🟣 Let’s Try This Again

Last week didn’t end like we all hoped it would. Following the ETF, there was actually a decent correction on BTC, which peaked at $49K, and is currently trading at around $42.5K.

Gm!

Last week didn’t end like we all hoped it would. Following the ETF, there was actually a decent correction on BTC, which peaked at $49K, and is currently trading at around $42.5K.

In the first two days of trading, spot Bitcoin ETFs had around $11 billion in trading volume and attracted $800 million in net inflows. Fidelity and BlackRock are currently leading the market, with $498 million and $422 million in total flows, respectively. Despite Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) leading in trading volumes at $4.3 billion, it experienced net outflows of $580 million.

Despite BTCs weakness, smaller caps have been performing decently. XAI, an Arbitrum GameFi L3 developed in tandem with Offchain Labs, is up 51% over the past week. Another GameFi infrastructure project, BEAM, a new subnet built on Avalanche for gaming, is up 14% this past week. Apart from GameFi, two strong performers are BLUR, up 15% over the past day, and MUBI, up 30% over the past day. Notably, Binance discussed MUBI, a bridge between Bitcoin and EVM chains, on Binance Research recently.

Onchain, it seems like airdrop season is finally here. Jupiter confirmed that they will be airdropping JUP, their native governance token, on the 31st of January. DYM airdrop claims end on the 21st of January. JUP is trading at $0.7 and DYM is trading at $4.7 per token on Aevo’s pre-launch futures. Apart from DYM and JUP, Rabby, a wallet provider, teased a snapshot for a possible upcoming token launch, Frame announced that they will be launching on the 31st of January, and Manta announced that they will be airdropping 5.6% of the token supply to eligible wallets.

Ribbon’s derivative exchange AEVO, an application specific OP Stack rollup, has been growing tremendously. With $700M in volume and almost $500K in fees last week, it has quickly cemented itself as one of the top perps DEXs. The success is largely thanks to their pre-launch futures listings, in which they allow trading with low leverage (2x) for tokens imminently launching such as DYM, MANTA, BLAST, and JUP.

Arbitrum DAO is once again voting on using its treasury toward protocol incentives. If the proposal passes, teams building on Arbitrum will be able to apply for a share of ~25-45M ARB to give to their end users. At current prices, this is between $50M and $100M. The projects who successfully receive funds in the LTIP will be required to use the ARB within 14 weeks. The proposal looks locked in to pass Snapshot, but will still have a substantial process before the incentives start, including a 3 week tally vote, a 6 week application process, and an unknown operational overhead. Yield farmers rejoice!

This report delves into the intricate workings of Optimism and Arbitrum, unpacking their differences and potential to redefine the core theses of every crypto investor.

MakerDAO generated $16.3M in RWA Revenue and $5.4M in Crypto Interest Revenue in November 2023. The magnitude of these numbers has yet to be seen anywhere in DeFi, yet MKR currently sits at relatively low P/S and P/E multiples.

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.