😡 Bitboy & Ben.Eth: Scammers or creative geniuses?

GM Legends,

Bitcoin and Ethereum look like they are anticipating the chaos that might ensue during the Bitcoin 2023 conference later this week. Generally speaking, Bitcoin pukes during Bitcoin conferences whilst Ethereum LSD tokens are outperforming the rest of the market.

Bitboy Ben and Eth Ben have been causing controversy in recent weeks with $BEN coin and the $PSYOPs mammoth presale leaving crypto Twitter confused, disgusted and feeling fomo.

Let’s tuck in!

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The big story.
😡 Bitboy & Ben.Eth: Scammers or creative geniuses?

DeFi insights.
🖼 Aveo launch Aveo OTC
📅 Trader Joe gets ready for Full Send SZN 2
🦧 Degen corner: The next rotation: Arbitrum or LSD?

In the news.
🐮 Worldcoin eyes up $100m funding 
🐻 Greed proves scams are easy
👨🏻‍💼 What the FED?! J Powell speaks on Friday

Plus Twitter reads from @BackTheBunny, @rektdiomedes and @alpha_pls!

🔥 The big story.
To make you think.

Right… THIS HAS GOT TO STOP.

Question: Would you send SEVEN MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS to a jpeg of a monkey?

Let alone pay for a $35 bill at Starbucks for 2 properly posh frappa-moca-loca-almond-latte-cinos ☕.

What have we just witnessed here? A creative anomaly? A social experiment? Or a public rug pull?

Let’s dig into this.

Crypto runs in cycles with its final form always ending with an iconic meme. Our beloved Pepe is the final form of this parabolic run.

Fun fact: Bitcoin has always been dumped shortly after meme season. Let’s hope this time it’s different!

The TLDR Story of the Ben’s

Meme season is full of frens, fun and fruitful devs hoping to score it big.

So big that they can retire with their magical internet moonies.

Timeline of idiocy -

• Eth_Ben made $BEN coin

• Bitboy_Crypto copes a bag, acquires and shills $BEN

• Meme coins with Names associated with them begin to take hold

• Both Ben’s make bank

• Eth_Ben makes new coin

Eth_Ben makes BANK from the $BEN acquisition, whilst still (at the time of writing) holding $6m in tokens as Bitboy_Crypto uses his 1M+ social media presence to influence the token price, as seen from the chart below.

Both Bens made bank ball’n off $BEN LARP but…

From Public Experiment to Political Statement?

What looked like a public experiment (as all memes are) is starting to look like a political public awareness play to potentially push Bitboys' “for the people policy bill”.

Remember when Bitboy became the “SBF bounty hunter” during SBF’s downfall which had a political underlying right?!

Ok so there might be more to this than meets the eye and we’ll dig into that at a later date.

Chapter 2: $PSYOPs

If greed is the drug, then FOMO is the fuel.

Once the euphoric feeling of greed, public recognition and green $$$ candles are combined it’s hard to stop.

I remember mum telling me as a kid that “it never hurts to ask, because in the worst case, it doesn’t happen and the best case… you get what you ask for.”

This leads me to the next social experiment, Psyops.

A social experiment that has led to almost $7 million United States dollars fuelled by FOMO being sent to his presale wallet…

A social experiment that many are expecting to end in tears (it will).

Remember Hex and the recently launched Pulsechain from Gucci fanboy Richard Heart?

Yeah… let’s hope Psyops holders don't get Hex’factor’d.

The Ben’s are playing the game of Psyops.

Psyops you say? Well, I asked ChatGPT to explain the word Psyops to me as if I was a 2-year-old. This is what it said.

“using special words, pictures, and tricks to make people think or feel a certain way. It's a way to change what people believe or how they act by using clever communication.”

A game that when in a position of significant influence can and will be dangerous as they taketh from the blind and giveth to the flush.

NOTE: At the time of writing the token is open for trading so make sure to check the contract first and do your own research before making any stupid decisions.

Our Take

This feels like a perfectly played social experiment that on the face of it looks like “meme coin name meta” but seemingly has an underlying agenda that is “Psyopsing” the attention of crypto Twitter towards a political agenda.

It is an abuse of power and social status that makes a joke of those working hard in the industry to make an honest buck and be part of the next big technological revolution.

And no… I’m not salty that no one made a name meta coin of me haha!

PS. 🫠🤦‍♂️

👀 DeFi insights & project updates.
Project updates, governance reports and industry secrets.

The World of DeFi

• Aveo - New product: Aveo OTC allows traders to trade altcoin options on-chain. (Twitter)

• Camelot Dex - will be integrating with DefiEdge, providing advanced features to their concentrated liquidity AMM. (Twitter)

• DefiLlama - 0xKofi, DefiLlama contributor is building a plugin to go on top of ChatGPT. (Twitter)

• GND - xGND unlock happening on May 17th. (Twitter)

• Hashflow - Complete the latest quest to earn new roles released in Discord. (Guild.xyz)

• Lido Finance - V2 went live and release last weeks analytics. Lido on Polygon grew almost 35% (Twitter)

• Trader Joe - new quests are live on Zealy in the run-up to the, yet to be announced, “Full Send SZN 2” (Zealy)

• unshETH - will now be deploying to Arbitrum. 3 chains, 1 token. (Twitter)

• Vega Protocol - classed as “the world’s best dex” is now live on alpha mainnet. (Twitter)

• VirtuSwap - Details on the up coming airdrop will be released over the next 7 days. (Twitter)

• Y2K - $MAI has been added to the latest weekly vaults. (Twitter)

Governance Updates

• Optimism - The yearly “Treasury Appropriation Proposal: Foundation Year 2 Budget” draft is live on the Optimism governance forums. This gives an overview of OP applications and a review of the Year 1 budget. (Governance Forums)

📊 Degen corner.
Charts, smart money or a degen idea.

What’s next Arbitrum or LSD?

Are the meme szn profits being rotated into Arbitrum gems…

Or straight back into LSD’s?

Two narratives to look for over the summer months. Arbitrum charts look fairly bottomed out whilst LSD continues to evolve bringing more function to the Ethereum token.

Some fun stats over at wenmerge.com including 173,932 ETH of rewards are eligible to be withdrawn.

🗞 In the news.
The important bits.

• Worldcoin eyes up $100m funding as the a16z backed iris scanning crypto project is in “advanced talks” for a fresh $100m investment. (Decrypt)

• BlockFi to liquidate lending business after sale attempts fail. (The Block)

• Optimism’s mainnet upgrade to Bedrock goes live on June 6th at 4PM UTC. During the upgrade downtime transactions, deposits, and withdrawals will be offline. (Twitter)

• Kava token PUMPS ahead of tomorrow’s (May 17th) mainnet upgrade to Kava 13. The upgrade includes a bridge to transfer assets from Cosmos to Kava. (CoinDesk)

• Greed proves scams are easy. The social experiment that captured 43,000+ Twitter accounts led by Voshy to teach and prove to traders just how easy it is to get scammed in crypto. (CoinDesk)

👨🏻‍💼 What the FED?!

Key events coming up for the rest of the week. The ECB (European Central Bank) President Lagarde speaks later today (Tuesday) and Friday.

🐥 Twitter reads.
In case you missed it.

@BackTheBunny breaks down the sociopolitical evolution of one of the most popular NFT collections, Milady.

@rektdiomedes releases yet another mind-bending Twitter thread… this time featuring Gandalf.

@alpha_pls takes a look into Vertex Protocol on Arbitrum. PS… there IS an airdrop happening for users of the platform.

And on that note, thanks for reading, catcha apes in the next edition!

blocmates team 🫡

🤝 A final word.

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