😱 Did SBF just rug BALD?

🗞 Market commentary.

Good morning Base yolo’ers and (hopefully not) rug pull victims,

Where do we even start?

• Too many projects to list have been exploited

• The SEC is hunting Pulsechain and HEX founder Richard Heart

• BALD dev might be SBF

• FTT token pumps on “FTX reboot” news

• and the fight to save the ENTIRE DeFi ecosystem Curve Founder’s

The very face of DeFi, hangs in the balance of 1 man. A man who recently bought 2 luxury mansions in Australia whilst holding one of the largest open-on-chain positions which, as we can see from the last few days of drama, has been asking to get hunted.

At the time of writing, Curve Founder Michael Egorov has been OTC’ing CRV to various market participants for $0.4 including His Excellency Justin Sun, MaciBigBrother.eth, Cream Finance and more in order to manage his position from liquation bringing down with it DeFi… which for the time being appears to be stable.

And let’s take a moment of silence for our fallen degenerate brother in arms who aped 100eth moments before BALD rugged.

In other news, Bitcoin is hovering just under the $29,000 mark as traders decide what to make of the last 72 hours.

🤓 In today’s email.

• Degen corner. BALD, BASE’d and BADASSERY

• DeFi insights. 12 need to know updates

• ICYMI. Onchain Wizard Podcast, Savvy Bull Case & Mozaic Finance Research

• Top Tweets. The truth behind HEX founder Richard Heart

• And finally. Where will Base profits flood too? Eth? Arb or OP?

🔥 Degen corner.

BALD, BASE’d and BADASSERY

If you were like me stuck touching grass over the last 48+ hours you might have missed the latest cross-chain liquidity sucker… as degenerates and hopeful millionaires bridged over to BASE.

Inspired by the mysterious powers that lay beneath a thick head of hair, baldness has printed billionaires (see thread below for the top 6 bald billionaires).

What was BALD?

What started as the most important token to launch on Base, BALD has quickly become a minefield of conspiracies with connections linking back to SBF and Alameda, which we will cover shortly.

Let’s, for a minute, forget real yield, SBF conspiracies and PFP’s… BALD was the meme of the chain that should have been a representation and the iconic image of Brian’s shiny bald prowess as it sucked the liquidity from the rest of the markets pumping, Base TVL to $81,000,000 + in less than 48 hours.

With no easy way to bridge back, Base has become the ultimate arena for battle-hardened degenerates. With a new chain, comes new coins, bringing exponential opportunities for life-changing wealth creation for those who are early.

SBF, is that you?

Or is Sam “Tabasco” Trabucco ego tripping from his luxury party yacht in the middle of the ocean surrounded by hula girls?

Delving into the on-chain data the ruggers wallet was funded by FTX, used both Binance and FTX to deposit into and appears to have been very active and connected to the depegging of the LUNA/UST collapse.

The conspiracy goes deeper as comparative tweets of SBF and the BALD dev are revealed with keywords being used such as “nor”, “seems like” and “quite well.” With speculation that the old hacked Serum account (now 0xLukaeth) is actually also involved or controlled by the rug artist (and maybe one of the Sams.)

BALD, went from meme coin mania to the next chapter in the SBF conspiracy files. This is either a MASSIVE larping coincidence or a genius plan hatched out of a bruised ego.

This definitely isn’t Caroline, but it would be an interesting turn of events if it turned out to be her.

The OP Bald Base case

Getting back to the “we’re innit for the tech part” we’ve written about the Optimism Superchain Thesis extensively over recent months as it’s one that has a lot of potential, as it features big players, wallets and upcoming narratives. Brian, CZ and a16z will not want to see their ecosystem fail as they position themselves to print money.

What’s interesting is that the OP token might have caught an actual use case. Governance, as a utility, gets thrown around a lot and generally, it’s a blasé reason for having a token. However the OP token will be the governance token of the WHOLE super chain ecosystem meaning to swing a proposal in your favour, projects will need sizeable bags.

Thus creating the battle of the baldies.

Brian vs CZ, BASE vs opBNB.

Let the games begin.

PS. The OP airdrop part 3. It’s not IF, it’s WEN

👀 DeFi insights.

The important bits.

• Celo Finance - Proposal passed to move to an Ethereum Layer 2 - read

• Curve Finance - Kirbs Crypto Alerts breaks down the timeline of what happened - read

• Ethena Labs - Building a perps exchange on Synthetix - read

• Frax Finance - A detailed look at Frax V3 by Flywheel Defi - read 

• Lyra Finance - Announces V2 including Lyra Chain, Lyra Protocol and Lyra Matcher - read

• Maker DAO - Spot accumulation rose post-FOMC as higher rates for longer = bullish for Makers revenue generating US T-Bills RWA holdings - read

• Michael Egorov - CRV founder creates new crvUSD / fFRAX pool to reduce frax lend interest, boost crvUSD fees to pay down his debt - read

• Odyssey 2.0 - 48 hours left to complete the Sparta Dex quest - read

• Panoptic - Announce gated beta launch parameters - read

• Pika Protocol - Rewards program went live - read

• Swell Network - Over 10,000 pearl hunters have joined the voyage - read

• YoloNolo - Single side staking and LP goes live. Perps bot goes into beta testing - read

📰 DeFi news.

Even more important bits.

• Coinbase was told to STOP trading in all currencies except Bitcoin by the SEC before they filed the lawsuit - read

• FTX Rebooted as a plan is drafted to reboot the exchange offshores for non US citizens - read 

• LeetSwap exploited as Base’s number 1 DEX halts trading - read

• MEV bot runner c0ff33babe.eth sandwiches the Curve exploiter for 2,879ETH returning it to the Curve team - read 

• SEC sues HEX & Pulsechain founder Richard Heart for allegedly selling unregistered securities - read

🫠 ICYMI.

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

Finding The Next Altcoin GEM: chainEDGE & Onchain Wizard

Listen & Watch.

Grant and Wizard chatted about an extremely exciting new product chainEDGE. This is basically the only tool you need in DeFi if you like to follow the smart money and find the next 1000x gem by wallet tracking and monitoring.

Tune in on Spotify | YouTube →

A Savvy Bull Case

Research.

Everything you’re about to read in the next few minutes is going to be straight-up facts, pretty compelling, and biased as hell! To show you why there’s nothing quite like Savvy — an Omnichain Yield Aggregator that grants you access to non-liquidating, auto-repaying, 0% interest loans.

Read more →

Introducing Archimedes by Mozaic Finance

Research.

Meet Archimedes, Mozaic’s groundbreaking AI tool that stands out from the crowd. Unlike those who merely use AI as a buzzword to attract attention, Mozaic has invested substantial efforts in training Archimedes with historical data.

Read more →

🐥 Top tweets.

To save you doom scrolling.

MidasFoolsGold summarises the SBF, Alameda and Sam Trabucco conspiracy

BoringSleuth sleuth’d Richard Heart

blueclarityone, the way it should be

🦍 And finally…

Base printed and printed HARD for some. Unless the chain can keep momentum and incentives worth staying for, I would expect profits to flood back to Ethereum, Arbitrum and Optimism once the bridge opens.

🤝 A final word.

A quick word from our super awesome sponsors who help us make this all possible...

Discover how your skills could power the next generation of web3 and blockchain technology. Your next career move could be one you never imagined. Start your search today at Web3nomads.jobs.