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

The crypto space is seldom drama-deficit and everything that happened this week is a testament to that. Right from the word wars to CRV wars, Trump-Biden crypto visions, and Mommy-Daddy issues - we have it all covered.

So, what are you waiting for? Dive right in

🎡 Ansem Third Wheels Mommy and Daddy

Unlike us, Mr Andrew Tate’s derangedness is directly proportional to the rational bankruptcy he can achieve.

For seventeen minutes straight this week, the self-proclaimed “rogue genie” ended up calling degens “losers,” “spineless,” “soulless,” “cowards,” and “dorks'' who do not understand how karma works. 

Ansem respectfully cooked Tate with mini-paragraph rebuttals, while all Tate could come up with was four to seven-worded replies along the lines of this is his world and how he’s built differently. No points for guessing, but CT users declared their darling sweetheart millionaire influenzah Ansem as the winner. 

Their verbal wrath on Twitter has also led to a boxing match being set up in Dubai in December during the Crypto Fight Week. The loser will donate $10 million to a coin of the winner’s choice. 

From the coin perspective, Tate started supporting DADDY in an attempt to flip Iggy Azalea’s MOTHER for the patriarchy. He claimed that he’d never sell his stash but instead burn it for the chaos. DADDY has already flipped MOTHER, but welp, insiders have been doing all the heavy lifting to manipulate the price.

At this stage, I could really use a time machine to go back and give due acknowledgment to the cats, dogs, and frogs for filtering out the unnecessary drama and keeping us entertained all day. 

Numerous other coins related to the Ansem-Tate spat have now started floating in the market. Most like Broke Mulatto Fuck and Chimpanzee Looking Dickhead are down on their knees in terms of valuation.

🙀 Is Kitty Drowning?

Hell no! GME trading was halted for the millionth time this week. Instead of merely soaring, it also nuked and lost more than 14% value in a single day. Gill then wittily posted a picture claiming how he was a billionaire before the dump. Amends were made gradually, double-digit gains were registered, and Kitty is now waiting for his folio to start roaring again. 

🏦 TrempBoden-Verse Updates

In the Politi-Fi universe, Mister Doland Tremp claimed this week that he wants “all” the remaining Bitcoin to be mined in America, but hello, he can’t just wipe out other hotspots from the map, right? If he’s back to the throne, I guess we can expect electricity subsidies for miners and other incentives to be rolled out, and ultimately, America’s shade on the map below could get darker. 

However, I do not see the entire map being white, with only Trump’s kingdom in color. As Laura Shin pointed out, that would end up creating jurisdictional risk and make BTC less decentralized and vulnerable to attacks. In the words of Venice.ai founder Erik Voorhees,

Like Tremp, Jeo Boden is now apparently looking to accept crypto donations. People in the president's ‘outer inner circle’ are telling him that if he continues to be quiet about crypto and doesn’t get up to speed, he could lose the election. The talks, however, have been labeled as “exploratory.” 

A recent report pointed out that his re-election team is discussing accepting crypto donations via Coinbase Commerce with our industry players. Even if he does, we might see a few headlines doing the rounds, but I don’t think it would make a difference to the retail crypto community. They’ve bore the brunt of his Operation Chokepoint and have had enough of regulatory suffocation in his reign. Don’t think they’re in the mood to give him a second chance. 

Price-wise, MAGA [TRUMP] is up 5.4% on the weekly, while TREMP AND BODEN and down 18% and 38% respectively in the same timeframe. Hang on to your hats, for the Politi-Fi tale is only going to get spicier from here on. The first debate between the two presidential contenders is scheduled for June 27, and the price of these Politi-Fi coins can be expected to dance to the tune of their unhinged word battle.

👀 DeFi insights of the week.

From the fundamental perspective, a ton of DeFi projects have delivered this week. That being said, there were also misses. Here’s it all - the good, the bad, and the ugly:

• Optimism has stepped into its ‘stage 1’ decentralization era and received a warm welcome from Lord Vitalik

• MetaMask rolled out its pooling staked services to compete with the likes of Lido and Rocket Pool, but US and UK folks do not have access for now

• ZKsync announced its airdrop deets and received a lot of backlash for ignoring small fishes and identifying real users as sybils. Several stalwarts have started supporting the user-protest  

• It was a merry week in the Tapioca and io.net camp. The former’s LBP concluded with $8.4 million raised in total, while the latter had a successful TGE, with the price of IO hovering above $5 at the moment

• Berachain had its V2 upgrade go live, ushering in a series of technical architectural changes

• Pendle is now a top-5 project in terms of TVL

📰 DeFi news of the week.

• Several protocols were hacked this week - The Loopring one resulted in a $5 million drain, while UwU Lend was targeted twice by the same hacker. First, $20 million was siphoned, and then $3.7 million 

• The luxury mansion owner’s loans got liquidated, pushing CRV to an all-time low valuation

• Ripple completed the acquisition of yet another crypto custody firm, Standard Custody; EigenLayer acquired the Rio Network

• Paxos laid off 20% of its staff

• Terraform Labs is gonna get away with whatever it did in 2022 by paying $4.47 billion to the SEC

A host of company executives walked into their office with hefty checks. Nexus Labs raked in $25 million in its Series A round, Layer3 accrued 21 million, Squad Labs amassed $10 million, Paradigm raised a whopping $850 million

📉 Fate of the Market

From the price perspective, it seems like we could continue experiencing a few more hiccups. Miners are under stress owing to the revenue drop and have started capitulating. In a single day this week, they dumped 3000 coins on Binance. Likewise, selling via OTC desks has also spiked up to a two-month high. 

Alongside, whales have been canceling out each other. The largest whale category - possessing at least 100k BTC - seems to be dormant at the moment. On the other hand, the 10k-100k group has been selling, while the 1k-10k BTC group has been buying - resulting in a net-neutral effect, and that’s why we’re stagnated in the $66k-$67k bracket. 

Coinglass’ data shows that liquidity has been amassing in the $63-$65k bracket, and to be frank, I’m waiting for a chop to transpire. This correction phase seems healthy. Good entry opportunities are set to open up soon, and I’m looking to buy the dip.

We already have institutional backing. Just need to wait for miners to settle down, paper hands to be filtered out, and whale buy trades to start picking up pace. It’s just a matter of when. 

At the moment, I am least worried about the market's fate, for it’s just a regular mid-cycle correction that we’re witnessing. But, Lady Whistledown’s fate is hanging by a thread, and my wiggly brain cells need to know what happens next before the suspense eats me alive. So, off I go to binge-watch the newly released episodes of Bridgerton. 

Emiri will take y’all through the happenings next week, and I shall see you here again the following week.