Gm gm, mates,

New to 2023 will be exclusive interviews and project breakdowns to give you an inside look into some of the industry's smartest brains and innovations. Think Bloomberg deep-dive with a blocmates twist added to it. 

Today we're bringing you an exclusive interview with the one and only Ansem, a rare breed of industry thought leader, video game slayer, and TCG Crypto's Head of Research. A milestone for us, too, as he joined us on the podcast for Episode 100!

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The TLDR of what’s inside

🔥 The Big Topic. Exclusive Interview: with Top Crypto Trader Ansem🗞 Hot Crypto News. NFT platform Raribles expand to Polygon, unknown crypto exchange Bitzlato founder charged $700m, is Genesis going bankrupt? AND MORE👀 Updates Across the Bloc. FactorDAO public sale Feb 20th, Vela Exchange referral scheme launching soon, Vertex Protocol partner with Perpy Finance, OlympusDAO acquire $1m Aura AND MORE🛡 Chart of the day. $FXS, ready for ignition?

🔥 The Big Topic.

A blocmates Exclusive Interview 

With Top Crypto Trader Ansem

Digesting over 80 minutes of alpha from crypto trader and Head of Research at TCG Crypto, Ansem as he joined us for Episode 100 of The Ape Enclosure podcast.

Here are 4 BIG areas of ALPHA that came from it, including Bear Market Picks, How to Research Like a PRO, The Arbitrum Airdrop, and Solana... boom or bust?!

Enjoy 🫡

Bear Market Picks

Dropping alpha bombs right from the start as we dug into his Bear Market Picks including Chains, Future Narratives, and one game that gave Jedi bear market butterflies.

Chains Chains Chains

Celestia is the first modular blockchain network, which means they will be outsourcing one or more of its components, eg, Execution, Settlement, Consensus or Data availability. Celestia will be super reliant on the first wave of apps and roll-ups building on top to accrue value such as Solana VM Eclipse. First movers may be a big play here.

dYmension is a modular settlement layer on Cosmos working with Celestia, building a roll-up SDK, like the Cosmos SDK that allows you to launch an L1. dYmension and Celestia will have their own version to launch roll-ups on top of those chains, for example: on top of Cosmos and settle on Celestia.

PS. check out the podcast we did with dYmension back in September.

Cosmos ecosystem. Ansem shows plenty of love for the ecosystem and what they have been doing with Inter Chain Security (ICS) where you use Cosmos hub validators to launch your chain. Neutron is one of the first to do it.

Future Narratives

MEV infrastructure plays will have a potentially huge role moving forward as no one likes high transaction fees, especially when chains are boasting large profits at the expense of users aping [redacted] coins. Notable mentions were JITO on Solana, MANIFOLD on Ethereum, and SKIP on Cosmos.

What is TCG Crypto digging into in 2023?

1. Mobile. Because let's be honest… everyone has one and it is one of the few areas left to be penetrated. Solana mobile comes to mind plus the wave of web3 mobile games being developed.

2. On-Chain Media. An interesting one as it's less about an online newspaper as they see room for growth in areas where people discuss on-chain activity. That's for all my wallet trackers, whale hunters, and data analytical insiders out there!

3. Blockchain Infrastructure. It changes fast but their thesis is simple… what underlying techs will be built on top of and make the most sense 5 years from now.

and the Game Giving Jedi Bear Market Butterflies

Treeverse, is a mobile-first open-world, fantasy MMORPG and NGL... the gameplay here looks absolutely stunning. You'll play as an NFT character to forge the mightiest of battle weapons to slay the most deadly beasts lurking in the Treeverse.

Animoca, Ideo Colab and SkyVision Capital are all backing the game.

Research Like a PRO

He must have some AI-driven, automated algo that does it for him, right?!

Nope. He still researches like a true degen. In the trenches, death-scrolling Twitter but in a highly organized way.

Here are 5 ways you can become an elite research pro like Ansem:

1. Twitter lists are a powerful tool to use as they act like an alpha mind dump, from gigabrains, new projects, specific ecosystems, macro news and of course… 100x shillers.

2. Tweetdeck, helps you digest your own Twitter feed, lists and DMs.

3. Find your blind spot by writing. If you can't easily explain a topic without having to reference a bajillion tweets you probably don’t know the topic.

4. On Chain snooping is where you’ll find smart money movements long before your favourite CT shiller tweets about it. Check out our Alpha Wallet Hunting guide to learn more.

5. blocmates! Yesss sir. He’s been a long-time reader and friend as Jedi made lunch money with Ansem's bull run content. We larp and joke around but deep down we provide some useful content, right?!

Arbitrum Airdrop - death by sybil?

It’s the talk of the town and we could probably write a whole thesis surrounding the battle of the L2s that's happening right now as Optimism is seeing a rapid rise in activity. And let's be honest, that could be a good sign for airdrop part 2.

We asked Ansem his thoughts on it. Has Arbitrum been sybil’d to death waiting for a TVL dump for a down-only air drop or will we see a dump ‘n’ pump play?

