All Been Crypto — Week 9 Feb 2024
Today is the last day of year of the Rabbit and as with so often Lunar New Year seasonality brings about bullish market activity. We are up +7% on the week for BTC surpassing 45k with ETH and even SOL in lockstep despite the later one suffering from a 5h outrage that resulted in a network reboot. Outperfromers were STX and TIA both +20% while XMR taking a major hit after Binance announced delisting -23% Wow. Besides the year of the dragon soon upon us we also see ETF flows turning more healthy with GBTC outflows slowing to <100mm daily and inflows continue into others. IBIT has now overtaken GBTC in terms of trading volume as well and Fidelity started allocating to BTC in their ‘all in one’ EFTs.On the news side Microstrategy topped up their holdings to 190,000 BTC, Eigenlayer lifted caps sending TVL to 3bn, El Salvador’s President Bukele got reelected, and Do Kwon got his extradition revoked. Enjoy reading and a prosperous year of the Dragon!
Bat Tai Chi — btc21@mail.com
Today is the last day of year of the Rabbit and as with so often Lunar New Year seasonality brings about bullish market activity. We are up +7% on the week for BTC surpassing 45k with ETH and even SOL in lockstep despite the later one suffering from a 5h outrage that resulted in a network reboot. Outperfromers were STX and TIA both +20% while XMR taking a major hit after Binance announced delisting -23% Wow. Besides the year of the dragon soon upon us we also see ETF flows turning more healthy with GBTC outflows slowing to <100mm daily and inflows continue into others. IBIT has now overtaken GBTC in terms of trading volume as well and Fidelity started allocating to BTC in their ‘all in one’ EFTs.On the news side Microstrategy topped up their holdings to 190,000 BTC, Eigenlayer lifted caps sending TVL to 3bn, El Salvador’s President Bukele got reelected, and Do Kwon got his extradition revoked. Enjoy reading and a prosperous year of the Dragon!
Bat Tai Chi — btc21@mail.com
HEADLINES:
South Korea toughens on Crypto
Korea has one of the most active crypto community, many traders and also very strict regulation on who can access the market ect. This week the equivalent to the SEC their Financial Services Commission (FSC) announced that crypto criminals committing illicit market acts could face criminal punishments, including life imprisonment, upon commencement of the country’s new crypto law on July 19. This is further toughening of the already passed bill last year and limit illicit trading and other criminal activity using crypto. Of course the big echo came from the collapse of Terra Luan and Do Kwons fall. He is still in Montenegro and just got his extradition appealed again however his ex-colleague, former Terraform Labs CFO Han Chang-joon, was extradited. We are still cleaning up the mess from 2 years ago.
Staying in Korea OKX also is facing potential regulatory backlash after the Digital Asset Exchange Alliance, a working group consisting of South Korea’s top five cryptocurrency exchanges reported them to regulators for allegedly operating locally without registering. This is clearly some turf war on Korean users as international exchanges are not allowed to target and market in Korea but this doesn’t hinder Koreans to sign up at international platforms.
Farcaster gaining mind share and volumes
If you havn’t heard about Farcaster this week you probably were not to Twitter. It’s a ‘new’ decentralized social media platform that gained mind share quickly over the past few days after a new feature was released called ‘Frames’. It’s actually not new but been around for a while and I encourage you to give it a try. Blockworks has a good write up of what Farcaster is and why it’s different from Web2 Social Media Platforms but also form previous Web3 projects like Friend.Tech ect. Similar vein to Nostr through the difficult part is to generate sufficient traffic and user growth for a social media platform to gain traction. While you are able to plug in more native interactions/payments/mints ect ultimately you’ll still need the network effects for social media to work. Now frames might make it possible to do things on/with Farcaster that are not possible on existing social media but these platforms can also change and adopt so I like the idea of decentralized social media, i believe its a great public good but i’m fearful we won’t see quick adoption anytime soon. We still need a killer usecase for users to move over.
Thailand expands VAT exemption for crypto
Thailand has extended its VAT exemption on crypto trading again. The Ministry of Finance has relaxed rules by suspending the requirement to pay a 7% VAT this comes as a push for making Bangkok a hub for crypto and as competition in SEA generally heating up for more friendly crypto regulation. Bangkok has also been chosen as the destination for Ethereum Devon 2H this year and has a very active local crypto scene.
QUOTES:
We’re thrilled to announce our partnership with @GoDaddy — Millions of customers can now use their DNS domains in the ENS ecosystem!
Ethereum Name Service
Holesky is finalized for Deneb. Another successful upgrade!! Participation dropped by approximately 5%, which I suspect is mostly due to node operators being offline. I have not seen any bugs reported yet.
Terence Cha — Ethereum Developer
Realized prices are all increasing, and bitcoin is above them all = bullish. Also, 5M realized price (currently $40k) acts like a floor for the dips in bull markets (red arrows). So .. never below $40k again?
PlanB
