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- 🟣 Weekend dip on geopolitical fears: Is it over?
🟣 Weekend dip on geopolitical fears: Is it over?
The only thing certain is tax day in the USA
Macauley Peterson
April 15, 2024
đź‘‹ GM.
Welcome back to 0xResearch – quick hitting alpha for the crypto degens. Here's what we got for you today:
A Blast liquidation fiasco
New way to transport tokens cross-chain
What’s clogging Base?
Happy Monday, Tax Day, World Art Day!
The sharp drop in crypto markets over the weekend had some participants running scared, as Iran launched hundreds of UAVs and missiles at Israel, stoking fears of a wider Middle East conflict.
The peak to trough (so far) in bitcoin and Total2 (crypto market excluding BTC) since Friday was “only” -13% and -21%, yet social media is filled with comparisons to the Black Thursday COVID crash.
As someone who was watching markets closely on March 12-13, 2020, this is as amusing as it is nonsensical.
For bitcoin, -20% is a totally normal bull market correction that happens several times each cycle.
The COVID dump subtracted -50% from bitcoin in a day, and tanked global markets too. It was much, much worse, mathematically and also psychologically.
In the present case, instead of people running for the hills, you had plenty of calls to buy the dip, even during the most uncertain hours of Saturday night.
Thankfully, by Sunday it became clear that the attack caused no deaths and almost no damage, due to international intervention.
The big moves higher in DXY, Treasurys and gold came already on Friday.
As a result, US markets opened flat, although trending lower in early afternoon trading. The morning crypto rally stalled once again right around market open in New York — a pattern of late.
There is, however, a sense that momentum has shifted, and the idea of shortened or accelerated market cycle is getting its first real test.
DePIN is ripe to disrupt a range of traditional infrastructure networks. Our latest report, made free thanks to AIOZ Network and POKT Network unpacks how investors can best gain long-term exposure to the sector, and where the opportunity lies. Check it out here!
Uniswap analytics: once again a work in progress
An eagle-eyed BWR subscriber noticed a dramatic color change in our Uniswap revenue breakdown over the weekend.
It turns out Uniswap Labs quietly added all 0.25% on all swaps through their front-end user interface and wallet, excluding stablecoin pairs and wrapping/unwrapping WETH. Previously, only a handful of high-volume tokens incurred an additional fee.
That provides a nice boost to the company’s revenue just in time for its legal fight with the SEC.
An unfortunate side effect is it temporarily breaks our analytics chart outputs! (We’re working on it!)
Ether staking provider Swell is incentivizing deposits into its new L2 rollup.
Much like Blast and Mantle before it, Swell promises its own points, but also points and/or airdrops from other platforms whose tokens are eligible for transfer to the Swell’s L2 pre-launch deposit, or are launching on the L2 — such as ION Protocol, Ambient Finance and Brahma Finance.
Swell LRT deposits to the L2 earn a 4x bonus on Pearls under Swell’s Voyage campaign.
Swell is also working with Karak Network, an EigenLayer alternative. According to a team member of the Swell Discord, holders of swETH or rswETH can earn 3x bonus pearls and Karak XP when they bridge their tokens to Karak, on top of normal ETH staking yield and EigenLayer points.
Tough choice!
Arweave recently launched the testnet for AO computer, a new messaging protocol that will sit atop a PoS network and aims to become a scalable global compute platform through parallel processing and modularity.
Solana current design is causing users’ transactions to be displaced or dropped. Until further solutions mature, we do not see the appetite to add additional risk at present; however longer term, we think the market will eventually look past these idiosyncratic headwinds and believe SOL is still a top candidate for outperformance throughout this cycle.
Crypto markets were largely the only ones open over a tense weekend, and they took a beating for it.
Though some expect most public miners to survive the halving, the segment’s most vulnerable could fall victim to consolidations and defaults.
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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.
