🟣 Dimon Hands

JPMorgan Chase scooped up First Republic for ~$10.6B after regulators took possession of the distressed company earlier this morning

JPMorgan Chase, the largest U.S. bank by a wide margin, scooped up First Republic for ~$10.6B after regulators took possession of the distressed company earlier this morning. JPM is acquiring roughly $92B in deposits, $173B in loans, and $30B of securities.    The FDIC has agreed to split the losses on mortgages and commercial loans that JPM assumed in the transaction, while also offering JPM a $50B line of credit to ensure First Republic's smooth acquisition.    Jack Farley pointed out that JPM will NOT be assuming First Republic's debt or preferred stock, which is in contrast to the Bear Sterns situation in 2008 when JPM fully assumed Bear's preferred stock.    It's set to be a big week on the macro front, with the FOMC and ECB's rate hike decisions due Wednesday and Thursday respectively, followed by the non-farm payrolls report on Friday. The consensus for the former two events is 25bps hikes and 180k expected for NFP.   BTC and ETH have retraced over the past 24 hours but remain in the same range as the past month. Traders making plays on majors over the past few weeks have been getting chopped to death when all they really had to do was long PEPE.   The hottest new meme coin is near cracking the top 100 crypto assets by market cap, currently sitting around 120th with a market cap of over $500M. First it was DOGE, then it was SHIB, and now it's PEPE. When will the Blockworks Research team quit fading the meme coins? - Sam Martin   While the research team was grinding to find the next 5-10% play on DeFi tokens, PEPE continued its swift ascent to $1B market cap. Did you miss PEPE? Don't worry because we all missed it too. PEPE currently sits at a $500M market cap, up 200x from the first time any of us saw it. This goes to show how frothy the market is, how jealous we are, and how sometimes the best returns in crypto make zero sense. At what point does this top? We have no idea. With the next competitive meme coin SHIB trading at a $6B market cap and the king meme coin DOGE trading at an $11B market cap, there is the possibility that PEPE is just warming up. Of course, none of us are willing to take that gamble. If you caught PEPE, congratulations on the life-changing money. Consider subscribing to our research portal and helping us smile through the pain.      Our analyst, Westie, flagged an interesting OP proposal over the weekend that seeks to reduce OP's 2023 annual inflation from 2% to 0%. Polynya, an active thought leader on crypto Twitter, pointed out a scheduled 270% increase in supply scheduled from May 2023 to April 2024. The passage of this proposal would circumvent ~86M OP (~$185M) from entering OP circulating supply this year, which would help alleviate some of this inflation. While practical, Polynya points out that this proposal is more intended to start a discussion on further refinement of OP's tokenomics.  Ethereum: 2023 Performance and Outlook Ethereum's fundamentals look poised to strengthen throughout 2023 with L2s seeing more economic activity, ever-improving security at the base layer, and increasing L1 block space demand that supports strong value flow for stakers. Read More → Data Decoded: Synthetix Our new Dune Dashboard tracks KPIs for Synthetix, a leading DeFi protocol for synthetic assets and perpetual futures trading. This includes valuation frameworks, perp trading analytics, user adoption metrics, and more. Read More → Bhutan Has Mined Bitcoin Since It Was Worth $5K: Report The country is aiming to generate positive, sustainable returns across a range of asset classes, including crypto, by tapping into its extensive network of hydroelectricity Read More → Jack Dorsey's Block Looks to Disrupt Bitcoin Mining Block plans to create custom silicon for bitcoin mining hardware to bring decentralization to the industry Read More → 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. 133 W 19th St, New York, NY, 10011 Unsubscribe