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Market Overview 📉
The week started off choppy, with few players willing to make any strong moves leading into the US Presidential Elections. However, with the rising odds of a Trump victory and the eventual confirmation, markets took the news well, surging ahead to new highs in both traditional markets and crypto markets, with Total Crypto Market Cap closing up almost 9% to $2.675T.
Bitcoin (BTC) saw a gain of 8.92% across the week, while Ethereum (ETH) finally showed strength against BTC, closing 15.56% higher from the week prior.
Daily liquidations were largely skewed towards the short side, with heavy short liquidations on Wednesday leading into the election results, with short liquidations peaking at $426M in a single day. Funding rates on BTC and ETH remained largely flat, still hovering around the 10% range.
📌 Spot BTC ETFs processed a cumulative $6B in volume in a single day after Trump claims victory in the US Presidential Elections. - Link
📌 All eyes on Bitcoin Reserve, as Senator Cynthia Lummis reiterates a proposed bill for the US Government to purchase 200,000 BTC per year for the upcoming five years. - Link
📌 Swiss bank UBS will launch a tokenized investment fund on Ethereum, joining BlackRock and Franklin Templeton who have already launch their own funds on the blockchain as well. - Link
Why does it matter?
Crypto markets surged to new highs this week, with BTC tapping $76K on the bullish wave following the Trump victory in the US Presidential Elections. Equities, likewise, had their chance to shine with the S&P 500 up 4.26% and the Nasdaq up 5.79% in just this week alone.
The week saw strong BTC strength against altcoins, with BTC Dominance making a new high at 60.96%, although this quickly retraced later in the week as investors found the courage to bid altcoins once more. ETH especially saw great strength after months of weakness, with ETH/BTC up more than 10% from its lows.
Notable outperformers among altcoins mostly centered around memecoins, AI and DeFi. Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT), Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) were some of the top performers in the memecoin category, while DeFi saw Instadapp (INST), Raydium (RAY) and Ethena (ENA) surging ahead. AI data project, Grass, also saw tremendous outperformance after their recent airdrop, gaining more than 150% in the last week.
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Narrative of the Week 📰
All eyes on the US Presidential Elections as Trump seized victory for the Republicans, ushering a wave of bullish sentiment throughout both the traditional equity and crypto markets.
📌 Republican candidate, Donald Trump, wins the US Presidential Elections, to take his second term in office, in a decisive victory for the Republicans. - Link
📌 Aylo discusses possible second-order effects from a Trump victory, including BTC as a US strategic reserve asset, renewed interest in DeFi, less fear for crypto startups in the US, and more. - Link
Why does it matter?
With the transition to Trump, all eyes have shifted to his earlier promises of a focus on crypto and making the USA as the “crypto capital of the world”. Many are expecting a revamped regulatory regime, with increased clarity and support for crypto entrepreneurs. Additionally, with easing regulations, collaborations between traditional finance institutions and blockchains can also be enabled. With such tailwinds in place, speculators are expecting the Trump presidency to usher in a more conducive environment for the industry as a whole, reigniting the bullish sentiment from earlier this year.
Major Project Updates 🗓️
📌 NFT marketplace, Opensea, opens a waitlist for a “new Opensea”, which is scheduled to launch in December 2024. Beta users have noted a new Leaderboard and Rewards tab, sparking rumors of a potential token launch. - Link
📌 Uniswap’s L2, Unichain, introduces a new validation network for the chain, aiming to decentralize the chain by allowing nodes to verify blocks, thereby reducing the risk of conflicting blocks. - Link
📌 ETH restaking layer, EigenLayer, introduces Eigen Economy, a dashboard showcasing the real-time key metrics within the EigenLayer ecosystem. - Link
📌 Ethereum research and engineering team, Nethermind, introduces Surge, a rollup built on Taiko’s stack to allow builders, developers and autonomous agents to push the limits of Ethereum’s performance. - Link
📌 Ethereum’s first SVM L2, Eclipse, launches on mainnet. Eclipse runs on the Solana Virtual Machine, enabling parallel execution and a local fee market. - Link
📌 Superseed introduces its upcoming token sale, Supersale, where users will be able to invest into Superseed at a fully diluted valuation of $100M, where 20% of the total token supply will be sold. The date of the sale has yet to be announced. - Link
📌 The Degen L3 has made the decision to migrate from the services of Rollup-as-a-Service provider, Conduit, alleging that Conduit has been holding their keys hostage and resulted in lost funds due to a bad upgrade. - Link
Why does it matter?