To be fair Ansem's outlook is positive. He just thinks the Arbitrum team has been wen airdroping us for such a long time that the activity is organic. Curious to see the actual valuation on launch and how it compares to the Optimism airdrop.

The moral of the story when it comes to airdrops is those sticking around in a bear market using testnets out of curiosity and being first are likely to profit. Remember the Uni and ENS airdrop?! Yeah, those inquisitive apes playing around degen style made bank role.

The Future of Solana - boom or bust?!

We met Ansem at Break Point as the price surged to $35. A few hours later the SBF, FTX and Alameda FUD began. Horrendous timing as we were all boarding flights home unable to watch our portfolios crash and burn.

It might be bust right now but there is hope for a boom with a little tidy-up around the edges by:

1. Improving the perceptions of Solana Defi

   1. Solana DeFi was SBF’s hunting ground. He went from being Chief Solana Shiller to the Solana KILLAH! The SBF perception will need to change for it to flourish BUT...

   2. ... the current teams have seen the past mistakes of the predators and we’ve teams like HXRO, ZETA, DRIFT and JITO are making positive headway.

2. Fixing the Solana downtime

   1. The Solana apes have been banging the nuts and bolts working on upgrades to fix spam transactions as validators moved from UDP to Quick which gives them better control to limit them.

   2. Solana also has a unique paralyzable function where it can corner network demand to keep gas spikes localised in that area.

So it's not all doom and gloom as Solana is becoming one of the most vocally communal chains with hackathons and world-class conferences.

TLDR, BONK probably just brought Solana defi back to life

Our Take

That was an absolute brain-melter of a podcast and a pleasure to interview.

There are still a lot of innovations happening in the space right now and the future really does look bright for blockchain and web3 as an industry, but we've work to do.

A lot to unpack but overall we agree with Ansem and appreciate his time. 

If you missed it check out Episode 100 of The Ape Enclosure Podcast

🗞 Hot Crypto News.

🐮 Bullish

Raribles Expand to Polygon, as the NFT marketplace launches its building tool on Polygon allowing creators to create their own collection storefronts. Good biz dev or throwing more $$$ at the NFT space?

The $2 Trillion Dollar FX Problem, can be fixed by DeFi as Circle & UniSwap Research released a paper that concluded that on-chain FX could keep up to $30bn a year in people's pockets by reducing cross-border costs.

HashKey Capital's $500m War Chest, as the global asset manager closes its investment round for its FinTech Investment Fund III. Proving that money is still pouring into the web3 space.

🐻 Bearish

Gelato Sounding Bitzlato Charged, $700m by the DOJ for money laundering tied to Russian illicit activities. Positive to see the DOJ cracking down on bad actors in crypto but let's not forget what SBF did in plain sight.

Is Genesis going bankrupt? Bloomberg reports confidential talks are happening between crypto lending platform Genesis and creditors. If an investment isn't secured this could be the final page before they file Chapter 11, Bankruptcy protection.

US Congress in SBF's Pocket, as a reported 196 of 535 senators and representatives received "contributions" from SBF including newly appointed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. But what will members do now with the money? Give it away? Hodl?

👀 Updates Across the Bloc.

Project Updates

CELESTIA, incentivized testnet invites have been sent out Jan 18th... wen airdrop?!

DOPEX, option liquidity pools go live.

FACTORDAO, public sale goes live on CamelotDEX on Feb 20th

JONES DAO, jGPL is coming... here's everything you need know.

ROCKETPOOL, list on Binance (ps, the link shows 3 wallets that aped early.)

STFX, token went live and raised over $3m in 48 hours.

SUJIKO PROTOCOL, lock discord in preparation for phase 2 of their launch.

SWELL NETWORK, airdrop has been confirmed for those who stake on their platform.

VELA EXCHANGE, soon to launch referral program, as juicy as GMX's?!

VERTEX PROTOCOL, partner with Perpy Finance bringing social copy trading to Vertex Protocol plus a slick UI upgrade.

Governance Updates

CANTO proposal passed to enable the creation of CREATE2 factories.

MAKERDAO proposal to onboard 100m PSM USDC into Yearn Finance vaults.

OLYMPUSDAO proposal to acquire $1m of Aura over a 6-month period.

ZILLIQA proposal to improve governance efficiency to lowers the pass rate to 8%.

🛡 Chart of the day.

$FXS, ready for ignition?

FXS has been one of the BIG LSD winners and the chart has A LOT of room for growth with a big area of resistance sitting up at $16.44. 

Where we are right now could be the start of a new consolidation channel between $8-10 before, what might be a monstrous leg up to slice later shorters and take the liquidity further up the chart. 

The RSI is looking heavily overbought to similar levels from March '22 as it ripped to its all-time highs of $44. One for the watch lists as the LSD narrative gets closer.

Bull case, consolidate between $8-10 before a break out up towards $16.44

Bear case, the macro environment takes control again and we see a retest of the 50EMA on the daily chart sitting around the $6 range.

Heres whats coming next week:

And on that note, thanks for reading, have a fantastic day, and see you all in the next episode!

- Team blocmates signing out

🤝 A Final Word

and a quick word from our super awesome sponsors who help us make this all possible

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