BTC is trading at the upper end of the $27k-$29k range to kick off the day. Meanwhile, ETH is trading above $1900 for the first time since August of last year. There has been a lot of FUD around ETH as we near the Shanghai upgrade that will enable staking withdrawals, so ETH outperforming BTC as we head into the event is noteworthy. An unfortunate caveat to rising crypto prices is MicroStrategy's filing today with the SEC stating the company has acquired an additional 1,045 BTC. Michael Saylor has an innate ability to purchase local tops in the BTC market, so bulls be warned. MicroStrategy now holds 140,000 BTC, or ~0.75% of the total supply, which was acquired for a total of $4.17B. Saylor is down $100m-$200m in total, which begs the question: Did he buy the wrong asset? If Saylor had bought and staked ETH instead of buying BTC his company would be up close to 2x with holdings worth nearly $7.6B, according to data from the Blockchain Center. |
The ETH supply has contracted by ~78.5k since the Merge whereas the BTC supply has increased by ~182k. When looking at the dollar denominated supply changes, Ethereum has sunk $157M of supply while BTC has added over $5B of supply to the market. On one hand we have ETH, which is a productive asset that can generate yield and be used in a wide array of applications that it hosts. On the other hand, BTC is the most decentralized, censorship resistant digital asset with the greatest degree of predictability in a world where central bank monetary policy feels like a roller coaster. The BTC that MicroStrategy holds does not generate any income, whereas $4.17B of ETH staked would generate ~$200M per year for the company through staking rewards. That would be enough to increase MicroStrategy's annual revenue by ~40% with little additions to operating costs. I believe both assets will outlive myself and anyone reading this, but there is no doubt that Saylor would have been better off as of today had he bought ETH instead of BTC over the past few years. - Sam Martin | |
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Uniswap is the king of DEXs, facilitating over $1.5 trillion of volume since its inception in 2019. The release of Uniswap V3 furthered its dominance, and the DEX is currently responsible for 60% of daily DEX volume on Ethereum. Interestingly, the ETH<>USDC token pair alone is responsible for 44% of total volume in 2023. Curve Finance is the second largest DEX by volume but trails Uniswap considerably, executing just 23% of Uniswap's volume in the first quarter of 2023. With the omission of USDC from tricrypto2 (the deepest volatile asset pool on Curve), Curve does not currently compete with Uniswap for its ETH<>USDC swap volume. Curve will soon be launching an upgraded version of its tricrypto pool, which reduces the average swap cost to about 25%-50% cheaper than a Uniswap V3 swap today. The upgrade will feature a permissionless factory to launch 3-coin pools, so I anticipate seeing more ETH/USDC/"Token" pools. Given Curve's ability to incentivize liquidity into its pools, keep an eye on Curve ETH<>USDC volume after the upgrade launches. |
MakerDAO: Protocol Engineering Core Unit Transition MakerDAO's passed "Endgame" proposal has many implications for the future of the DAO, but one notable one is the dissolution of the Protocol Engineering Core Unit (PECU). The PECU has historically been responsible for the bulk of MakerDAO engineering-related endeavors and will be replaced by smaller DAO budgeted teams each in charge of individual projects. Notably, the comments give the impression that about half of the team has opted to no longer contribute to the DAO in any form and will not transition to the new smaller teams. 1INCH: Allocate $900,000 in $ARB to Purchase a Lamborghini Revuelto for Marketing Purposes 1INCH DAO is currently voting on whether to fund Roman Tomera with $900,000 to buy a Lamborghini and attach his "1INCH" license plate. Aave: Incentivized Delegate Campaign (3-month) Aave will test out incentivizing delegates. Any AAVE holder can vote on one of 13 delegates that will receive a $15,0000 reward for a 3-month term. We'd appreciate your consideration for Blockworks Research if you are an AAVE holder! |
Bitcoin's Taproot upgrade that went live in 2021 is beginning to see utility as Ordinals gain in popularity and teams like Rollkit begin exploring Bitcoin as a data availability layer for rollups. |
The final roadmap element, the Splurge, looks at further refining various different aspects of Ethereum, including the EVM, gas markets, and account abstraction. |
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Lawyers for the SEC and the Wahi brothers have asked a US court to allow time to finalize terms of a settlement |
The marketplace said it wants to cater to its "power users," those professionals who have extensive knowledge of the NFT landscape |
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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. |
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