ToE's Weekly Highlights #42

Digging up the grinds for the week.

Sep 24, 2023

GM ToE readers!

Macro: Central banks remain focused on tightening monetary policy to combat high inflation, though there are some early signs of inflation peaking. This is leading to market volatility as investors weigh recession risks. The path of inflation and central bank policy will remain key drivers of markets in the months ahead.
Trend: Bitcoin traded sideways. ETH underperformed BTC. Large cap gainers included WLDF, TON, AAVE, MKR, ATOM, and LINK. ARB outperformed OP after Optimism sold tokens and an Arbitrum proposal passed. FriendTech growth slowed. Buying your own keys to pump price may be risky if they punish it.
DeFi: FT analysis, Token 2049 alpha, Banana rev share and positive stats, GAMBL relaunch, $VKA TGE, $NOLO, $MEOWL, $NAKA,
Tools: Messari AI, Dev resources, Alpha newsletters, chad accounts to follow, find gems before binance list
Spicy drama: Good entry, Sisyphus is exposed, $RLB made more revenue, Truffle sunsetting

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Segmenting the megathread of content into 5 parts:

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

1. Macro News

Central banks remain focused on tightening monetary policy to combat high inflation, though there are some early signs of inflation peaking. This is leading to market volatility as investors weigh recession risks. The path of inflation and central bank policy will remain key drivers of markets in the months ahead.

The Fed is expected to interest rates by 0.75% in 2023 and indicated rates will remain high through 2024 to combat inflation. This led to a sell-off in stocks as investors anticipate slower economic growth.
UK inflation slowed more than expected in August, reducing pressure on the BoE to continue aggressive rate hikes. However, the BoE is still expected to raise rates.
US stocks declined after the Fed announcement, with the Nasdaq down 1.5%. Megacaps like Microsoft and Nvidia dragged down major indices.
Oil prices also declined, with WTI dropping below $90 and Brent below $93 per barrel, as recession fears mounted.

@arndxt_xo on macro pulse

@_FabianHD on key announcements

@cburniske on BTC is good

@thb0301 Blockcrunch latest podcast

Crypto, Distilled

Crypto, Distilled #21

Welcome to the 21st issue of "Crypto, Distilled," your 5-minute biweekly edge in the crypto market. Market Overview: At just 5 days in length and +6% in movement, this is now the longest period of sustained upside price action we've seen on $BTC in 3 months…

3 years ago · 2 likes · 2 comments · James Wells

@rektmando

🟥 Things I’m looking at today 🟥

Bitcoin leads rebound, judge rules for Binance, oil keeps rising

Crypto

* BTC rebounds to yesterday’s high of $27.3k

* Open Interest flushed in mini-drop

* BTC dominance >50%, ETH/BTC YTD lows

* Binance US collateralisation ‘difficult to audit’

