⏳ T-3 To Bitcoin Halving

🗞 Market commentary.

GM, are you slurping the dipperino?

The halving week continues, and we’re finally seeing a slight bounce across the markets. Despite the ongoing downside risk while Bitcoin remains under $70K, I don't believe it's time to turn overly bearish.

Several veteran traders, including Eric Krown, Velvet, and Cold-Blooded Shiller, are either starting to re-enter the market and build spot positions or are targeting the $58K area as the next potential hotspot. Keyword: "opportunity."

In other news, the macro experts are back in full force. Inflation continues to heat up, with three consecutive months of rising inflation prints, and just yesterday, Canada reported a significant increase in core CPI. Consequently, Fed Chief Powell signaled that rate cuts might need to be delayed further to tame inflation.

The fact that the rates need to stay higher for longer might be a blessing in disguise, though. Rate cuts typically occur when something is on the brink of breaking badly, which means the next big market crash might actually take place sometime after these take place.

📊 Luke’s Chart of the Day

WZRDUSD 4H - BRC20 Pre Rune

This is my other high-conviction pre-rune play. Left curve chart - accumulate here, and lower pre-halving is the plan (see purple box). Ansem picked $PUPS and $WZRD as his ‘no trading, 100x or 0’ Rune plays, and the chart has been mostly up only since. 

However, the market cap is still ~$180M. I think it can go much higher if it becomes a Runes schelling point. Particularly if it gets tier 1 exchange support or L2 low friction, low-fee buying options emerge. Right now, it’s still a BRC20. 

These are quite janky and relatively hard to buy compared to a Solana meme shitter. This is a gift, because, as we know, shit UX is effectively a price suppressant in speculative markets. $BTC market cap is $1.2T. I’m thinking if $WZRD really does become the Dogecoin of BTC, the market cap would probably have to be a reasonably big multiple of what it is today.

As always, NFA, and please do your own research!

Come by the Lucky Luke Discord channel for comments, to roast my picks or to pump your own bags. All banter is welcome any time!

🔥 Degen corner.

Runes Pre-play: Episode 2

Pre-halving week rolls on, and with it, the Runes Protocol release. Let’s keep highlighting new projects of this, without a doubt, massive narrative and opportunity.

A new collection that is minting right now. From the announcement, we clearly see this is a pre-Rune collection as well.

Runevo just minted out and aims to become the mobile-first tooling infrastructure for Ordinals. As we all know, friendly UX and especially mobile-friendly apps open the gates to many more participants.

Bitcoin Puppets friendly collection, minting at the moment as well.

Runes will unlock many functions, one of which is DeFi. Alex aims to become a Super App for the Bitcoin economy.

This one may or may not be a pre-Runes collection, but the mint is live right now, and I personally minted some because I like these projects and see solid mutuals following them.

👀 DeFi insights.

The important bits.

• Smilee Finance (DeFi) - Introduction to first modular liquidity - read

• TON (L1) - Introduces Memelandia cultural hub - read 

• Parcl Limited (Real Estate) - PRCL token airdrop claim is live - read 

• Mode (L2) - Adds Cobo custody provider to Mode  - read 

• Fantom (L1) - Announcing Gas Monetization quarterly bonus - read 

• Peapods (DeFi) - Announces Q2 and Q3 roadmap - read

📰 DeFi news.

Even more important bits.

• OKX launches new Layer 2 on the main net - read 

• Offchain Labs releases Arbitrum BOLD on test net - read 

• New Payment Stablecoin Act prohibits algorithmic stablecoins - read 

• Morgan Stanley gives up on rates cut bet - read 

• Korean won surpasses USD as the most-traded currency for crypto - read 

• GBTC outflows overpower other ETFs, again - read

🫠 ICYMI.

Life gets busy so here’s what you’ve missed.

An Interview With io.net | The Most Anticipated Launch in Crypto x AI?

Podcast

If you've not already soaked up the information around ionet, you've not been paying attention, so now's the chance. We dig into GPUs's value proposition, $IO, and way more than can fit into a tweet. Go and get it below...

Tune in on Spotify | YouTube →

🐥 Tweet of the day.

To save you doom scrolling.

It’s certainly getting wild down in Dubai, bishara…

🦍 And finally…

If you’re tired of trading in these quite brutal conditions, it might be a good time to explore yield (and maybe airdrop) opportunities.

I’ll be using Smilee Finance (more detailed info in this newsletter) for exactly this reason. Not only are the vaults offering a very competitive APR and attractive pairs, but we can also concurrently farm a solid batch of points. I have a feeling Smilee has a few tricks under their sleeves and the fact they are working closely with Berachain only strengthens it.

Keep your eyes peeled, as we will be covering more news on this soon.