Crypto News: 🟣 As "Jupuary" comes to a close, what will JayPow say?

January 31, 2024 | Read Online

It's the end of January or, as some corners of the Solana universe would like you to think — "Jupuary" — and all eyes are once again turning to financial markets' most prominent influencer, one Jerome Hayden Powell.

While no one is expecting the FOMC to move the Fed funds rate following its meeting today, there will be ample scrutiny of the committee's statement and Powell's press conference for signs of what may happen in March (there's no February meeting).

According to data from the CME FedWatch Tool, there's about a 60% chance of a rate cut following the March 20 meeting, which increases to over 90% for the May 1 decision.

Power presser days are usually marked by volatility in both directions.

Speaking of volatility, remember FTT — the house token of the ill-fated FTX exchange? For some reason it still trades on multiple crypto exchanges, and a bankruptcy hearing in Delaware today had speculators…confused. Here it was on the one-minute chart as the 11:00 am ET hearing progressed:

Initial ebullience at news that FTX's customers are now expected to recover substantially all their USD-valued assets was tempered by a declaration that there would be no FTX 2.0.

No exchange = no exchange token.

Although why anyone would believe that — even if there was a relaunch out of bankruptcy — FTT would have any value is beyond me. It's basically a meme coin at this point, and not one with a cute hat.

And yet, it still trades at a $250 million market cap.

Spinning up to $269 million at time of writing, Jupiter's JUP token is trading right where the Aevo futures market predicted in recent days — around $0.65. That puts it at a massive $6.5 billion fully-diluted valuation, which is, remarkably, $500 million more than Uniswap, a top 25 crypto asset out of the gate.

— Macauley Peterson

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Farcaster monthly active users since the initial GitHub commit in January 2021.

Source: Dan Romero

Something is brewing on Base, with the Twitter-inspired social media app Farcaster launching a promising new feature called Frames.

Watch this space.

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0xResearch hosts Julian Koh, the co-founder of Aevo, formerly known as Ribbon Finance. Today's conversation details the evolution of Ribbon into AEVO, an L2 derivatives exchange built using Optimism's OP stack for faster and cheaper trading.

Learn about AEVO's origins providing structured products to DeFi users and the decision to pivot to an L2 system to capture rising institutional interest in crypto options. They also touch on pre-launch futures markets as an effective user acquisition strategy. They close out on AEVO's plan to expand into an interoperable cross-chain ecosystem. Stay tuned for all of this and much more!

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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.