* Judge rules for Binance vs SEC getting access

* CZ paid BAM $250m via convertible loan

* BTC hashrate hits highest level ever

* BTC address activity at YTD highs

* Plan B: BTC to be $32-64k by halving

* Blockchain Capital raises $580m crypto fund

* Citi introduces private blockchain for deposits

* SOL sees best institutional inflows in alts

* Astar & Canto both move to ETH L2s

* Yearn Finance offers 37% yETH staking

* FTX estate sues SBF’s parents

* Malta changes crypto regulations

* SEC Commissioner: crypto shouldn’t give up on US

* INJ teases announcement today

* OP announces third $25m airdrop

* TON Telegram wallet integrated to 800m users

Macro & General

* Stocks fall as oil hits another high >$95

* US Federal debt hits ATH of $33T

* US Federal debt to hit $50T by 2030

* US homebuilder sentiment at 5-month low

* US corporate defaults hit highest since 2009

* Inflation-linked bonds price inflation cooling

* Lavrov: US is at war against Russia

* Kevin O’Leary: higher rates lead to financial disaster

* Elon: X may soon have monthly charge for all

* Softbank looking to invest into OpenAI

* Instacart valued at $10bn in IPO

* Vienna & Copenhagen top cities to live

* $2bn Powerball winner buys up California property

* Missing F-35 jet debris found

* Disney World shuts down after bear enters

* Northern Lights may be coming to Chicago & NY

NFTs & Low-Cap

* Friend Tech volume beats NFTs for 6th straight day

* Friend Tech reaches $11m revenue with 3 employees

* RLB record daily burn, hints at new sportsbook

* SPELL +25% as next DWF coin

* TRB +25% after DWF Binance deposit games

* NFTs volume hit new lows for the year

* Animoca & Honda announce NFT F1 strategy

* Sugartown up to 0.4ETH after free mint

* Deafbeef new mint launches tomorrow

@WClementeIII bullish on BTC success

@zerohedge on US debt

State of the US economy

Maverick Equity Research

✍️ The State of the US Economy in 35 Charts

Dear all, welcome to the +300 new readers for a total of 2,750 enjoying independent research! “The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more.” from the one & only Charlie Munger. Just like with investing, knowledge compounds…

3 years ago · 32 likes · 12 comments

@biancoresearch worst macro

2. Trending Narratives

Bitcoin traded sideways this week around $27k after a quick move up to $27.3k that retraced. Some speculate this was Michael Saylor buying, which could lead to a flush down if he bought the local top.
ETH significantly underperformed BTC, reaching new lows on the ETHBTC ratio around 0.0599. This is likely due to flows into BTC ahead of a possible spot BTC ETF. An ETHBTC low around ETF news could signal a good time to rotate into ETH.
Large cap gainers included WLDF, TON, AAVE, MKR, ATOM, and LINK. WLDF bounced from $1 support but will likely return there. TON and its $8B market cap remains a mystery. ATOM and LINK may be pumping ahead of upcoming conferences.
Suspected cartel pumps DWF and scams pumped coins like HIFI, BLZ, and IMX with no catalysts. Tracking DWF wallets can front-run these pumps.
ARB outperformed OP after Optimism sold tokens and an Arbitrum proposal passed. This could catalyze Arbitrum.
ICE pumped on its migration to WAGMI. GFT pumped on new USDT pairs. Eclipse launched an ETH L1 using Solana VM.
FriendTech growth slowed. Buying your own keys to pump price may be risky if they punish it. New platform PostTech launched. ChatGPT launched a token APX.
Tracking whales can provide alpha, like selling ahead of a big holder dumping SAINT, MOG, BBANK.
Other potential shitcoins to watch: PROPHET, GOLD, TYRION, Real Smurf Cat, OCD

@0xChanglu

Here's some of my bets over the next 6 months to 2 years, and where I'm placing my time investments and $$.

1. A lot of the current narrative around "web3 games" will shift towards fully on chain games / autonomous worlds.

Why? because the existing set of web3 games don't gain any consumer or branding benefits from being on the blockchain.

The main innovations so far have been a stronger presale mechanism (resellable kickstarter passes with speculation), and the play to earn cycle, which was basically not that different from many defi tokenomics.

As those innovations are fading away due to market dynamics, any blockchain game right now still building needs to optimize for a large amount of users, and they're better served by completely abstracting the blockchain.

Therefore, they actually don't want any attention from crypto twitter they want to blend in and do a bunch of boosted organic activations.

Autonomous worlds / FOCG, while not fun to play and maybe the entire userbase is like 300 active players, represents the final state of what blockchain gaming should be. It will incorporate governance, modularity/composability, and finally some player control over the game state. It's still early but you have to start somewhere.

Based on this I will spend more and more time understanding autonomous worlds, and building relationships with the best builders in the space.

2. A greater % of streamers will become vtubers.

Why? The market has proved over and over again that people don't actually need a real human in order to be entertained or build a connection to a character.

Look at people's attachments to their NFTs, or the popularity of anime on Netflix. As the streaming market continues to grow and there's people who don't feel comfortable showing their real face, or their real identity, they'll start to put on rigs and start to stream as vtubers.

