#MayInLeo - today we talk about strategy. And investing in crypto, Sun Tzu with his art of war is not enough to do well.
What happened in crypto in the past week? Kucoin seems to recover nicely after the SEC threatened them. The SEC is also fighting everyone lately, Coinbase, Ripple, Biden administration? Memecoins are the buzzword lately. What else? Read below:
- Bitcoin: According to the on-chain data, Runes accounted for over 60% of the entire BTC network's daily value transfers on the 4-5th of May. As the halving is behind us, the so-called experts are telling us that Bitcoin will get more stable soon. Some are looking at all this noise about Trump back to the office and how he is pro-crypto. In my opinion, he is only hunting for more votes, this is the same person saying in June 2021: "Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam. I don't like it because it's another currency competing against the dollar." (Meanwhile, we have memecoins like $TRUMP and $BODEN, both pumping up after Mr Trump going pro-crypto.) The mining difficulty is set for a 5.5% downward adjustment, the largest difficulty drop since 2022. Hong Kong's spot BTC ETFs have fallen short in the debut week. Trading giant Susquehanna has invested over $1B in BTC ETFs during the first quarter of 2024, buying from Grayscale GBTC and Fidelity FBTC. This may be the reason why Grayscale recorded a daily net inflow on May 3rd, the first positive since January. Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital's profits went up to 184% over crypto price rises.
- Ethereum: Metamask is going after the MEV tax, as ETH users lost over $400M per year in failed transactions, inflated gas fees and other unnecessary costs, and they are rolling now a Smart Transaction with features to help protect users from these MEV scams, all with the help of something called 'a virtual mempool'. I don't know why, but this is similar in my mind to the Oval feature made by UMA. Ethereum burning levels are also dropping with 610 ETH last Sunday, a far cry from the 2500-3000 ETH regularly burned before, and this is happening because the scalability solutions finally started to do the work intended to be done, lowering the fees. Traders are aggressively loading up short positions against ETH, betting on the price dropping. ARK Invest and 21 Shares amended their ETH ETF proposals to exclude staking plans.
Altcoins and stablecoins: Keep an eye on HBAR (Hedera) as they reached ATHs on both TVL ($119M) and DEX volume. with DEFI SaucerSwap growing TVL from 460M to $117M (a +94% QoQ). Trading volumes on CEX dropped after seven months. Venus ranked as the fifth-largest lending protocol by market cap at the end of Q1. EigenLayer airdrop comes with non-transferability and geographic restrictions.
NFTs and blockchain games: What a number! On Splinterlands, the fourth round of Conflicts airdrop ongoing, with Legendary summoners next, and the new reward system seems to be alright, as you get Glint tokens for every match you win and double of it at the end of the season. You can use Glint tokens to buy specific cards, Merits, potions and even 3 different titles. You may also want to check Holozing - a soon-to-be-launched Pokemon-like game on the Hive blockchain.
- Good news: Kucoin has a brilliant referral program, if you are good at this kind of activity. April was the second straight month when the VC startup funding went over $1B. FTX claims are now exceeding their original face values, trading at 112 cents on the dollar. They still need to pay the creditors. The European Union is exploring the idea of allowing crypto into its $12T investment product ecosystem. In the upcoming US elections, crypto-backed political groups contributed over $102M for crypto-friendly candidates. Revolut launched a dedicated crypto exchange for experienced traders.
- Bad news: RobinHood received a Wells notice this week, an official warning that the regulators are coming to check on you. Some big bucks names, of the likes of JPMorgan, Wells Fargo et all, all partnering with Mastercard, are pooling resources to start minting their own invite-only Regulated Settlement Network, where they plan to tokenize everything, treasuries, cash, and more. Is this about big banks trying to hijack the blockchain? Crypto-wallet Exodus' NYSE listing was postponed as the SEC is still reviewing its registration statement. SEC also maintains that Ripple should pay the $2B fine for selling XRP to institutional investors. Biden administration declared its intention to veto the congressional resolution to undermine the SEC's crypto policy, saying it strongly opposes the resolution. The SEC also called Coinbase's requirement to create a new regulatory framework for crypto from the ground up as being unreasonable and added that there is no need for a new regime. Binance was fined $4.3M by the Canadian regulators, citing two separate administrative violations.
- Joke of the week: Memecoin trading activity decreased by 80% from its peak in March, going down from $1B to a merely $192M in April. Most of them are going down now, because of the overall weak structure of the altcoin market and the decreasing trading activity. VanEck released a new index to track all the top memecoins, called MarketVector Meme Coin Index, or $MEMECOIN for short.
All the best,
George
Why not...
...have fun and win rewards on my favourite blockchain games (Splinterlands- Hearthstone-like card game) (Mobox - GamiFI NFT platform) (Upland - real-life virtual land) (Holozing - Pokemon-like game)and (Rising Star - Music creators game).
...Get ETH while writing on the Publish0x blog, using the Presearch search engine to maximize your income with PRE tokens. Use Torum instead of Twitter. I am also writing for crypto on Read.cash and Hive.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
