🍺 This Week in Crypto: Emiri Checkin’ in From the Pub

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Greetings from my second home on this fine Friday. 

The pints are already flowing but unfortunately, crypto isn’t. This has been one of the most uneventful weeks since I started doing crypto full time, which could be both good and bad. Bad because nothing is happening, good because how much worse can it get. 

Nonetheless, we did have some interesting developments this past week which are worth talking about, so let me quickly run through those before diving into what I’m looking at going forward. 

🏦 The Feds hate crypto 

It’s no surprise that government agencies across the world have something against crypto. 

There is justification in that a lot of scams take place here, resulting in major losses with close to no repercussions, but you also have to consider whether there is an ulterior motive driven by a certain threat that crypto adoption poses. 

This week, we had a flurry of agencies attacking crypto. 

Let’s start with the CFTC. They have recently partnered with numerous federal regulators to target a specific sort of crime in crypto called “pig-butchering” scams. These scams involve scammers socially manipulating victims through fake relationships and taking money from them. 

So just know, when you guys are simping for E-girls on crypto Twitter, you’re just giving money to a big bully in his mother's basement. 

They aim to stop this mainly through educational campaigns because the losses from these types of scams are nearing all-time highs. 

In other news, the FBI also put out a pretty damning report. 

Their report said that there’s been a 45% jump in the severity of crypto fraud, with Americans losing approximately $5.6B to crypto fraud this year. Seeing this, it makes sense that we’ve seen a  3,018% jump in fines put by the SEC on crypto companies. 

Unfortunately, as we know, Gary Gensler only likes to fine companies that follow the law rather than those that commit actual fraud.

Now, if we go across the pond and look at our friendly neighborhood Britbongs, we will see that the UK government is taking some interesting steps. 

The government is essentially working on a legal structure to properly define and regulate digital assets. They could fall under the property bill and be defined as personal property or as security. These details are still being fleshed out. 

🚢 Crypto companies cruising

While we mere plebs continue to suffer in the trenches, the bigger crypto companies seem to be cruising. 

Let’s start with the bane of all our existences, FTX. 

Recently, FTX redeemed 117,693 SOL (roughly $23M) from staking. They are majorly benefiting from their initial Solana investment, which means they have a large amount of SOL still staked.

However, Solana has had a major recovery from the pts of FTX this year. This level of pressure could be a potential red flag for SOL investors. 

On the other hand, we can see Tether living its best life. 

They recently made their first investment in an agricultural company. They invested $100M in Adecoagro, an Argentinian milk producer. 

This marks the start of their new diversification plans, as they aim to use small portions of their profits and working capital to diversify their portfolio and hedge against crypto risk. 

Tether keeps winning. 

✅ Crypto protocol positives

There were also some positive tidbits from crypto protocols this week. 

Let’s start with the much-anticipated EigenLayer. 

After raising $13M, the NEAR foundation made Nuffle Labs with the intent of extending the functionality of NEAR’s modular chain. Recently, EigenLayer announced that they will be partnering with Nuffle Labs to shift away from being solely operational on the Ethereum L1. 

This is pretty major news for those getting the EIGEN airdrop, as well as those staking on other chains. Eigen could be coming to you soon. 

Sticking on the restaking theme, we have some interesting developments from the EtherFi camp. 

EtherFi announced that they have partnered with crypto L2 platform Scroll to roll-out a crypto Visa credit card. 

As you can probably guess, the idea behind the card is to create an easy way for users to spend their crypto assets without any off-ramping headaches. 

With that, we come to the end of the news section. 

🐂 Looking forward 

In terms of what I’m thinking going forward. I’m pretty bullish. 

I think we’ve dropped a significant amount and now seem to be accumulating at these levels. Price is barely reacting to any news, whether bullish or bearish. 

Historically, the summer and September are very bad for markets as they’re illiquid. But going into Q4, once liquidity comes back, I expect a lot of bullish developments to take place. I’ve slowly started deploying into majors like ETH and SOL. 

Beyond that, I bought a couple of memes that I like. I might also scoop a little FTM before the Sonic upgrade. But my main focus is going to be DePIN and AI coins. I’m yet to figure out where I want to concentrate my bets, but I think these sectors can generate proper revenue, making them very undervalued at the moment. 

With that, we come to the end of this week’s edition of Emiri from the pub. 

I got more pints on the way as I drink away my Friday and I hope you do the same. Other than that, tune in next week to catch Lavina’s round up and insights. 

stay safe homies,

Emiri 🫡