In addition, they'll gain from the association from all the anime fans already on the market, a category that just keeps growing and growing.

Based on this I'm pushing

@PaladinsDao

to invest time into the space and develop our anime like IP.

3. Your identity and "social score" are going to become more and more important.

As social media becomes mature and these apps become "super apps", you'll see your status being measured more and more in life.

http://Friend.tech measured how quickly you can identify a high value individual. Do you know that people will want to talk to Cobie? And you're online 24/7? Then you could have bought his key at .3 eth or .5 eth.

There's new dating apps in Asia that offer $100+ memberships, and measure many more variables about you to see if you're a good match for each other. Asians don't like leaving things to chance - I give it 2-3 years before you have to connect your wallet to a dating app to qualify for a "gold check".

Based on this, I plan to get more active on X and build relationships with those who have high social scores here. I plan to write more including more blogs, reply guy more, and create some systems of how to spend more time on here vs. just being a passive reader.

@erc6551 on Tokenbound Accounts

@twobitidiot on 33 investors who have done 10+ rounds announced crypto deals this year.

@Flowslikeosmo on AVAX RWA

@Arctonhq on RWA

@brownbaconx weekly feature

@wacy_time1 on RWA

@criptopaul on SOL price prediction

@Tanaka_L2 on RWA

@DeFi_Made_Here on thoughts

Since there is nothing going on in the crypto space except friendtech ponzi, I will add more:

- Nobody will buy your -95% bags ever again. Even if someone buys it, you will try to sell at a new ATH and eventually roundtrip to 0 again.

- Europe is done - its local population will become a minority and there is nothing they can do about it at this point.

- DeFi will completely change in a matter of few years. You can forget about non-KYC transactions/wallets except your dark p2p wallets.

- Binance can fail because of the regulation interference but not because of the FTX-style problem.

- The ideal situation for the public hospital is if all the patients die tomorrow, so it can get more funding to fight a death rate that is above the provided by the government.

- Devices listen to your conversations and nobody can prove me otherwise.

- In general, immigrants are a problem for society and a benefit for the government.

- America is an upside-down world where you can freely loot the stores, people live to work and they use the imperial system, but still, it is probably the greatest country in existence.

- There are better DEXes than Uniswap or Curve, but they can not compete with OGs.

- Lido is not centralizing Ethereum. Coinbase does.

- Token-centric protocols will fail unless they build a sub-product that does not depend on a native token and brings more value to it.

- Most of the countries would have been doing better if they did not get independence.

- 90% (at least) of the CT are larps and scammers.

- Lefties are the product of the good times.

- You do not care about crypto if you only care about the prices.

- Private property is not private if it can be taken from you.

@Mr_Lumus on socialfi

@Defi0xJeff on thoughts on token2049

@Haylesdefi ETFs bull leading to RWA pump

@akshaybd on SOL hackathon

Making Sense of the DeFi Lending Meta

@layerggofficial on tokens watchlist

@milesdeutscher weekly alpha tweets

@definapkin on RWA

@apes_prologue weekly alpha

@0xFinish on RWA

Stable’s Substack

LSTs are not enough, we can do better

The explosive growth of LSTs and LSTfi Liquid staking is now the dominant category in DeFi. The total value locked in this category is $20b which represents approximately 1/3 of DeFi’s TVL. Excluding liquid staking, DeFi’s TVL has been constant year to date. While LSTs benefited from a 125% growth on the same period of time (DefiLlama). This growth fuell…

3 years ago · 1 like · StableUnit

@gmx_intern on ARB projects getting grant

@BananaGunBot revenue

3. Defi Happenings

Vaultka Updates:

Upcoming leaderboard system

A new set of gitbook is 80% completed, we will release it once we have finalized everything

There will be 2 new vaults to be released in the coming weeks

Our full launch plan is released

Marketing direction:

Prioirty on our leaderboard system. As what we have previously mention that we hope our ambassador to discuss about our leaderboard mechanism, the material about our leaderboard will be sent to you during this weekend.

@0xjaypeg on FT analysis