ToE's Weekly Highlights #25

Digging up the grinds for the week.

May 28, 2023

This is an eventful week with lots of eyes on LSD protocols, Maestro bot and its neighbours and a jittery macro situation.

Macro: Debt ceiling kept everyone on its toes but its quite clear that the Fed would not let US go into a default. Debt ceiling eventually got raised (literally heard about it just a few hours ago) . It’s now up to the market how interpret this news when the markets open on Monday.
Narrative: Metaverse stuff caught some attention due to Apple’s event and Nvida showing resilient results. Chinese coins seems to have the focus now due to CCTV broadcasting crypto. Maetro’s neighbours like UNIBOT caught a good pump though a token is not really necessary. Chain abstraction, Index products.
Defi: LOTUS and JIMBO mechanics remain interesting, while new projects like Karrot, an EGG fork with improved mechanics, show some interest from the degens. RWA is getting real, with it it happening in Singapore.
Tools: Delphi digital $1 package! Decentralissed storage tokens, LSD journal, On chain wallet tracking
Spicy drama: Multichain saga, Ledger FUD, DMT contracts exploit, Fatmanterra exposes Rollbit team

If you have not read the previous week’s highlight, here it is:

Hope you enjoy the content, and feel free to connect with me on Twitter here.

Segmenting the megathread of content into 5 parts:

Macro news
Trending narratives
Defi happenings
Educational resources and tools
Spicy crypto drama

1. Macro News

The US debt ceiling standoff continued this week, with the Treasury Department warning that the federal government could breach the debt ceiling as early as June 1st. Any agreement could take days to pass through Congress, and the lack of progress has started to weigh on investors.

Wall Street remained optimistic about a deal being reached until earlier this week, but signs of concern are showing as US stock markets closed lower on Wednesday. As of Friday morning, reports said that negotiators were closing in on a deal, but were “not there yet.” Ratings agency Fitch also put the United States' AAA rating on negative watch, further highlighting the increased risks should the debt ceiling not be raised in time.

The US debt ceiling concerns appear to have affected momentum in the crypto markets too, as token prices dropped lower across the board on Wednesday, with prices rebounding slightly by Friday morning. After struggling to make a decisive break above $27k USD last week, bitcoin (BTC) had another unsuccessful attempt at remaining above that level this week before seeing a sudden drop to around $26k USD.

Ether (ETH) prices held up slightly better throughout the week, rising above the 0.068 level on the ETHBTC pair, although ETH price did drop below the $1,800 USD level which has provided good support since the start of April, before moving above that level once again on Friday.

As a result of the debt ceiling impasse, investors are becoming increasingly concerned about the economic outlook. This is likely to continue to weigh on markets until a deal is reached.

@arndxt_xo on debt ceiling and rates hike situation

@biancoresearch on markets felt aggressively neutral

@bigmagicdao on debt ceiling issues .

@DeItaone on Economic Releases for Week of May 22, 2023

@_FabianHD on Macro schedule for the week ahead

@ogdave621 BTC play

@TaschaLabs on crypto market trading volatility

@BobEUnlimited on gold holding up well

@not_concoda maps out entire U.S. Treasury market

2. Trending Narratives

AI Boom Boosts Nvidia Revenue

The AI sector is expected to be a major growth driver in the coming years. As a result, a number of AI-related crypto protocols have also seen outsized returns this week. Render (RNDR), a provider of decentralized GPU rendering, added another 18%+ to its token price over the past seven days. The increased demand and supply shortage in GPUs has helped to position RNDR as one of the best performers of the year so far, trading up over 550%.

Hong Kong to Allow Retail Crypto Trading

On Tuesday, Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) announced finalized rules allowing retail traders to buy and sell crypto from June 1. Licensed exchanges will be permitted to sell cryptocurrencies which meet certain capitalization and liquidity requirements, which would likely include bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH).

As part of the rules, the SFC has proposed that stablecoins not be offered for retail trading until planned future regulations for the asset class are brought in. Hong Kong appears to be taking advantage of prohibitions on crypto activities in other jurisdictions as they push ahead with developing a crypto hub.

Some observers have speculated that the framework Hong Kong has set forth for investing in crypto will be a “testing ground” for China to lift its ban on crypto trading. This would reopen investor access for digital assets for the world’s second largest economy after the Chinese government banned trading and mining activities in 2021.

@pierre_crypt0 on chinese narrative is here!

@_FabianHD chinese narrative is validated

China narrative

@LandfSmile on the various LSD projects

@winter2Moon on LSD projects to watch

@CryptoHub210 on metaverse projects

@c_storry on an Index future

@TheDeFinvestor ETH from inflationary to deflationary asset

@0xsurferboy on VC money tracking

@OfficialNucleon riding on Chinese + LSD narrative

@insomniac_ac Cross chain monday

@gmdSaul on new meta for LP created by Balancer and Aura

@hotnewcrypto on new projects

@FungiAlpha weekly update

@apes_prologue weekend update

@Dynamo_Patrick on crypto events this week

@ConnextNetwork on Chain Abstraction

@thedefiedge on defi catalyst

@ConnextNetwork chain abstraction.

