700M in Q4


BTC dominance 41% | ETH dominance 17% | DeFi TVL $50.6B |

Total Crypto Market Cap $1.16T | Stablecoin Supply $136B |


To no one’s surprise it’s been another beautifully insane week+ in crypto. Essentially every possible emotional reaction between the spectrum of “it’s over” and “we’re so back” has been evoked since I’ve last written. Currently, we’re residing on the latter of that spectrum as BTC (+9%) and ETH (+7%), combined with BLUR’s launch and equities playing nice, have lifted the market up with them in the past 24 hours.

As for the former of the spectrum, a regulatory crackdown aptly named Operation Choke Point 2.0 (h/t Nic Carter), caused panic last week with numerous FUD inducing headlines that are summarized below:

  • SEC sues Kraken for failing to register the offer and sale of its “crypto asset staking-as-a-service program”; Kraken settles for $30M & agrees to end on-chain staking services (minus staked ETH) for U.S. clients only (Feb. 9th)

  • Coinbase adamant staking services don’t meet criteria in Howey Test (Feb. 10th)

  • SEC planning to sue Paxos for listing Binance’s BUSD stablecoin, alleging it’s an unregistered security (Feb. 12th)

  • Brian Armstrong says, “Coinbase’s staking services are not securities. We will happily defend this in court if needed.” (Feb. 12th)

  • NYDFS orders Paxos to stop issuing BUSD stablecoin from Feb. 21st (Feb. 13th)

  • Binance to continue issuing BUSD for “foreseeable future” but ready to adjust, could move away from BUSD as main pair (37% of spot vol) for trading (Feb 13th)

  • Paxos statement says, “categorically disagrees with the SEC because BUSD is not a security under the federal securities laws…we will engage with SEC staff on this issue and are prepared to vigorously litigate if necessary.” (Feb. 13th)

Despite the coordinated regulatory crackdown crypto prices appear to continue wanting to expand upwards. Since the Monday lows, BTC is currently up ~14% while numerous alts are up multiples of that. In the January 22nd edition of Round Tripping, in reference to the DCG saga, I wrote, “the swift processing of potentially negative news and small rallies in spite of bad news signals broad market strength as we’ve entered the bad news doesn’t affect markets stage of the ongoing rally.”

While the news this week certainly affected prices, we’re now a week removed from a coordinated effort to stifle crypto development in the U.S. that resulted in some of the worst regulatory decisions we’ve endured in years yet markets currently sit higher than they were before the news started last Wednesday. Of course, the long-term implications of any overstepping regulatory actions and fighting to keep crypto innovation available in the U.S. outweighs short-term price action, but the point remains. Until disproven, crypto is consistently displaying strength in the face of bad news and I’ll continue to embrace that instead of fading it.

Twitter avatar for @nic__carter
nic carter 🌠 @nic__carter
the analogy for crypto wrt regulation isn't "the internet", it's capital markets. it's not "imagine if the US banned the internet" but rather "imagine if the US never developed a securities market"
7:53 PM ∙ Feb 13, 2023
529Likes82Retweets

BLUR captured the mindshare of the crypto ecosystem this week as news hit that they’re raising at a valuation of $1B the same morning of their planned airdrop. BLUR was initially priced around ~$.30 when liquidity developed, a price that has since risen ~280% to ~$1.10.

image from dexscreener past 24 hours of BLUR volume

What’s fueling BLUR’s rise, and has since the token was live, is an overwhelming demand of BLUR from large market participants. As the percentage of eligible BLUR claimed steadily increased, so did the number of sells and it’s price. Despite the growing number of sells, BLUR, evidenced from the picture above, was steadily accumulated within the first day of trading as the distribution of the sell/buy ratio reached as high as 5:1.

As you can see, this still continues to be the case as the number of sellers are overwhelmed by the volume of buys. Many where prepared for a large opening dump followed by an eventual pump higher, but with the current state of market participants being mostly advanced and surviving the catastrophe that was last year, the usual airdrop playbook was speed ran into a transfer of tokens from thousands of willing sellers securing “free” money to those willing to watch their free money multiply.

