Round Tripping
a weekly recap of the crypto ecosystem
as always, thanks for reading and follow me here
tl;dr: further confirmation of seller exhaustion, scaling through zkEVMS (Polygon, Scroll, zkSync), Uniswap’s NFT platform, CRV’s stablecoin, and funding continues
BTC dominance 40% | ETH dominance 17% | DeFi TVL $84.5B |
Total Crypto Market Cap $1.06T | Stablecoin Supply $153.5B |
funding:
Halborn, Miami based blockchain security company, raises $90M series A
Hashflow, cross-chain interoperable DEX, raises $25M @ $400M valuation
Valkyrie launching an initial $30M venture arm focused on Israel startups
Tribe Capital launches crypto incubator program after raising $25M
Meow, corporate treasury exposure to yields in crypto markets, raises $22M
New fund Modular Capital raises $20M with DeFi sector as key focus
Famed art/luxury business Christie’s launches venture arm; invests in LayerZero
Meta launching digital fashion items in Avatar Store with DressX partnership
XLD Finance, DeFi infrastructure tools for emerging markets, raises $13M
Optic, NFT authentication/fraud prevention company, raises $11M seed
Centralized exchange KuCoin raises $10M
Arkive raises $9.7M to build DAO structured decentralized museum
StarkNet based decentralized oracle Empiric Network raises $7M
Lines, web3 wallet-to-wallet messaging platform, raises $4M seed
news:
Dubai outlines their metaverse plans of 40k virtual jobs, $4B added to economy in 5 years
BitGo adds $NEAR to institutional offerings; BitGo expands registration to Italy
BNP Paribas, France’s largest custodial bank ($13.4T), enters crypto custody space
Square Enix, gaming giant, to launch NFT project on DOT based Enjin platform
Valkyrie launching venture capital fund for “web 2.5”, middleware, investments
FTX in talks to raise another funding round and potentially acquiring Bithumb
Cobie deservedly dunks on Coinbase surrounding their ongoing token listing disaster that resulted in a manager’s insider trading arrest
FTX and Alameda propose early liquidity plan for Voyager customers
Animoca and various metaverse platforms form an interoperability DAO
Tesla sells $936M of their BTC holdings in Q2
thoughts & notes:
Markets, 3AC, & Tesla
The ongoing saga regarding 3AC’s collapse added another chapter as Kyle and Su spoke about their fund’s “regrettable” collapse in a surprising puff piece interview released through Bloomberg. The interview was likely a reaction to, and hopeful damage mitigation, after a 1,157 page legal document detailing 3AC’s history, operations, communications, creditor claims, and liquidation proceedings was released online Monday which was recapped well by wassielawyer below.
The most interesting and relevant information confirmed a few things including that their liquidation price was around 24k and their downfall was largely the result of losing ~$600M in LUNA combined with large positions in GBTC/stETH. The weekend of June 12th was the ultimate end of 3AC as BTC rapidly fell with Zhu saying, “after that day, when, you know, Bitcoin went from $30,000 to $20,000, you know, that, that was extremely painful for us. And that was in, that ended up being kind of the nail in the coffin.” As revealed on Wednesday, and a perfect addition to this insane timeline, Tesla may have nailed 3AC’s coffin shut as the company had been selling $926 million worth of BTC in Q2 which likely led to the cascading liquidations that teleported BTC from 30k to 20k. Incredible stuff.
On the bright side of this fiasco, the news this week is an additional confirmation of the enormous selling pressure that has occurred in recent weeks. Two weeks ago in Round Tripping, the core takeaway I wrote was under the title “selling pressure abated.” As I stated there, the market has absorbed extensive selling and “bottomed around 18.8k and 900 for BTC/ETH respectively as Celsius, 3AC, Voyager, BlockFi, BTC miners, and numerous others became forced sellers and offloaded billions of assets into the market.” Since then, the market has began to recover led by ETH’s impressive strength ahead of catalysts including the merge and scaling solutions taking shape. Adding close to another billion in BTC sell pressure from Tesla increases the likelihood that those previous levels have formed some sort of bottom. I mean, how much worse could it really get?
ZK Szn Approaching
As everyone is aware, reducing transaction fees and scaling ETH through L2s and rollups is paramount to its success and longevity. Scaling is done through optimistic or zk (zero-knowledge) rollups. Optimistic solutions such as Arbitrum and Optimism are the dominate L2s currently as ZK tech is extremely complex and difficult for developers to navigate. Fortunately, teams and protocols have been tirelessly working to implement zkEVMs lowering the barrier to implementing ZK scaling solutions. zkEVMs are powerful as they have the ability to run arbitrary solidity code on a zk rollup giving thousands of developers access to integrate scaling solutions. This week, three protocols announced zkEVM developments that will drastically advance ETH’s scalability/usability in the future.
MATIC launches their Polygon zkEVM L2 on testnet
Scroll, zkEVM based ZKRs, releases pre-alpha version of Scroll for testing
zkSYNC (token at some point) announces zkEVM rollup will be live on mainnet in 100 days (Friday, October 28th)
ZK technology and scaling is the most likely long term future of the crypto ecosystem and we’re just beginning to understand the immense impact the technology will have across every sector. ZK solutions not only enhance scalability and reduce fees as they also allow verifiable privacy. As such, monitoring the ongoing developments of ZK tech is paramount to market participants and Round Tripping has covered the space and will continue to do so in the future. Scroll, Polygon, and zkSync are just a few of the growing number of competing ZK solutions but are leaders (specifically zkSync) in the zkEVM space. For a deeper dive into the ZK field I would highly suggest reading The Zero-Knowledge Landscape I previously wrote in March.
tokens & protocols:
UNI to launch NFT marketplace with full sudoswap (XMON) integration
Curve (CRV) hinting at its own new over-collateralized stablecoin is on its way
SUSHI launches crosschain swap AMM built on LayerZero’s Stargate(STG) tech
RUNE’s THORChain, cross-chain DEX, begins phasing out RUNE pegged ETH.RUNE & BNB.RUNE tokens from ETH & BNB
APE rallies following ETH and impressive, successful Otherside demo
LDO launching liquid staking stETH on L2s
Jaypeggers (JAY) thread explaining their protocol for NFT tax loss harvesting
Synthetix (SYN) partners with Jump Crypto
AAVE & BAL execute $1M treasury swaps for 16,907 AAVE & 200,000 BAL
AVAX data live on Dune; AVAX highlights 5 gaming companies building there
around the ecosystem:
Arthur drops part 2 of his musings on YCC, QE/QT, DXY, YEN, EUR & crypto
Miles breaks down ETH’s five stages of ongoing scaling developments
llamaintern providing a great walkthrough of Defi Llama’s tools & products
Delphi’s in-depth analysis on the future of crypto gaming
Great thread outlining the data to use when analyzing NFTs
s/o to @poordart for the amazing cover photo this week
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