Daily Bullets π: Fed Stays Hawkish, Meta Big Partnerships and Andre Cronje Reemerges
π Daily Bullets π Thursday, November 3rd
Yesterday, once again, all the crypto traders turned macro experts turned their attention to the Federal Reserve, which raised interest rates by 75 basis points (as expected) for the 4th time in a row to a range of 3.75% to 4%. Bitcoin and ETH charts darth mauled on a hawkish press conference from Jerome Powell and the key takeaway was the Fed language and that they are staying the course and plan to aim for 2% inflation. Strict monetary policy will continue for some time and while slowing is a possibility, pausing isn't at this point. People were super eager to squeeze out any bit of dovish commentary from Powell but the message was clear - the time to go risk on again is not yet here
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Interesting Crypto Stories You Should Know About π° π
1οΈβ£ Big day for Meta. While their metaverse hasnβt been doing too hot and has been getting memed to death, they announced theyβre now using decentralized data storage protocol Arweave to permanently store digital collectables from Instagram. Instagram will also support a Polygon-powered NFT marketplace. Both projects saw a huge spike in their price. Polygon has continued to be on fire with their business development. Now the questions remains of how much usage these platforms will actually getΒ
2οΈβ£ Andre Cronjie returns to social media after a hiatus - he updated his LinkIn to βVice President of Memes at the Fantom Foundationβ after we saw a paper posted to his medium last week (which wasnβt actually authored by him) What do his plans include? Is he building and releasing anything or just shitposting with the rest of us?Β
3οΈβ£ Crypto-focused investment firm Paradigm (hey we just talked about them recently with the launch of Art Gobblers and NFT marketplace Blur) will host its first public event on Capitol Hill on Nov. 16 to help policymakers better understand the Web3 technologies theyβre attempting to regulate. So theyβre joining the like of SBF and Coinbase in lobbying. Yay politics.Β
4οΈβ£ Ruh roh. Are you paying attention, influencers? The European Unionβs crypto regulation bill, MiCA, set to be made law following some additional steps, contains a section that could impact many crypto influencers. It seems that commenting on crypto assets on social media without disclosure and profiting from the effects of that will be considered market manipulation. This will probably get messy.Β
5οΈβ£ Coinbase, GameStop and multiple other big names have come out with their own NFT marketplace and now Kraken, the worldβs sixth-largest cryptocurrency exchange, is launching its new NFT marketplace promising gas-less transactions. They will initially host over 70 Ethereum and Solana-based NFT collections. The key here is theyβre highlighting gas-less transactions to target fee-conscious traders. Some of the other big name marketplaces attempts havenβt really paid off so letβs keep an eye on if itβll be different this timeΒ
Now for a more expanded and detailed look at the dayβ¦
β Crypto News:Β
More than 1,000 Solana validators hosted on Hetzner have seen their server access blocked by the cloud provider causing more than one-fifth of the Solana stake that secures the network to be delinquent
Investment powerhouse Fidelity opened up a waiting list for Fidelity Crypto, which will offer commission-free trading of bitcoin and ether alongside traditional stock investments in one app
Revolut's new instant messaging feature, which launched recently in the UK and the European Economic Area, will integrate NFT profile pictures, CEO Nik Storonsky said in an interview
Mastercard adds 7 blockchain startups to its crypto accelerator
Payments firm Stripe is firing 14% of its workforce as layoffs continue at fintech and crypto companies
Goldman Sachs is working with index provider MSCI and crypto data firm Coin Metrics to develop a crypto classification service
Three top executives at web3 gaming unicorn Mythical Games announced their departure. Those leaving include the startupβs co-founder Rudy Koch, chief operating officer and head of game studios and publishing
Digital asset platform Bakkt, which has an interested in crypto staking and NFTs, is set to acquire crypto trading infrastructure firm Apex Crypto for $55M in cash, with another $145M in stock to be paid if time-dependent financial targets are hit
ββThe founders of crypto investment platform Bitpanda have quietly set up a venture capital firm
Protocol Ventures, a crypto fund of funds that invested in the likes of Multicoin Capital, Pantera Capital and Electric Capital, is reportedly shutting up shop
π¨ββοΈ Economic/Government/Regulatory:
The Bank of England's Bank Rate, or the cost of borrowing money, rose by 0.75% to 3% - the highest rate in 33 years
According to several digital asset lawyers, the popular disclaimer βthis is not financial adviceβ β may not actually protect them in the eyes of the law
The European Unionβs crypto regulation bill, set to be made law following some additional steps, contains a section that could impact many crypto influencers
Online trading brokerage Robinhood (HOOD) reported $51M in crypto revenue in the third quarter, down 12% from $58M in the second quarter
πΈ Exchange News:
Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao is looking into potentially buying banks as a way of bridging the gap between the worlds of traditional finance and crypto
Coinbase and Coinbase Pro will list Marinade (MNDE) and Marinade Staked SOL (MSOL)
FTX will list Tortuga Staked Aptos (tAPT) spot market
Binance has partnered with Ledger, opening up more pathways for users to purchase digital assets, and increasing the growth of the Web3 ecosystem
