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

Another discombobulated week comes to an end. The much-awaited fund launches accounted for the ‘disco’ part, while the midweek bomb blast had us soaking in a sea of blood. We rolled meme joints. We coped. We survived.

Without much ado, lemme start yapping about everything that happened. 

/

🚫 Just leave cardaNO alone

If it were 2021, I'd typically start this newsletter with Cardano-related updates. From $0.016, ADA surpassed $3.1 within the first three quarters. Post Alonzo, it lost charm. A few months down the line, ADA was branded as a dino coin and community members rechristened Cardano to Ghostchain. 

The Chang hard fork is in process at the moment, but no one seems to care. All they are bothered about is why Hoskinson shaved his beard. Personally, I don’t see any reason why one needs to cling onto Cardano, but if you’re in there still, godspeed. 

🙃 Old MacDonald had a Fund, ETHE-ETHA-O 

Moving past Cardano to the most important event of the week - the Ether ETF launches. Garry Daddy’s agency finally green-flagged asset managers’ official filings, opening the doors for investors to gain indirect exposure to the second largest crypto asset in the boomer-finance way. 

Their launch was expected to act like a catalyst, but lo and behold, ETH nuked to $3087, eroding away most leveraged long trades. 

Flows-wise, day 1 was great for the newborn ETFs. Out of the $1 billion trading volume, the net inflows accounted for $106.7 million. Grayscale’s ETHE single-handedly registered negative flows worth $484 million, and the other funds were able to absorb it, which was a big W. 

Interestingly, out of the 600 or so new ETF launches that have taken place over the past 12 months [barring the BTC funds], BlackRock’s ETHA grabbed the numero uno position in terms of day one volume, Fidelity’s FETH ranked two, while Bitwise’s ETHW grabbed the fifth position. Huge, indeed. 

On day two, however, the clan wasn’t able to wipe out the $327 million of outflows from Grayscale’s converted Ethereum Trust. Resultantly, $113 million worth of net outflows were registered. Likewise, even on day 3 of trading, negative flows worth $314.8 million were recorded by the funds. 

Even though there were no fireworks this week on the heels of the launch, my long-term ETH and ETH beta conviction remains intact, just like the ecosystem's fundamentals. Patience will be rewarded down the line. So hang in there, anon, hang in there!   

✍️ A flurry of ‘firsts’ on Solana

Yet again, Solana renewed its streak of not disappointing. Earlier this week, it overtook Ethereum on the DEX volume front for the first time in history. The convergence on the chart below is a testament to the masses flocking from Ethereum to Solana.  

Solana-based Solend rebranded itself as ‘Save’ a day back and announced the launch of dumpy.fun, a platform for shorting meme coins. Evidently, meme coins have reached a “fever pitch,” but rugs and cash grabs are creating holes in traders’ pockets. According to the team, "What goes up must come down,” and nothing wrong in shorting shitcoins that are “destined” to drop to zero. 

WILD. Solana DEX volumes are gonna continue creating highs.   

In another first for the network, the Jito Foundation released the code for a staking and restaking program for Solana. The code is yet to be audited. It is slated for implementation on the mainnet later this year. 

This architecture will foster any protocol building on Solana to create a mechanism for providing economic security to on-chain apps. Jito's code will help users secure AVSs via any crypto asset they pick. The flexibility and customization options are evidently the cherries on the cake. 

Next, $900 billion asset manager Hamilton Lane became the first institution to launch a fund directly on Solana this week. Until now, Solana users could access tokenized funds via Ondo on Solana, thanks to USDY and OUSG.  But now, Hamilton’s private credit fund can be directly accessed on the blockchain by Solana users. 

📈 Dilute the red   

The mid-week macro market crash was brutal. However, it seems like we’ll be signing off this week from a much better place. Bitcoin and Ether were both up by 3-5% at press time, with the aggregate market cap sneaking around $2.4 trillion.  

Bonus, crypto-related stocks like Coinbase, MicroStrategy, and Bitfarms were also seen in a merry mood, registering gains up to 6%. In fact, earlier this week, CitiBank upgraded Coinbase’s stock from neutral to buy. It parallelly notched up its COIN price target from $260 to to $345. For context, it’s currently trading around $231.5.

🥥 You think you just fell outta a coconut tree? 

Within the political sphere, a bunch of developments shaped up this week. First and foremost, Jeo Boden announced that he is not going to contest in the upcoming elections and instead batted for Kamala Horris to take over reigns. A few hours back, the Obemas also voiced their support for Horris and said she’d make a “fantastic” President of the United States.

Sure. 

Kamala mentions alongside “brat” and “coconut tree” memes have been flooding social platforms. 

Per statistical analysis, interactions on her posts have seen one of their sharpest spikes ever. 

Alongside the aforementioned spike, even the price of the PolitiFi coin Kamala Horris pumped. While most large-cap crypto-assets continue to be engulfed in their correction phase, KAMA rose from a low of $0.0083 to create a weekly high around $0.038 this week. 

Also, we now have a new twist in the debate tale. The Trump campaign said that it would not agree to finalizing debate plans until Horris formally becomes the Democratic nominee. 

Notably, an ABC News-hosted debate was scheduled for 10 September. Kamala wants a face-off, but her opponent seems to be stubborn about the nomination confirmation part.  

She didn’t let go of this chance to take a dig at Trump on X for backpedaling. 

🧓 RFK, please don’t chop off the de from decentralization

Apart from the mains, independent presidential candidate RFK Jr. reaffirmed his support for BTC earlier today. He said,

"I am a huge supporter of Bitcoin. I have most of my wealth in Bitcoin. I am fully committed."

Also, if he is elected, he’d urge the government to buy Bitcoin until the size of its holdings weighed the same as the nation’s gold reserves.

It's a known fact that the US is the world’s largest owner of gold. It holds around 8,134 tons [worth $615 billion] of the shiny metal. To match this value, more than 9.4 million BTC [i.e. a little less than half the total supply] will have to be bought at the current price. 

For context, MicroStrategy and BlackRock have around 226,331 BTC and 334,000 BTC in possession. 

Being pro-crypto is all welcome Mr. RFK Jr., but 9.4 million is way out of proportion for a single entity — that too the government — to hold. Centralization has already started echoing in my ears, welp!  

💎 This week’s treat: Courtesy of Grantmaster 

Last but not least: You’re gonna regret it if you miss out on Grant’s updated DEXScreener watchlist.

Skimmed through it this afternoon and it has loads of idiosyncratic coins that have 100x’d over the past few weeks. You can thank him later. 

Here’s the list, check it out!

🌅 And finally… 

It’s been a long yap, yikes. Anyway, that’s it from me for this week.

Off I go to relish my beach time. Y’all have a great weekend too!