This thread explores the increasing trend toward horizontal blockchain scalability. This method, unlike vertical scaling, distributes workloads across numerous nodes, allowing networks to expand by adding more machines. Vertical scaling, on the other hand, improves a single machine's abilities. Both methods have their merits, but horizontal scaling ultimately ensures global scalability and is hailed as the future of blockchain systems.
Traditional indicators for cryptocurrency market tops might not be relevant in the current cycle. The increasing influence of institutions like BlackRock on Bitcoin sentiment and the mainstream adoption of crypto could change what traditional market tops look like. Look for broader signals, such as sovereign wealth funds investing in Bitcoin, corporate treasuries diversifying into crypto, crypto company IPOs, and potential crises from over-leveraging or restaking in the sector.
This post goes over the concept of power perpetuals, assets that target an index price's power, in relation to three types of DeFi primitives, including crypto-collateralized stablecoins, margined futures, and products like Uniswap. Stablecoins are analogous to 0-perps, margined futures are 1-perps, and Uniswap-like products act as a replicating portfolio for 0.5-perps. This uncovers a compact design space across these central primitives in DeFi.
The market's demand for stablecoins via lending platforms has risen sharply, fueled by bullish positioning by traders and perceived attractive opportunities, driving up borrowing rates and yields.
This thread provides a good overview of Ordinals on Bitcoin for beginners including their history, a high-level description of them, and some examples of how they work.
Tesla and SpaceX's Bitcoin address, which holds 19,794 BTC valued at over $1.3 billion, was identified by matching on-chain fund flows with financial statements.
March's major crypto events include Ethereum's Dencun upgrade, NVIDIA's AI conference, Fantom's Sonic upgrade, FOMC's interest rate decision, and ARB's massive token unlock.
DCG and its CEO Barry Silbert have sought to dismiss a lawsuit from New York's Attorney General, Letitia James. The legal action alleges DCG and its subsidiary Genesis Global Capital defrauded investors connected to Gemini's Earn product and Genesis following the collapse of crypto entities Three Arrows Capital and FTX. The move follows DCG's opposition to a proposed settlement deal from Genesis with the NYAG last month.
Binance.US is struggling with a loss of trust, severe revenue declines, and layoffs following the SEC's attempt to freeze its operations via a Temporary Restraining Order. Binance.US executive Christopher Blodgett disclosed in a recent court deposition that the TRO resulted in a $1 billion asset withdrawal and a 75% revenue drop. Following these challenges, the company laid off two-thirds of its workforce and experienced heightened legal and auditing costs and the loss of banking relationships.
The NIM RollApp combines blockchain tech with gaming to enhance user experiences. NIM, resulting from a three-year effort into gaming and deep-tech cryptography, aims to overcome current limitations in web3 gaming. The $NIM token will serve as the native currency for transactions and staking in the RollApp. NIM plans to start with an AI-focused project and progress through three phases of infrastructural development and application creation. Its tokenomics will provide a robust economy in the ecosystem.
FormAI aims to democratize artificial general intelligence by creating a blockchain-driven protocol for AI computation, data, and research. The Form protocol leverages a decentralized network for efficient AI training and inference. It supports various hardware, employs smart contracts for task management, and uses pipeline and data parallelism for task allocation. It also introduces a reward system and integrates synthetic data generation, data scraping and labeling, and AI evaluation. FormAI also aims to foster AI research and ensure community governance in AGI decision-making.
Bitcoin's long-term holder growth rate is indicating early bullrun signs. A buoyant supply delta and the Bitcoin Macro Index point to strong expansion. While the trend suggests a significant uptrend in the coming months, it could be potentially faster than the average progression and there is a possibility of some short-term volatility or pullback. The era of "deep value" Bitcoin is over, giving way to a "Bitcoin Momentum era."
The Ichimoku Kinko Hyo is a comprehensive trading system originally from Japan that helps traders maintain a holistic view of an asset’s trend. The system encompasses six elements. These include the Kijun-Sen or base line, Tenkan-Sen or conversion line, Chikou Span (also known as Lagging Span), and Senkou Span A and B, which collectively form the Cloud (Kumo), a crucial feature of the system. The system applies to multiple markets, such as crypto, commodities, forex, and more. Its one-glance approach helps traders identify the direction and strength of a trend, potential support, and resistance levels and can provide overbought or oversold signals.
Bitcoin could experience a surge in speculative activity within the next 6-12 months beyond its typical use case of being a store of value. There has been a flurry of developer activity on Bitcoin over the past year, which has led to NFTs, DeFi, and other use cases being built on top of Bitcoin. Coupled with its familiarity with the retail audience and the potential for speculators to increase their bitcoin stack, significant capital flows are predicted for Ordinals, L2s, DeFi, and other apps during this bull run that will resemble the Ethereum ecosystem’s growth in 2020-2021.