One final note on BLUR centers around ETH and what I highlighted last week regarding the reduction in ETH’s supply since the fundamental changes of EIP-1559 and the merge. Well, it turns out that this can be massively reinforced through a new token launch where tens of thousands of wallets need to submit transactions to claim free money ($BLUR) and potentially swap that to stables or ETH.

BLUR’s launch day induced sustained, extreme gas fess which of course means that ETH was burned. In fact, around ~7k ETH ($11.5M, $4.2B annualized) was burned on Tuesday and ETH’s supply has reduced by ~10k ETH ($16.5M, $6B annualized) since the last time I wrote while the supply since EIP-1559 was passed has diminished -1%.

images combined from ultrasound.money

This edition of Round Tripping is sponsored by Sorare. Sorare is the best fantasy sports platform and is powered by NFTs! Users own their cards (NFTs) forever while using them to create lineups and compete for new card rewards, crypto powered prizes & tickets to sporting events. The inaugural Sorare NBA season is underway while Sorare also announced a four year partnership with the Premier League.

Myself, Moon, and numerous people in The One have been playing Sorare NBA since their launch in October so join the discord to come hangout where you’ll find dedicated Sorare NBA and Soccer channels.


funding:

  • Worldcoin, eye-ball scanning protocol, raising ~$120M @ $3B valuation

  • Carbonplace, bank-backed carbon credit transaction network, raises $45M

  • Coincover, recovery & protection services, raises $30M series B

  • Mino Games raises $15M to create Dimensionals game with crypto features

  • Dymension, EVM compatible modular “RollApp” builder, raises $6.7M in SAFT

  • Cub3, customer loyalty program with rewards in tokens, raises $6.5M series A

  • Ajuna, platform allowing Unreal/ & Unity to integrate with blockchains, raises $5M

  • Sesame Labs, “marketing platform for web3”, raises $4.5M seed

  • Vault, music NFT & content platform, raises $4M series A @ $42M valuation

  • VRRB Labs, developing L1, raises $1.4M pre-seed @ $20M valuation

news:

  • Tether (USDT) provides latest attestation, reports $700M in net profit for Q4

  • Binance to use zk-SNARKs for verifying its proof-of-reserves

  • UK central bank launches digital pound project, issued solely by the central bank

  • DefiLlama launches LlamaSwap on CANTO & announces Llamalend, an aggregator for NFT loans

  • Kraken settles with SEC and pays $30M over charges regarding staking program

tokens & protocols:

popular tokens these week based on narratives & announcements
  • ATOM/AVAX — details on Landslide which enables Cosmos/IBC subnet on AVAX

  • UNI — vote passes to deploy UNI v3 on BNB

  • MKR — announces Spark Protocol, growth focused arm of MKR building lending protocol Spark Lend; MKR will also integrate LINK oracle to Keeper Network

  • CANTO — proposes 30% reduction in emissions & new liquidity mining incentives

  • AAVE — protocol native GHO stablecoin now on ETH’s Goerli testnet

  • SAND — signs “memorandum of understanding” in collab with Saudi Arabia

  • OP — distributes 11.7M OP tokens in Airdrop #2

  • CHZ — validates genesis block of new L1 Chiliz blockchain

  • SUSHI — acquires ATOM-based derivatives platform Vortex Protocol

  • StarkWare — joins LINK’s SCALE program with oracle feeds available on StarkNet

  • Infinity Pools — DEX with unlimited leverage on any asset introduced

  • JPEGz — index token tracking 10 popular NFT collections launched

  • Caldera — announces one-click deployable rollup app solutions

  • AltLayer — rollups-as-service platform opens to 100 devs before mainnet launch

  • Flux Finance — US Treasury yield on-chain to permissionless lenders announced

around the ecosystem:

  • SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce’s dissent regarding the SEC’s action v. Kraken

  • Nic Carter’s explanation of Operation Choke Point 2.0

  • Ansem outline’s his February Market Outlook

tweets:

Twitter avatar for @WClementeIII
Will Clemente @WClementeIII
Image
7:59 PM ∙ Feb 9, 2023
3,009Likes455Retweets

Round Tripping is brought to you by Sorare. You can sign up for Sorare today and get 1 free limited card when you buy 5 cards from the primary market!

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