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Crypto Alpha Recap
17.04.2023: Osmosis tokenomics change. Arbitrum IP failed. Uniswap releases mobile wallet. a16z released its State of Crypto report. SEC sues Bittrex. Mysten Labs paid $96M to repurchase FTX's equity.
On April 12th, Ethereum's thrilling Shapella upgrade went live, the most anticipated change since The Merge. This pivotal update allowed users to withdraw staked ETH. Users previously staked ETH directly (32 ETH min) or via services, while liquid staking services offered derivative tokens for fund access. Now, withdrawals are enabled, allowing these tokens to be burned and exchanged for the staked Ether. Ahead of the Shapella activation, over 18M ETH were staked, more than $36 billion at today's prices.
There was a lot of speculation about what the ability to unlock all the staked Ether would do to its price. Despite concerns about potential sell pressure, many users had staked at higher prices, reducing their incentive to cash out immediately. Large full exits have been minimal, with Kraken accounting for a significant share as it shuts down its staking operations after settling with the SEC. Although market leader Lido (31% share) withdraws are not available before late May. You can check all key data points around Shapella in this dashboard from Nansen.
Macro: FOMC minutes revealed the Fed expects the banking crisis to lead to a recession this year. Officials expect GDP growth of 0.4% for all of 2023 and still are leaning towards a 25bp hike in May. While inflation used to be the most crucial part of the Fed Model, it has lately been just one component in an ever-changing macroeconomic environment. Once we get through major bank earnings and the post-liquidity crisis, it will return to the top spot of “things to watch.
Meme of the Day:
General:
SEC sues yet another crypto company. This time it’s Bittrex, a co-founder and former CEO, and its foreign affiliate Monday.
Mysten Labs paid $96M to repurchase FTX's equity stake and the right to purchase Sui tokens.
Singapore-based crypto exchange Bitrue has been hit by a security breach, draining a hot wallet of $23M in various assets.
a16z has released its latest State of Crypto report. Introducing a new index that shows stable product development in a market known for its volatile price swings. They also release open-source tooling to serve devs, builders, and users.
More than half of Bitcoin has not moved in over two years. True hodlers.
CoFund tokenizes a $10M hotel in Bali via Tokeny. The minimum purchase amount for the hotel's tokenized ownership is $1K.
Bank of America sees the tokenization of real-world assets as a key driver of digital asset adoption.
FTX recover $7.3B in assets and allegedly plans to restart the exchange.
DeFi:
Osmosis tokenomics change proposals are up for voting: Reducing daily OSMO emissions by 50% at the next upgrade; adjusting the ratio of emissions (Staking: 25% to 50%, LPs 45% to 20%; reducing community pool to 0% (standard 5% allocation from distribution model).
A controversial Arbitrum Improvement Proposal aiming to return 700MARB governance tokens failed by an overwhelming majority.
Solana Foundation is expanding its capital deployment strategy to include convertible grants and investments.
Uniswap Wallet iOS app passed Apple’s App Store review and is now available for download.
Yearn hacked for $10M in stablecoins.
NFTs:
The cumulative volume for borrowing against NFTs has just hit $1B.
Reddit drops thousands of NFTs on Polygon from over 100 Artists.
MonkeyDAO buys rights to popular Solana Monkeys for $2M.
Trump NFTs earn up to $1M from sales.
Aptos gives $20M to artists willing to create on its blockchain.
Sidenotes:
Hundred Finance on Optimism hacked for $7M.
Uniswap DAO approves the proposal to deploy V3 on Polygon zkEVM.
Vela refunds nearly $50M USDC to VLP holders.
Euler redemptions are live. Affected users can check their redemption numbers.
Tether blacklists “Sandwich the Ripper” MEV exploiter.
Funding:
Metalpha raising $100M to attract Chinese Bitcoin buyers.
Atrix raised $15M in a seed round ($600M valuation) under Polygon Capital.
Bankruptcy claims trading market Xclaim has closed a $7M Series A funding round.
Tradier raised $24.6M in Series B funding.