Crypto Alpha Recap

Edition #002: 31.10.2022

Oct 31, 2022

Crypto market sentiment is getting better. Bitcoin has been consolidating under key resistance ($20.6k - S21.1k) over the past few days. But FOMC meeting is on Nov 2. so do not get too euphoric. Fed already telegraphed us through the WSJ that they'll talk about slowing the pace of rate hikes, which isn't technically a pivot, but November might be the last 75bp rate hike we'll see.
On the macro side, U.S. GDP growth in the third quarter was 2.6%, the highest since the Q4 of 2021, after two-quarters of negative growth. This could indicate that the Fed will use this positive news that the economy is in good shape not to slow down future rate hikes. A 50/50 chance of being priced in for 50 or 75 in December will be the biggest question the market is asking Powell.
Amazon and Meta are missing analysts estimates and are forecasting another drop in the fourth quarter.
Total Crypto Market Cap shy of $1B, DeFi TVL ~ $54B. However, Nansen Smart Money did not follow the recent crypto pump. Expect some volatility coming Wednesday.

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Onchain market intelligence provider Glassnode has acquired crypto tax and portfolio platform Accointing.com. The financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
Core Scientific Inc., one of the world's largest miners of Bitcoin, warned that it might run out of cash by the end of the year and could seek relief through bankruptcy protection.
Google is launching a cloud-based node engine service for Ethereum developers and projects, the tech company announced Thursday.
Blockchain.com may raise money at a significant discount to the previous valuation. Valued at $14B in a funding round earlier this year, but may only fetch $3B to $4B.
Binance backed Elon Musk's $44B acquisition with a $500M commitment to take a share of the equity. Musk fired Twitter's current CEO, CFO, and legal chief.

DeFi landscape:

According to DappRadar, weekly active users in crypto (2.8m) have fallen by nearly 80% in the last 12 months. Weekly transaction (186m) counts are 8% higher than in September 2021. But total weekly volumes ($ 2.7bn) are down 87% since last year
Is a stablecoin war coming? Cryptocurrency exchange FTX is working on creating its stablecoin. According to founder Sam Bankman-Fried, "it is very likely."

NFT & Metaverse:

LooksRare becomes the latest NFT marketplace to switch to optional royalties for NFT creators. However, it will allocate 0.5% of trading fees to creators.
The Norwegian government is opening a metaverse tax office in Decentraland to educate a younger audience about taxes related to DeFi and NFTs.

Funding Highlights:

Reap, a digital payment company based in Hong Kong, raised $40M aimed at developing infrastructure to help facilitate payments between Web3 projects and traditional businesses.
The Decentralized Engineering Corporation (DEC), which developed the ride-sharing app Teleport, raised $9M in seed funding to build a decentralized Uber and Lyft competitor on Solana.
Origami got $6.2m to build an operating system for DAOs. It was made by the same team that created Orange DAO (the Y Combinator alumni DAO).