🟣 Again? Again

While majors consolidate, the appetite for speculation remains.

Author

Luke Leasure
May 14, 2024

Welcome back to 0xResearch – quick hitting alpha for the crypto degens. Here's what we got for you today:

  • CPI tomorrow

  • A memestock and memecoin resurgence

  • dYdX change of guard

  • Hyperliquid upgrades

Majors BTC, ETH, and SOL remain in range bound consolidation ahead of tomorrow's CPI print, with consensus expecting a .3% M/M print. Evidently, the appetite for speculation remains. Roaring Kitty, of the 2021 Gamestop short squeeze saga, has reemerged from a 3 year hibernation, posting a series of cryptic images and videos. The comeback tweet received over 24M views.

As if on queue, Gamestop(GME) stock surged over 110% during Monday’s trading, halting over 5 times along the way. The move results in losses in excess of $1 billion for short sellers, who have yet to see a reprieve as GME gaps up another 100% today. GME and AMC memecoins on Solana joined the party, with each rising over 2000% and 6000%, respectively. As the onchain casino booms, Jito validators earned a record high from tips of over 10.6k sol. 

In other news, Antonio Juliano, founder of the premier decentralized perpetual futures protocol dYdX, has stepped aside as CEO to assume the role of Chairman and President. Founding the project in 2017, Antonio led dYdX through four different deployments of the perps DEX, with over $1 trillion in cumulative volume settled.

In his place, Ivo Crnkovic-Rubsamen, who held the role as Chief Strategy Officer for the project over the past two years, will take on the role as CEO. This change in guard occurs as the emerging L1 Hyperliquid presents stiff competition, having gained notable volume in the perps DEX market. Hyperliquid is transitioning to a proprietary consensus algorithm, HyperBFT, which will remove the current throughput constraint of Tendermint consensus. This upgrade should allow Hyperliquid to support 200k orders per second.

Several perps DEXs, Hyperliquid included, have been running points programs to incentivize volume and users in hopes of an airdrop. Another competitor in this market, Drift, announced that their airdrop will go live on May 16, distributing 12% of the token supply to users.

— Luke Leasure (X: @0xMether)

Pack your bags, anon — we’re heading west! Join us in the beautiful Salt Lake City for the third installment of Permissionless. Come for the alpha, stay for the fresh air. Tickets are only $199. Check out our site for more info!

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Pertsev’s verdict by a Dutch court shouldn’t impact Roman Storm’s upcoming trial, CoinCenter’s Peter Van Valkenburgh says.

The holdings disclosure is the first from a state investment board.

The insights, views and outlooks presented in the report are not to be taken as financial advice. Blockworks Research analysts are not registered broker/dealers or financial advisors. Blockworks Research analysts may hold assets mentioned in this report, further outlined in the Firm’s Financial Disclosures.