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

The FOMC meeting and the subsequent interest rate deduction decision were the main catalysts of this week’s price action. Even though we started off the week on a cautious note on Monday by visiting $57.5k, we picked up pace over the next few days. 

BTC now has four consecutive green candles on the daily timeframe, with a new weekly high created around $63.85k. 

The reserves on exchanges have been reducing, indicating spot demand has been trickling. As long as people continue adding to their bags, Bitcoin should be fine. 

BlackRock Puts On the Underdog Boots 

The US economy seems to be getting back on track, and the reduced interest rates are reflective of that. Government debt, however, remains piled up. To shield itself from the worst-case scenario that could potentially transpire, BlackRock is leaning on Bitcoin’s back.  

Justifying why other alternative assets have come to the limelight, BlackRock's ETF chief investment officer, its head of crypto, and its head of fixed income global macro said,

“The growing concerns in the US and abroad over the state of US federal deficits and debt has increased the appeal of potential alternative reserve assets as a potential hedge against possible future events affecting the US dollar." 

The asset manager recently published a nine-page white paper on BTC’s appeal to investors as a “unique diversifier” that is detached from traditional fiscal and geopolitical risks.

If you don’t want to take BlackRock’s word for granted, then have a look at Metaplanet’s performance post adopting the BTC strategy. It has been able to largely outperform the USD, the Japanese stock market index, and gold. 

Bitcoin is the way forward, crypto is the way forward, and smart institutions have already started acknowledging that. 

WAGMI. 

Redefining Innovation 

Projects have been taking the innovation game quite seriously and this week serves as a testament to the same. 

We all know that volatility is the most sought-after renewable resource in the crypto space. PeaPods Finance — the pioneer of volatility farming — is all set to advance its offerings to the next level. The project is in the auditing stage of “Leveraged Volatility Farming” [LVF], its most significant protocol improvement to date. 

The team expects to wrap up these audits and launch LVF towards the start of Q4.

Typically, market participants will be split into two distinct groups — Volatility Farmers and Stable-Yield Farmers. The TVL of these two independent sets will be integrated to create the LP position. 

All collected liquidity will then be engaged in productive volatility farming, boosting yield for all stakeholders. PeaPods also introduces a novel leverage mechanism called ‘Soft Leverage’ via which volatility farmers will be exposed to the efficiencies of leveraged investing while putting a cap on the associated risks.

The team says,

“The leverage may be considered “soft”, its benefits are not! The Volatility Farmer still gets the leveraged exposure of farming with 2x the capital they provided initially upfront.”

Other than the PeaPods development, we had Solana unveil details about its second crypto phone, Celestia’s rolling out its first mainnet upgrade — Lemongrass, dYdX gearing to launch perpetual futures on prediction markets, and Phantom introducing ‘Usernames‘ to improve UX and help users sync accounts.

The oopsies 

Alongside these positive developments, a couple of things did go downhill as well this week. DeFi platform Delta Prime fell victim to a hack, resulting in the loss of nearly $6 million worth of crypto assets. The reason —  a private key exploit, smh!  

Then, Singapore-based crypto exchange BingX was also targeted earlier today. In the first batch, hackers moved out ~$26.68 million worth of crypto assets, while right after, another $16.5 million was siphoned. Most funds from the first batch flowed out of Ethereum and the BNB Chain and were swapped to native denominations. Meanwhile, funds from the second batch remained parked in a wallet.  

Peckshield estimates the total loss to be over $43 million.

Meanwhile, BingX chief product officer Vivien Lin assured users that the exchange will make all users whole, with its own capital. She further underlined that the total loss is “minimal and manageable.”

Unlike WazirX, BingX has dealt with the situation sensibly, and users thankfully don’t have to bear the brunt. 

Also, fun fact: BingX is the official crypto exchange partner of Chelsea FC. 

For users still reliant on CEXes, remember: Not your keys, not your coins. 

The hoorays 

A  bunch of new revelations were made at Solana Breakpoint today. Summing up the main takeaways: 

• Phantom introduced embedded wallets to help simplify user onboarding

• Franklin Templeton intends to launch a mutual fund on Solana 

• Securitize picks Wormhole as its official interoperability provider 

• Firedancer is live on testnet; Frankendancer is live on mainnet 

• Helio Pay introduces Solana blinks support, enabling Shopify merchants to sell on X directly 

• PayFi network Huma Finance to launch on Solana 

• Sky [formerly Maker] is bringing its USDS stablecoin to Solana via Wormhole 

• Citi Bank is looking to use Solana for money transfers and advanced smart contracts going forward

• Fuse Wallet launches Fuse Pay — a virtual Visa card 

• Solana-based NFT platform Tensor opens up waitlist for its new product vector.fun

Then comes Jupiter-related updates:

• Jupiter to release limit orders on perps

• It also unveiled Pump.fun competitor 'Ape Mint' to help users mint tokens, lock liquidity, and earn perpetual swap fees

• Jupiter Mobile to foster Apple Pay, Google Pay, credit card on-ramping 

• Jupiter also acquired omnichain trading terminal Coinhall and Solana explorer SolanaFM 

You can’t fade Solana. Uber bullish  

And finally…

Before signing off, one last good news: MicroStrategy has acquired another 7,420 BTC for ~$458.2 million. Its total stash now has 252,220 coins worth ~9.9 billion.

We’ve had a very wholesome week. Pumped to see what’s in store next. Before putting on my detective hat again, imma head out to chill by the beach. Y’all have a great weekend too! 

Until next time,
Sayonaraaaa! 
Lavina xD