🧵🧠 America's Crypto Flame: Flickering or Dying?
Degen Debrief - Week of April 24th
Gm degens, this Debrief brings to you a weekly curation of key updates & alpha from the cryptoverse.
It's time to dive into another wild week in the world of crypto! So, grab your coffee, strap in, and let's go! ☕
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes.
Here’s what’s inside…
1️⃣ Highlights from the Market 📈
2️⃣ Big Story of the Week ✨
3️⃣ Crypto Expert Takeaways 🎧
4️⃣ Crypto Twitter Roundup: Top 3 Threads 🔥
5️⃣ Trending NFTs: This Week's Standouts 🃏
1️⃣ Highlights from the Market 📈
State of the Market - Essential Updates You Need to Know
1. How the Top 10 Coins are Faring:
It’s been largely a red week with most coins in red week-on-week
BTC has been trending down since briefly breaking above 30k
BNB is the alt that’s held up the best in the top 10, up 0.5% week-on-week
2. The Crypto Fear/Greed Index:
Still in “Greed” territory, but down a bit
Greediness has been on a gradual downtick over the last 2 weeks
Will we see a further dampening of sentiment? Or will the market turnaround?
3. Top Trending Category - NFT Marketplace Coins:
Zilliqa ecosystem coins held up well this week vs rest of the market
This seems to be driven by the EVM compatibility introduced on the chain, aimed at attracting developers from Ethereum
4. Funds Flow Summary: A Look into the Big Boys’ Activity:
TLDR; Ethereum's Shapella Attracts $17M in Investments, Bitcoin Experiences Profit Taking
Digital asset investment products experienced a total of $30 million in outflows last week, bringing an end to a six-week streak of inflows.
The outflows commenced on the previous Friday (April 14th) when Bitcoin reached the significant psychological milestone of $30,000, implying that the recent sell-off was due to profit-taking, especially in the absence of any major macro-economic factors.
Meanwhile, Ethereum recorded $17 million in inflows last week, indicating growing investor confidence following the implementation of the Shapella upgrade.
2️⃣ The Big Story: America's Crypto Flame: Flickering or Dying? 🔥🤔
Will crypto be able to survive in the US?
📈 Believer Turned Pessimist: Chamath's Journey
Chamath Palihapitiya, a long-time Bitcoin advocate, venture capitalist, and host of the popular podcast "All In," recently expressed his disappointment in the state of the US crypto industry.
Palihapitiya, who has a successful investment track record with companies like Slack and Yammer, believes that the future of cryptocurrencies lies outside of America.
🚨 Regulatory Roadblocks: Growth Stifled in US
Palihapitiya cites regulatory actions as the primary cause for his pessimistic outlook on the US crypto industry.
He pointed out that authorities have focused their efforts on crypto companies, which have historically pushed the boundaries in the startup economy.
💔 Chamath's Crypto Love: Still a Believer
Despite his concerns, Palihapitiya remains a believer in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies at large.
He contends that the industry's future growth will likely occur in Europe, Asia, or elsewhere globally.
This sentiment is echoed by Republican Financial Services Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry, who criticized SEC Chairman Gary Gensler for his regulatory approach.
He argued that it drives innovation overseas and threatens American competitiveness.
🏃♂️ Companies Contemplate Exodus: Awaiting Clarity
In response, Gensler has requested additional funding to police the crypto industry.
The SEC's actions are already causing ripple effects, with companies like Coinbase and Bittrex considering relocation plans.
While these firms wish to comply with regulations and join the financial services sector as equals, the lack of well-defined crypto laws makes complete compliance challenging.
Catch the full episode of this podcast here 👇️
3️⃣ Crypto Expert Takeaways 🎧
Bite-sized alpha from an Illuminati Round Table chat
🚽 Arbitrum Vs. ETH: Toilet Analogy
This Twitter Space recap features 0xJeff, who shares his experiences investing in crypto, particularly on Arbitrum.
Jeff uses a colorful toilet analogy where a toilet is used for many purposes.
He says that people want to piss, but someone who wants to shit and is in the toilet stops those people from pissing.
He says Arbitrum adds the urinals to the overall toilet to allocate the stress on the network, while Ethereum is like one toilet stall.
Jeff explains that DeFi innovation is prominent in Arbitrum based on network scalability, TVL, and more.
He states that the TVL didn’t drop as much as people expected after the airdrop.