Reilabs utilizes Formal Verification techniques for enhanced security of Zero Knowledge circuits, which assists developers with on-chain computations. It recently confirmed the effectiveness of the Worldcoin network's core protocol, World ID, through this method. Reilabs noted the need for better tools in order to ensure ZK proof correctness and advocates for continuous checks to prevent user access issues.
Wormhole announced an airdrop for its governance token across Solana, Ethereum, and other blockchains, benefiting nearly 400,000 wallets with 617.3 million tokens allocated.
Revolut is collaborating with MetaMask to launch Revolut Ramp in the UK/EEA to simplify topping up MetaMask wallets directly from Revolut accounts or cards, promoting crypto adoption.
This post lays out the case for a double top this cycle due to crypto natives selling early and underestimating retail inflows, leading to a new all-time high driven by strong inflows from traditional finance.
Farcaster's daily active users have dropped 60% to 16,000 from over 40,000 since early February despite a crypto rally, with declining revenue and engagement on SocialFi platforms.
Bitcoin broke its all-time high yesterday, eclipsing $69,000 before swiftly dropping to $59,700 after a sharp sell-off. This sharp drop led to over $1 billion in liquidations, one of the largest liquidation events since the last cycle. In the hours after this liquidation cascade, Bitcoin recovered to $62-$63k with overall leverage at a much lower level.
Grayscale has launched its first actively managed fund, the Grayscale Dynamic Income Fund (GDIF). The GDIF will initially own assets from nine blockchains, staking them to generate income. These cryptocurrencies include Aptos, Celestia, Coinbase Staked Ethereum, Cosmos, Near, Osmosis, Polkadot, SEI, and Solana. The earnings from staking will be distributed quarterly in U.S. dollars. The move is expected to introduce investors to the concept of multi-asset staking through a single convenient investment vehicle.
Polymer, an Ethereum rollup, has launched the Polyverse Testnet to improve blockchain interoperability. The three-phase testnet aims to encourage developers to bring liquidity onto the testnet from other rollups and build decentralized apps for end users. Not merely a third-party bridge, Polymer will serve as an ‘interoperability hub’ between Cosmos and Ethereum ecosystems.
This whitepaper from the Scroll team discusses the development of a new parallel zero-knowledge Virtual Machine framework. Instead of constant-sized circuits, the design leverages dynamic and data-parallel circuits to improve efficiency. It groups identical operations, allowing proof generation to occur simultaneously, reducing overhead.
Part 2 of the ‘State of Wallets’ report goes over Account Abstraction (AA), which has the ability to greatly improve the UX for wallet users. One big improvement AA offers is gasless sponsored transactions, so users do not have to fund wallets with ETH to get started. Additionally, AA standardizes the ability to bundle transactions, making it easier to chain different functionalities together. AA also allows users to sign transactions with passkeys on Apple or Google devices.
This thread provides ten tips for people going through their first cycle: reduce leverage exposure, have more exposure to cryptocurrencies, understand the power of narratives, don't chase sudden surges, avoid memecoins, separate project quality from token value, prioritize survival, minimize overtrading, be cautious with yield farming, and take profits.
Involving individuals in "information games" could potentially result in data monetization through crypto. Advancements in blockchain technology allow trust to be decentralized, fostering crypto-powered information games that improve decision-making and efficiency. This experimental approach could revolutionize how we manage and commercially benefit from information.
2024.03.06·archetype.mirror.xyz·32 min read·TLDR Crypto This article offers an insider's perspective on market manipulation, specifically in the crypto markets and with a focus on the phenomenon of 'Whale Watching.' It explores the role of influential or wealthy market manipulators, known as 'whales,' who cause significant market movements. The article lays out the various stages of market manipulation, including building positions, suppressing prices, testing, and implementing pump-and-dump strategies.
The SEC and ShapeShift have settled charges for operating an unregistered exchange and listing cryptocurrencies the SEC deemed securities.
This post provides a good overview of what has been going on at ETH Denver over the past few days, focusing especially on some of the most talked about memecoins.
Do Kwon's extradition to the U.S. over Terra's collapse is uncertain after a Montenegro court ordered a retrial.
Osprey Funds is seeking to sell or merge its bitcoin trust to avoid liquidation as its shares are trading below bitcoin's value.
Bitcoin is approaching its all-time high, eclipsing $68,000. With this surge in price, Bitcoin is closing in on silver's $1.4 trillion market cap. Meanwhile, Ethereum also hit a significant milestone, surpassing $3,700 for the first time since January 2022. This comes on the back of record inflows into BlackRock and other funds’ spot Bitcoin ETFs.