Opensea has faced criticism over the years for its decision never to release a token, with many attributing its loss of market share and valuation to this very reason. Although the announcement thus far is inconclusive, many are speculating on a planned Opensea comeback through a token launch, especially under the Trump regime which is expected to see less aggressive regulatory action from the SEC.
DeFi Brief 🏦
📌 Prominent market maker, Wintermute, proposes to turn on the fee switch for synthetic stablecoin protocol, Ethena, which would enable the allocation of protocol revenue to sENA holders. - Link
📌 Solana-based perpetual DEX aggregator, Ranger Finance, goes live in closed beta, opening access to their loyal early users. - Link
📌 Modular lending protocol, Euler Finance, introduces rEUL, a 1:1 locked version of the EUL token with a six-month unlock schedule. The earlier the user unlocks rEUL, the less EUL they receive. The rEUL token can be earned through supplying USDC to the Euler Prime market. - Link
📌 Perpetual options platform, Panoptic, launches mainnet on Ethereum, focusing on the vast liquidity that Ethereum mainnet holds despite its scalability issues and high fees. - Link
📌 Money market platform, Morpho Protocol, passes a governance vote to enable the transferability of the MORPHO token on both Base and Ethereum. A new proposal has been set up for the liquidity provision arrangement. - Link
Why does it matter?
With the succession of Trump as the 47th US President, crypto projects have been quick to move with the expectation of a less aggressive regulatory environment. This especially applies to DeFi projects, which have long held back on features such as revenue sharing with token holders to avoid crossing the lines on securities laws. With the results of the recent elections, DeFi projects such as Ethena have already seen proposals for revenue sharing, which would help make the bull case for their respective tokens through direct value accrual.
Meme Coins 🚀
📌 Virtuals Protocol unveils fun.virtuals.io, a permissionless launchpad for autonomous AI agents on Base, with many likening it to the pump.fun of AI agents. - Link
📌 A new animal-themed memecoin, PNUT, launches over the weekend, named after a euthanized squirrel, Peanut, which turned the squirrel into a social media sensation and even Elon Musk tweeting about it. - Link
Fundraises 💰
📌 Ethereum data infrastructure project, Vlayer, raises $10M in a pre-seed raise to build Ethereum’s “Solidity 2.0”, with investors including a16z Crypto’s CSX, BlockTower Capital, Credo Ventures and several angel investors. - Link
📌 Crypto AI startup, Pond, raises $7.5M in a seed round led by Archetype VC, with participation from Cyber Fund, Delphi Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Anagram, and more. - Link
📌 Blockchain compatibility infrastructure project, Cytonic, raises $8.3M in a seed round led by Lattice Fund and Lemniscap, with support from Maelstrom, Laser Digital and IOBC Capital, among others. - Link
📌 RWA-backed stablecoin protocol, Usual Money, raises $1.5M in a community-only raise leading up to their token generation event (TGE). The raise saw notable participants from Echo, Breed Syndicate and Comfy Capital. - Link
📌 On-chain identity platform, Phi, raises a strategic round of funding led by Neoclassic Capital, with participation from Decima Fund, Cyber Fund, PAKA Fund and Incubate Fund. - Link
Airdrops Abound 🎁
📌 ETH restaking layer, Swell Network, opens claims for the SWELL token airdrop, releasing 8.5% of the token supply to early users of the protocol. - Link
📌 On-chain data product, Arkham introduces Arkham Exchange Points to incentivize trading volume on their latest product launch, a perpetual DEX. - Link
📌 Sonic (formerly Fantom) announces an upcoming snapshot on 1st December for holders of Sonic Shards. Eligible users will be whitelisted for an exclusive NFT mint which grants them points for the new Sonic token airdrop. - Link
Tweet of the Week 📝
Source: SenLummis
US senators are tweeting like this, and you’re not bullish?
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