3. Defi Happenings

@arndxt_xo on 12 projects with catalyst

@ipor_intern on Balancer 80/20 model

@FungiAlpha on 20 early stage projects

@FungiAlpha shares another 18 projects

@crypticdegen22 updates protocol metrics

@Riley_gmi on Frax ecosystem

@AdamHODL called some alts

@jinglingcookies on Hourglass and its time bound tokens

@baalazamon on Cube exchange

@citadao_io on real estate on chain in Singapore

@Slappjakke on Smilee

@Risk_DAO analyses Badger’s synthetic BTC

@PopsicleFinance new roadmap for WAGMI

@definapkin on Liquity

@cryptofishx on LOTUS and JIMBO

@StrategProtocol An Omnichain Social Yield Infrastructure.

@0xWhizz on Root protocol

@QuantMeta on metaverse plays

@Krypt0nian on REBATE $RBE token

@Moomsxxx on what VCs are looking at

@wacy_time1 on AVAX eco

@onchainangels bullish on Arcadia Finance

@3azima85 on decentralized storage protocols

@Bellickkruz on Ton Ambassador Program

@563defi on MUX protocol

@RealDegenGMX on Penpie

@hanztrinh LSDfi watchlist

4. Educational resources and tools

The Ultimate Ordinals/BRC-20 Directory (from: @kirbyongeo)

Wallets
◉ Xverse (http://xverse.app)
◉ Hiro Wallet (http://wallet.hiro.so)
◉ Unisat (http://unisat.io/download)
◉ Ordinal Safe (http://ordinalsafe.xyz)
◉ Ordinals Wallet (http://ordinalswallet.com)

Inscription Services
◉ Ordinals bot (http://ordinalsbot.com)
◉ Unisat (http://unisat.io/inscribe)
◉ Ordswap (http://inscribe.ordswap.io)
◉ Ordinals Wallet (http://ordinalswallet.com/inscribe)
◉ Gamma (http://gamma.io/ordinals)
◉ Ord Kit (http://ordkit.xyz/inscriptions-h…)
◉ Toki Hash (http://to.ki)
◉ Ordi Mint (http://ordimint.com)

Marketplaces
◉ Magic Eden (http://magiceden.io/ordinals)
◉ Ordinals Wallet (http://ordinalswallet.com/collections)
◉ Ordinals Market (http://ordinals.market)
◉ Gamma (http://gamma.io)
◉ Ord Swap (http://ordswap.io)
◉ openordex (http://openordex.org)
◉ ordynals (http://ordynals.com)
◉ luminexio (http://luminex.io)
◉ Ordx Market (http://ordx.io)

Auctions
◉ Ord city (http://ord.city)
◉ Gamma (http://gamma.io/ordinals/marke…)
◉ NeoSwap (http://neoswap.xyz)

Aggregators
◉ Ordinal hub (http://ordinalhub.com)
◉ bestinslot (http://bestinslot.xyz)
◉ Ord Space (http://ordspace.org/collections)

Explorers
◉ ord_io (http://ord.io)
◉ ordiscan_com (http://ordiscan.com)
◉ hirosystems (http://ordinals.hiro.so)
◉ rodarmor (http://ordinals.com)

BRC-20 DEXs
◉ unisat (http://unisat.io/market)
◉ ordinals wallet (http://ordinalswallet.com/brc20)
◉ ALEXLab (http://app.alexlab.co)

BRC-20 Price Tracking
◉ ord io (http://ord.io/coins)
◉ Ord space (http://ordspace.org/brc20)
◉ Ord Spy (http://ordspy.com)
◉ Unisat (http://unisat.io/brc20)

APIs
◉ hiro systems (http://docs.hiro.so/ordinals)
◉ Ord Api (http://ordapi.xyz)

Discord Authentication
◉ BitCheckMe (http://bitcheck.me)

News
◉ Ordinal News (http://ordinalnews.io)
◉ Ordinal Labs (http://ordinallabs.io)
◉ Ordinals Global (http://ordinalsglobal.substack.com/potential-va)
◉ Ordinal Daily
◉ 1btcnews (http://1btc.news)

Analytics
◉ Inscriptions (http://dune.com/dgtl_assets/bi…)
◉ Marketplaces (http://dune.com/domo/ordinals-…)

Docs
◉ Ordinals (http://docs.ordinals.com)
◉ BRC-20 (http://domo-2.gitbook.io/brc-20-experim…)