🌅 What Happened This Week in Crypto? Lavina Checkin’ in From the Beach

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Hombres and Hembras,

What a passive-aggressive week! We did march towards the edge a couple of times but thankfully steered away from ghastly bloodsheds. We’re all safe and sound. BTC seems to be comfy around $60k for now, while alts continue fetching reasonable returns. 

From the news point of view, a host of developments shaped up one behind the other this week. So let’s dive right in without any ado.

💵 Tether hasn’t lost its luster: 

Tether continues to be that crypto horse who is running with its head held high. On a daily basis, it’s generating a revenue of over $13.4 million.

• The stablecoin king continues to expand its empire. It announced its launch on the Aptos blockchain this week

• Its supply has been growing the fastest on Celo and Avalanche. At the moment, it has an outstanding supply of 230.73 million and 1.34 billion on the respective chains, while its aggregate supply is hovering around its ATH of 117.2 billion

• Tether is also gearing to launch a token pegged to the UAE’s Dirham

• Won’t call it pessimistic, but Tether aborted its plan to launch its in-house blockchain owing to a saturated market. Paolo feels blockchains will become commodities in the future and launching one might not be the right move

• Ser also says Tether is “very good” in technology and would continue to focus on that. Meanwhile, there are other quality blockchains that already exist and he wants them to keep doing their thing. Fair! As long as value is being added one way or the other no complaints. 

🌄 Sun rises in Sun’s land: 

Like it or not, Justin Sun and his entities kept making it to the headlines this week. 

• Sun’s SunPump overtook Pump.fun in revenue this week. In a single day on Wednesday, the former made around $548k, while the latter generated about $367k

• In fact, on the same day, the number of new tokens generated by SunPump [7,531] outpaced that of Pump.fun [6,941]

Sun says: “It's just one day; there's still more work to be done to make it last forever.”

Tron train takes off:

Mindshare-wise, Tron registered a perpendicular spike. Mind-boggling and questionable at the same time

SunPump’s launch => Increased Tron network activity => Surge in TRX burns 

We’ve seen this have an impact on the price too. TRX is up 18% on the weekly. Plus, according to Santiment, TRX is seeing a “historic level” of trader interest at the moment.

Also, His Excellency is eying Tron’s aggregate revenue to hit $4 billion in the best-case scenario going forward.

Well, SunPump is just a copy pasta of Pump.fun and all the hype and traction it has garnered ain’t sustainable from the mid/long term perspective. 

Swim by the bait, anon, but don’t get bitten.

• Also in another parallel development, the TRON DAO Reserve removed $750 million worth of BTC backing the USDD stablecoin. The asset is now backed only by TRX. Justifying this move, Sun said,

To break it down:

“Hey guys, we're gonna yoink these 12k BTC within the blink of an eye. Ain’t a big fat deal. All good. We’ve got a truckload of TRX to back it all up. Trust me bro, just trust me.”

Sue me not for defamation but Sun’s the real manipulator here. Is he tryna shield WBTC’s peg by offloading BTC from the USDD coffers? Or is he looking to divert ‘em towards staking on Babylon? Guess we’ll soon come to know.

📉📈 DeFi is back baby, and so is Vitalik:

CT’s timeline got cleansed this week. Healthier tech and utility-related discussions have started gaining steam. The cherry on the cake - Vitalik is back defending his brainchild and sooner than later we're gonna see ETH’s resurrection too.  

Unless you’re living under a rock, you’d know that Aave stole the limelight this week. The borrowers on the protocol have spiked to a new high. There are more than 40,000 active weekly borrowers at the moment, eclipsing the previous highs registered in late 2022.

Strong fundamentals and solid tokenomic tokens will never leave you hanging out in the dry. Aave has seen more than a handful of bull and bear runs and knows when to change gears and accelerate. 

The road to its $666.86 ATH is long. The token is still heavily undervalued. Hold on and let it coooook!

Also, Steno Research believes DeFi summer is officially making a comeback. Even though the aggregate TVL is still significantly below its 2021 peak, they believe it could climb to an ATH as soon as H1 2025.

⏲️ Tick tock, one month and CZ will be out:

CZ was transferred from a minimum security prison to a “halfway house” this week. Technically, he is out of prison but still remains under the custody of the American government. As of now, he’s neither free to move or do as he wishes. He is expected to be released on 29 September.

🐒 And finally…

I like the resilience we’re seeing across the board. All eyes are now on the Federal Reserve's annual Jackson Hole symposium that’s scheduled for later today.

Pow-pow’s comments are expected to stir in optimism and assure Americans that things are getting back on track. Markets are heavily betting on rate cuts, and if he gives a confirmation then we might see an action-packed weekend.

Anyways, there’s still time for him to get on stage and yap. I’m gonna go and untangle my head meanwhile by relaxing at the beach. 

May the market forces be with us. 

Until next time,

Saaayonara!