Garlam himself agrees that Ethereum has so many options but doesn’t provide smooth options being expensive, etc.
On the other hand, Garlam says Arbitrum is geared to many sectors, whether traders or the broader ecosystem.
Jeff emphasizes that he believes blue chips moved to Arbitrum for this reason.
He says GMX has established itself and scaled on Arbitrum to make its protocol successful.
📑 Check out the full round table recap here
🎧️ Listen to a clip from this Twitter Space 👇️
4️⃣ Crypto Twitter Roundup: Top 3 Threads
Essential CT News & Alpha to Catch Up On
⚔️ Banks vs Crypto: Wealth Transfer & Conflict
Mikko Ohtamaa explores banks' roles in wealth transfer, their relationship with crypto, and the resulting conflicts of interest.
Banks can act as parasitic leeches, transferring wealth from low and middle class to the high-net-worth class.
They may wait for regulators and politicians to kill crypto if allowed.
Bank of International Settlements (BIS) announced crypto's death, while embracing smart contracts and tokens.
Innovations originate in permissionless environments like public blockchains before moving to permissioned ones.
Banks, industry groups, and regulators represent banks' interests, not consumers', causing conflicts.
1/ SOCIETE GENERALE, A FRENCH BANK, ISSUES A KYC COIN
Crypto community laughs. I don't consider this constructive.
While it's not big, it is still a positive wind of change.
Let me break down why. https://t.co/TPxyMpjD6a
— Mikko Ohtamaa (@moo9000)
Apr 20, 2023
🔎 Inside the Twitter-Fueled $PEPE Craze
Crypto Koryo did some digging into how $PEPE was born, and shares his findings.
$PEPE, a new crypto project, gained popularity after trending on Twitter, amassing 35k followers in just two days.
The price of $PEPE surged significantly due to retail investors joining the trend.
The top 20 ENS domain wallets that bought $PEPE after listing are provided in the tweet thread.
$PEPE's future potential is compared to $BONK, a Solana memecoin that trended for a week in December, with a similar price pattern expected.
Insiders owning 10% of the illiquid supply are already millionaires, posing a risk of them dumping the coin at any time, leading the author to avoid investing in it.
I got curious about the $PEPE project and how it was born.
So I did some investigations.
Here is what I found. https://t.co/6YVwKFVhm6— Crypto Koryo (@CryptoKoryo)
Apr 20, 2023
🎭️ Polygon’s View on Role of L1s in the L2 Era
Thor Hartvigsen shares names of some of the top VC funds in the space (worth $5,000,000,000+💰) and their key holdings.
Blockchain Capital's On-Chain Assets
Valuation: $82 million | Major holdings: ETH, MATIC, AAVE, UNI
Sold entire on-chain RPL position
Spartan Group's Diverse Portfolio
Valuation: $49.7 million | Key holdings: USDC, ETH, LDO, DYDX, CVX
RBN vesting in Llamapay
Defiance Capital's Holdings Snapshot
Valuation: $47 million | Significant assets: USDC, LDO, ETH, DODO, AAVE
Additional untracked investments: JOE, DYDX, LayerZero, Arbitrum
Partial Picture of Larger Holdings
Limitations: unknown wallets, non-EVM chain assets
Tools used: Debank, Nansen, Arkham
Who are the top VC funds in the space?🐳
Together they are worth over $5,000,000,000💰
A list of the largest crypto investment entities and their biggest positions📊 https://t.co/bdlAbvwKuV
— Thor⚡️Hartvigsen (@ThorHartvigsen)
Apr 20, 2023
5️⃣ Trending NFTs: This Week's Standouts
NFTs that are hotter than your altcoins
The following collections have been creating waves this week (Stats Source: https://www.nft-stats.com/)
1) Milad Maker NFT
7-Day Volume: $343k | NFTs Sold over 7 days: 6k
“Milad Maker is a NFT-TCG and PFP collection of 10,000 neochibi mad lads created for Miladies, by Miladies!”
2) Diamond Exhibition: Day One Pass NFT
7-Day Volume: $306k | NFTs Sold over 7 days: 604
“PROOF is delighted to present the Diamond Exhibition, an event to celebrate art by bringing together a versatile array of artists for the Moonbirds community on their first anniversary. You can learn more about the art and artists on proof.xyz/exhibitions/diamond”
Check out their website