OKX, the world's second-largest crypto-only exchange by trading volume, follows rival FTX and obtained a digital asset license in The Bahamas, where it plans to hire up to 100 people over the next 12 months
π¦ DeFi News:
In a unanimous vote, Matter Labsβ proposal to deploy Aave on the testnet for its Ethereum scaler zkSync has been approved
A hacker siphoned $3M from Skyward Finance, a launchpad project on Near Protocol
The Uniswap Protocol is four years old today
The dYdX DAO near future will likely consist of several autonomous subDAOs in the near future that each work on core functional areas of the dYdX protocol and are ultimately accountable to the dYdX community
ββThe ApeCoin DAO has voted to approve a $4.4M bug bounty program with ethical hacking platform Immunefi, aiming to guard its upcoming token staking mechanism from hacks
Yield App partnership with Trovio Group, Asia Pacificβs leading hybrid asset manager and technology solutions architect, for the launch of the $35M Trovio DeFi Fund
AirDAO, which governs the Ambrosius Layer 1 network, launched an Ethereum bridge for its blockchain ecosystem. The ecosystem already has a BNB Smart Chain bridge
Rubic exploit - adminβs wallet addresses compromised that managed the RBC/BRBC bridge and staking rewards - 34M of RBC/BRBC were sold on Uniswap and PancakeSwap
πΌ NFT/Gaming/Metaverse News:
The Bored Ape Yacht Club creators say an open standard to enable NFTs to migrate between Otherside and other metaverses is coming soon
Haas F1 Team, the only American-owned team in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, announced a partnership with OpenSea - deal will include the production of a line of branded NFTs and cross-promotion during racing events where the OpenSea logo will appear on the Haas F1 Team VF-22 series cars
Blockchain software company Alchemy has launched a new product called Spearmint, which aims to make the NFT allowlist signup and management process easier for creators
SuperRare launches RarePass for exclusive curated art drops - will airdrop exclusive art to 250 holders of the subscription-like passes over the course of a year
Web3 browser Opera has launched DegenKnows, a new NFT analytics, tracking and exploration tool that includes on- and off-chain analytics
Roham Gharegozlou, Founder and CEO of Dapper Labs, announced that the Web3 studio for blockchain games and NFTs, like NBA Top Shot has reduced its team size by 22% citing macroeconomic environment
π° Fundraises:Β
Ex-Bain investor launches $30M web3 consumer VC fund
Beosin, a leading blockchain security service provider, closed a $20M strategic financing round
WalletConnect, which aims to provide social features for noncustodial wallets, raised $12.5M in what it calls an "ecosystem round" from previous lead investors 1kx and Union Square Ventures, along with companies and projects such as Shopify, ConsenSys and Gnosis
Pudgy Penguins is working on a raise of up to $10M in a round that would value the project at $50M
Y Combinator-backed Web3 startup Courtyard raised $7M and plans to redefine NFTs and the marketplace for digital collectibles
Blocto, a Mark Cuban-backed multi-chain crypto wallet and ecosystem, has announced a $3M Aptos Ecosystem Fund to help projects onboard new users
VenturePunk raises $1.5M to build Web3 product studio - ββround includes: PunkDAO, The LAO, Bufficorn Ventures, Erick Calderon (Snowfro), Devin Finzer (OpenSea), Bain Capital Crypto, ConsenSys Mesh, and Polygon Ventures
Standard Chartered (STAN) has invested in Partior, the blockchain-based payment network founded by JPMorgan (JPM), DBS Bank (D05) and Singapore government-owned investment fund Temasek. The size of the investment has not been disclosed
πΆ Early Stage Projects:
Introducing 3 new Sui payment methods β Pay, PaySui, and PayAllSui β released as part of v0.14.0
Fantom Alpha Round - leveraging Gitcoin's grants protocol, Fantom Foundation will be running an initial round allocating 125,000 FTM to projects building within the Fantom ecosystem
The second wave of the Aztec Grants Program - funding smart, ambitious people chasing after big ideas in privacy
Introducing TokenTable - EthSign is officially launching its first vertical solution bridging legal agreements with smart contracts
Whatβs your take on todayβs news? Anything interesting that you have to say about these stories? Did we miss anything that shouldβve been included?
π Data:Β
TL;DR: Today we see light flows into ETH derivatives (Aave and stETH) and even lighter outflows from WETH and Uniswap (FYI itβs Uniswaps 4th anniversary). For the weekly, aside from some flow into USDC, thereβs a move into WBTC/cWBTC. Outflow from Compound USDC, Compound WETH. Nansen still hasnβt integrated Blur so NFT volumes arenβt accurate but according to Blur, Art Gobblers has seen ~ 5500 ETH in the past 24 hours. Nansen only shows ~ 450 ETH so peeps are def going for that Blur airdrop.
Nansen Smart Money Holdings Token Inflow and Outflows: Tracking what the whales are up to...
- Inflow (1D):Β
- Outflow (1D):
Weekly:
- Inflow (7D):
- Outflow (7D):
Nansen NFT Hot Contracts:
Gobblers shot up to ~ 20ETH floor and has fallen back since on low volume ( important to note Nansen currently isnβt showing any Blur data where most people are trading Gobblers)Β
Price and Volume chart vs Individual TransactionsΒ
What is the Data telling you? See anything that sticks out to you?
π Research/Reads:
WuBlockchain - VC Monthly ReportοΌFinancing Amount in Oct. was the Lowest in Past Two Years - source
ZKPs in Web 3: Now and the Future - source
New Framework for Funding Rates - source
Have you seen our institutional-quality research?
https://momentum6.substack.com/s/m6-labs-research-
π Crypto Twitterverse:
Did we miss anything or is there anything you want to discuss? Weβd Love to hear your feedback and engage with the community! Feel free to leave a comment and let us know your thoughts on the Crypto market!
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