🔥 Touch Grass & Watch DeFi Burn

🗞 Market commentary.

GM, the size of this week is indeed colossal.

Yesterday, we spoke skeptically about the possible repetition of the FOMC bottoming effect. When everyone expects the market to repeat the same thing repeatedly, the operator turns things around.

As post-FOMC longers are getting liquidated left and right, Michael Egorov, founder of Curve Finance, is watching his own liquidation. The little difference is that he’s spectating his $140 million worth of CRV being liquidated from a nice, tidy mansion. Surely tidier than the Curve interface, as Luke says. 

Price-wise, people are getting jittery all around. Our outlook remains the same: anything under 67,000 dollars per Bitcoin is an area of opportunity. In the longer term, this might even be truer for altcoins, which are getting ravaged by rising Bitcoin dominance at the moment. One thing is pretty much sure: once this long-term BTC dominance uptrend breaks, these prices will seem like a gift from the heavens. At least, that’s my opinion.

So, what’s the plan? Don’t get chopped up, enjoy touching grass and let the markets reconsolidate. The bull run is intact.

🔥 Degen corner.

Welcome to Avantis. Time to Level Up.

Base, or as the trenches call it, “Fed chain,” is the perfect place for real-world asset (RWA) projects and perpetual DEXs. Since the chain comes from Coinbase, large money bags have no fear of parking here, as we can clearly deduct from the massive rise in TVL.

This spells opportunity for us—in the form of Avantis.

RWA season, driven by BlackRock’s tokenization narrative, is on the horizon. Avantis aims to deliver 'the most advanced onchain DEX for trading and market-making cryptocurrencies, forex, and commodities.'

I’m diving in and securing my spot in Avantis XP Season 1. Here’s how:

Have spare dry powder? Deposit USDC and earn points based on the duration of deposits and lock duration (up to 4x multiplier) here.

Self-explanatory: trade and earn volume XP here. All volume generates XP (at most 1 XP per dollar traded. 

Create your referral here and earn 10% of the referred XP. This combines into your final Trading XP. 

With a wild year ahead for the markets, it’s invaluable to have a platform to trade crypto and RWAs like crude oil, exotic commodities, or indices, all while earning rewards for every dollar traded.

📊 Luke’s Chart of the Day

TON/USDT 1D Chart

I think we last featured $TON in early April at around $5 (1st purple box). That box turned out to be a good entry in the end—perhaps just not quite long enough. The trend has continued to be up while almost everything else has tanked or consolidated (majors). Kijun pullbacks (The Ichimoku red MA) have been good buys thus far. We’re looking good for a fresh breakout here, but the whole market (this coin excepted) is weak. We may get another Kijun pullback or at least one to the Point of Control (red line) before we continue up. I’d recommend patience and purple box spot accumulation over-leveraged plays at this point. It’s still unclear how much more choppy majors price action we must endure in the short to medium term.

NFA as per usual, please always 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!

👀 DeFi insights.

The important bits.

• Remilia (Milady NFTs) - Launches the CULT token - read

• Berachain (L1) - Puts out an article about proof of liquidity  - read

• Sushiswap (DEX) - Introduces Sushi Labs and multi-token ecosystem - read

• Bracket (LST DeFi) - Introduces a point program - read

• Thales (DeFi, GambleFi) - The Sports Markets V2 architecture is live - read

• IntentX (DEX) - Listed IO with 20x leverage available - read

• API3 (DeFi, Oracles) - Integrates with Core DAO - read

📰 DeFi news.

Even more important bits.

• DeFi protocol UwU Lend hacked again - read

• Federal Reserve pauses interest rate hikes, remains at 5.25% - 5.50% - read

• Taiwan asks Crypto Industry Association to draft regulations - read

• Paxos reduces headcount by 20% - read

• Zimbabwe looking to regulate crypto operations - read

• MetaMask rolls out pooled staking service - read

• MicroStrategy to raise $500 Million for BTC purchase - read

🫠 ICYMI.

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

The Tapioca DAO TGE and How To Play It Successfully

Research

It's a massive day for Tapioca—one of our favorite protocols in DeFi has its TGE go live!

Read More →

🐥 Tweet of the day.

To save you doom scrolling.

Pulling this edit up for every FOMC from now on, thx Delta.

🦍 And finally…

The stars seem aligned for this one. Tapioca, the next-gen omnichain DeFi ecosystem, is running a sale just as Curve hits new all-time lows.

I believe in all things connected, and right now, my divine intuition says I need to bite the bullet and make TAP one of my core holdings. This is not financial advice, but I don’t see opportunities like this happen often.

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