In today’s newsletter:
🔎5 big things that just happened
📊 On-chain alpha
😂 Crypto meme of the week
🗞️ The latest DeFi news
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🔎5 big things that just happened
The past 7 days have been insane.
Trump getting shot is just one of the top headlines from last week.
In this issue, I wanted to cover the biggest news from the past 7 days that are in some way related to crypto. Happily, most of those are extremely bullish.
Mt. Gox’s BTC repayments are still a headwind in the short term, but besides this, I don’t see any other reasons to be bearish at this moment.
Let’s dive in 👇
Trump picked J.D. Vance as Vice President
This is a big win for our industry for one simple reason:
J.D. Vance has been vocally supporting crypto over the past few years.
Not only that but it was revealed that he:
owned $250k BTC in 2022 (probably has more now)
critiqued Garry Gensler several times in open letters
has worked to pass pro-crypto legislation in Congress
Interestingly, he also said, “If there’s a candidate for the worst person in my view, it's Gary Gensler” when talking about his approach to regulating crypto.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said Bitcoin is digital gold
In an interview for CNBC, he also said that he now recognizes Bitcoin as a legitimate financial instrument.
With BlackRock being the largest asset manager in the world, his statements certainly have an impact on how institutions look at crypto.
SEC dropped Stacks and Paxos investigations
The SEC has been on a losing streak for a while, and I really hope that this continues as it could eventually lead to Gary Gensler being fired.
Before the SEC started investigating Paxos, Paxos’s BUSD stablecoin was one of the largest stablecoins in crypto, yet Paxos was eventually forced to shut it down.
And now, after all this damage has been done, the SEC decided to drop the investigation with no repercussions🤡
Spot Ethereum ETFs will go live on Tuesday
The SEC has allegedly issued preliminary approval to at least 2 ETF applications.
What’s more, an SEC Commissioner said that “something like staking is always open for reconsideration”.
Ethereum's native staking yield could make the spot Ethereum ETFs even more appealing to institutional investors.
India’s largest CEX was hacked For $235 Million
WazirX is the name of the exchange that experienced the security breach.
Friendly reminder that the best place to store your coins is a hardware wallet.
Or if you don’t want to buy one, it might be a good idea to spread your funds across multiple exchanges or wallets at least.
Holding crypto on centralized exchanges isn’t risk-free. The FTX saga showed this.
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On-chain Alpha🔎
Bitcoin spot ETF cumulative flows reached a new ATH
Even though the retail interest in crypto has significantly dropped over the past months, institutions have continued accumulating BTC.
Crypto Meme😂
The latest developments in DeFi
Spot ETH ETFs will launch on July 23 according to ETF analysts
German government has finished selling all their BTC
MakerDAO announced a competition to onboard $1b in tokenized real-world assets. Blackrock, Ondo Finance, and Superstate plan to apply
Kwenta went live on Arbitrum. 1.9M $ARB incentives will be distributed to its traders and LPs
Uniswap launched its wallet extension. It comes with MEV protection on trades, automatic network switching, and faster quotes for quicker swapping
Fluid has been deployed on Arbitrum One. Fluid is the most efficient money market in DeFi
Sonic Labs & Rabby Wallet announced a Gas-Free Trading Program
Polygon launched Plonky3 - a modular toolkit for building zkVM blockchains that are use-case specific
Hermetica released USDh, a BTC-backed yield-bearing synthetic dollar on Runes. Its holders earn up to 25% APY rewards on BTC
Base underwent the Fjord upgrade, leading to 20-30% lower tx fees
XDEFI Wallet rebranded to Ctrl, and announced the upcoming launch of its new iOS and Android apps. Ctrl wallet will offer a unified portfolio and gas abstraction
Solv Protocol’s Babylon Deposits will open on July 19 at 12:00 UTC. By depositing BTC you can farm Solv and Babylon airdrop at the same time
Sanctum, a liquid staking project, launched its airdrop checker. Its token $CLOUD goes live today
Drift Protocol launched Drift Earn, a savings product for normies. The yield for USDC on Drift Earn comes from perpetual trading yields
Avail L1 launched the Avail Foundation, which is likely one of the final steps before $AVAIL is released
Polynomial introduced Polynomial Chain - a new Ethereum L2 with a native liquidity layer for derivatives.
That’s all for this week!
Until next time,
The DeFi Investor
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