Asset manager BlackRock has filed an application with the SEC to acquire shares of Bitcoin ETFs for its own funds. The firm plans to do this through its Strategic Income Opportunities Fund. The fund’s ETF has gained the lead in market share amongst the new spot Bitcoin ETFs and has done record-breaking levels of trading volume. This move would allow BlackRock to make investments directly into these ETFs, giving clients of this fund direct exposure to Bitcoin.
Bitdeer Technologies, a Nasdaq-listed bitcoin mining firm based in Singapore, has successfully tested its first self-designed 4-nanometer process technology crypto mining chip, the SEAL01. This advanced chip is designed to optimize bitcoin mining performance while reducing power consumption, leading to lower operating costs and a potentially smaller environmental footprint.
Cross-chain bridge protocol Wormhole is preparing for a potential multi-billion dollar airdrop of its W token. The airdrop, which Aevo markets are valuing at an estimated $2.73 billion, could be one of the largest in the history of cryptocurrency. Wormhole's protocol, popular for its ability to send assets between blockchains, now claims to have processed over $35 billion in transfers.
This thread explores financial nihilism, focusing on how it fosters increased financial risk-taking, particularly among younger generations. Apparently a response to rising costs of living, income inequality, and unaffordable housing, financial nihilism leads to strategic gambling for potential large payoffs, demonstrated in trends like the rise of 0DTE options and sports betting. Financial Nihilism is linked to cryptocurrency - it will likely play a large part in younger generations adopting the technology.
MicroStrategy has announced plans to offer another $600 million in convertible senior notes due in 2030 to qualified institutional buyers. The company also intends to provide an option to purchase an additional $90 million aggregate principal amount of the notes. The funds raised from this private offering will be used to purchase additional bitcoin and for general corporate purposes.
The SEC has delayed its decision on BlackRock's proposed Ethereum ETF for the second time, indicating that other similar applications from companies like Fidelity, Invesco, and Galaxy Digital could also face delays. The success of the spot Bitcoin ETFs is increasing interest in Ethereum ETFs. The delay was mostly expected. Experts are confident that a decision, likely an approval, will be reached in May.
CryptoPunk 3100, a rare "alien" punk, sold for $16 million yesterday, marking the second-highest CryptoPunk sale of all time in USD.
Ordinals offer leveraged BTC exposure with unique risks and opportunities.
Coinbase experienced another glitch showing $0 balances for some users amid increased trading activity - it assured users that funds are safe and trading is unaffected.
Michael Saylor exploited the fiat money system by issuing convertible notes to buy Bitcoin, boosting MicroStrategy's valuation as the dollar weakened - he is doing it again as MicroStrategy’s share prices rise.
Short-sellers collectively lost $50m as leading memecoins surged in price. PEPE, WIF, and BONK all hit all-time highs over the weekend - even Doge saw price gains. Memecoins, only recently stepping into the spotlight as legitimate speculative bets, have rapidly been gaining traction as an asset class not to be overlooked by investors and speculators.
BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust and Fidelity Investments' Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund have emerged as the leaders of the spot Bitcoin ETF race so far. These two funds have captured 79% of total inflows while the rest have struggled to keep up, responding by reducing fees. Experts expect further concentration among the top ETFs and continuing fee wars as time goes on.
Uniswap has unveiled a comprehensive Limit Order offering. Users can now buy and sell tokens at their preferred price without having to wait and monitor the market. Included in the web app, the feature optimizes gas fees, auto-executes when market conditions meet user-set requirements, and can be used for swaps of any size.
Astaria has launched a first-of-its-kind intent-based lending platform. Its unique features include a 24-hour gas-free rate auction for each new intent. The system fosters competition among lenders to meet borrowers' intents. Astaria also promises no-fees capital efficiency, no listing process for new assets, and an oracle-free lending process. Incentives are in place for both lenders and borrowers involving $USDC and $WETH.
This thread lays out a thesis for memecoins being the next big trade, mirroring the L1 trade of last cycle. Memecoins have parallels to L1s. L1s' proliferation led to a few winners and many losers. The L1s that won mostly did so by winning the attention game. Memes are similar, except that they are more of a pure attention play.
This thread walks through strategies investors can utilize during market "flushes" or sudden downturns. These moments provide a good opportunity to invest in the strongest-performing assets. Strategies for investing include mechanical scalps, known as knife catching, which requires careful handling. The use of alerts, lists, and screeners is also recommended for staying organized and identifying what to buy after the dip. Investors need to have a solid plan and a good understanding of market dynamics.
The Nigerian Government is fining Binance $10 billion for profits gained from what it deems as illegal transactions. The decision follows the recent detention of Binance executives as part of a larger crackdown on unpaid taxes and unregistered exchanges. This is in response to concerns that Binance's actions are destabilizing the Nigerian economy at a time when it is trying to stabilize its currency.