🍻 What Happened This Week in Crypto? Emiri Checkin’ in From the Pub

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I apologize if the writing is incoherent today because the beers are arriving before I start writing this time. 

It appears I spoke to soon last week, and we were indeed NOT back. Things just keep getting worse. So forgive me, but I need this pint. 

Alright, I feel much better now. So let’s get into it. 

This week was absolutely horrendous market-wise; I don’t wanna talk about it. But news-wise, we actually had some pretty good news, from positive US and Russian news to Tether’s financial report to some exciting DeFi developments. It was actually pretty bullish. 

So, before I get too drunk, let’s dive into this. 

🐐 Paolo is the undisputed GOAT

The picture is a little outdated, but hey-ho. The point still stands. 

On July 30th, it was leaked by multiple sources that Circle’s valuation ahead of their planned IPO will be around $5B. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, $5B is no small feat. In fact, it’s super impressive for any company.

But just as Circle started to propel bullish news about themselves through the media channels, Mr. Paolo, the undisputed GOAT of crypto, stepped in. 

July 31st, just a day after the Circle report. 

Glass shatters Stone-cold Steve Austin music plays in the background. Paolo walks up and slaps Tether’s Q2 report on the table. 

The verdict? Oh, no biggie, just a cool $5.2B profit, I repeat PROFIT, for the first half of the year 2024. 

Think about that. Big boy 1000 employee company Circle says their valuation is $5B, only for Paolo to slap his massive cock on the table and say, “That’s cute. That’s six months of profit for me.” 

To put that into perspective, that’s roughly $200M net profit per employee Tether has. 

It is quite easily the most cracked business I’ve ever seen. They print money hand over fist.

They also said that they now have roughly $97B in US treasury bonds, making them the 18th largest holder. That’s pretty insane. Just imagine how much bigger they can get as a stablecoin issuer.  

📊 Bullish political climate for crypto 

It feels like all of 2024, we’ve seen governments around the world take a massive U-turn on their crypto policy as they all have suddenly become very accepting of it. 

First off, we have Russia. Russia has been talking about integrating crypto in different ways for a couple of months now, and just this week, they announced they have legalized mining as well as the use of crypto for international payments. 

Considering how important Russia is in this world, this is pretty big news. 

On the other side of the pond, there’s the US. Senator Cynthia Lummis recently proposed a bill wherein the US government establishes a strategic reserve for BTC as an asset that can support the US dollar.

Their aim is to accumulate 5% of the supply. 

Think about that—the US government is considering buying our bags. Granted, it’s very unlikely this will happen, but it's still crazy that it’s in consideration. 

On a side note, how funny would it be if we liquidate the entire country's next bear market? I’ve spoken about it a lot on my Twitter, but if we see it in real time, that would be something to witness. 

💹 DeFi is back in the headlines 

Arguably, one of the most disappointing sectors this year has been DeFi. 

Honestly, I wouldn’t say DeFi is dead, it’s just the sexy, unsustainable, unrealistically profitable DeFi that is dead. There are good DeFi products in the market, but they’re boring, as they should be. No moonshot products, and hence no mindshare on CT. 

But recently, we got some really promising news on Dinero. 

So as we know, the ETH ETF launched, but there is no staking on offer for TradFi as yet. We know they love yield products, and Nomura is looking to give it to them. 

They are looking to launch a staking product with the help of Galaxy Digital and none other than Hixon’s favorite, DINERO. 

This is absolutely huge news, but we will have to wait till September to see how it plays out. 

In other DeFi news, we had a big story come out of the Compound camp. Another example of the decentralized governance theatre. 

This tweet gives you a full rundown, but to summarize, there was an account called Humpy that put in a proposal to grant their team 92K COMP.

This was spotted by Compounds' security advisor and didn’t pass. Shortly after, another attempt was made, but also didn’t pass. 

Then, Humpy increased the ask by five times a little later on to roughly 499K COMP, and this time it quietly passed with a mere 57 votes cast.

As bad as this is, it just goes to highlight how flawed a token governance system is where usually more than 50% of voting power is controlled by a handful of participants. 

This is one major thing that needs changing in DAOs and DeFi. 

🐒 What to look forward to

I guess that’s all from the news front. 

In terms of what to look forward to this time, I honestly have no idea. 

I’ve been wrong on my thesis almost every time these past few weeks so unless you have a fetish for losing money, I would say don’t listen to me until I get my mojo back. 

But personally, I haven’t changed my positioning much. Still ETH and ETH beta heavy and playing Solana memes at the same time. Nothing too crazy. 

But anyway, that’s all from me. 

I'm going to drink the pain away, and if you’re doing the same, then cheers. Hopefully, things will get better for us soon. 

Other than that, until next time, mi amigos.  

Emiri