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In today’s newsletter:
🔎Are we back?
📊 On-chain alpha
😂 Crypto meme of the week
🗞️ The latest DeFi news
🔎Are we back?
What a roller coaster.
After initially announcing the highest tariffs in over 100 years, Trump decided to pause the tariffs for 90 days (for most countries, excluding China).
As a result of the tariff pause, financial markets saw a massive pump shortly after.
Now, the key question is this:
Will this uptrend continue, or is the bottom not in yet?
Here are my thoughts👇
First of all, I think that pausing the tariffs was overall a good decision.
This certainly improves the short-term outlook of the market, but at the same time, it doesn’t provide the clarity that the markets needed.
This is probably why the S&P 500 index is down 4% today despite the tariff pause.
But even though the tariffs were paused for most countries, Trump decided to raise the U.S. tariffs on China to 145%😳
As I mentioned in a newsletter issue a few weeks ago, the macro uncertainty is one of the main reasons that I believe caused this dip in the first place.
And at this moment, there are still many questions that need to be answered:
Will most tariffs be removed after the 90-day pause period?
Will Trump eventually reach a deal with China, or will the economic war between China and the US continue?
Is the market pricing in a China-US deal?
Is the Fed Chair Jerome Powell going to cut interest rates soon? (There’s a ~25% chance of this happening in May, according to Polymarket)
Considering this, I expect the market to keep going mostly sideways or even down in the next weeks - at least until Trump hopefully strikes some trade deals.
Whether I’m right or wrong remains to be seen.
But for now, I’m not interested in making any significant investments. There’s a popular saying: “Sometimes, the best move is no move. “
It’s very hard to gain an edge in the market at this point.
And there is nothing wrong with not taking massive risks in uncertain times.
The best way to increase your odds of success in the long run is to take only high-conviction bets and wait for the right opportunities to arise.
So, currently I prefer to focus on this:
Airdrop/yield farming (primarily using stablecoins)
Work towards increasing my income rather than staring at charts
Pair trade from time to time (open long positions and short positions on different assets at the same time to profit from any market conditions)
In the end, I want to say this:
There’s also a positive aspect (only for BTC) in this market uncertainty.
The trust in the world’s leaders, the traditional financial system, and fiat currencies is eroding as a consequence of the market uncertainty.
Ignas put it perfectly:
“Worst case for BTC is rational leaders, friendly global cooperation, fiscally cautious policies, and low debt with USD being hard money. “
Unfortunately, BTC is currently highly correlated to the stock market.
But in a world full of unpredictability, the bull case for Bitcoin is only going to get stronger in the long run.
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The blockchain for emerging markets
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KiiChain is now entering a crucial phase with the launch of its Open Testnet.
Here’s why you should join:
Confirmed incentives - Participants will get $ORO rewards for completing tasks and using KiiChain during the incentivized testnet phase
Community-first approach - The project pledged to allocate 67% of its total supply to the community
Strong backing - Kii Global, a leading blockchain group that is developing KiiChain, secured a $20M investment from Nimbus Capital
Major Partnerships – Kii is working with BIMA, MANSA, Rome Protocol, Usedecentral, EclipseFi, and many other partnerships will be announced soon
Larger community = higher rewards - KiiChain’s airdrop allocation will vary based on the no. of users who use the testnet
With block times of only 400ms and the capacity to process up to 12,000 TPS, KiiChain is going to be one of the most scalable blockchains.
The T-REX RWA module will enable the compliant tokenization of assets such as commodities, real estate, and financial instruments on Kiichain.
Follow KiiChain on X to stay up to date with all the latest news!
On-chain Alpha🔎
Crypto developer activity hit the lowest point since 2018
Crypto Meme😂
The latest developments in DeFi
AAVE token buybacks started yesterday
SEC declared US dollar stablecoins are not securities
Pendle’s proposal to launch Pendle PTs on AAVE is live. PTs are Pendle’s fixed yield tokens
Solana released a new token standard called Confidential Balances - enabling private transactions and institutional compliance
Chainlink introduced Payment Abstraction, enabling users to pay for its services using any assets. The network fees will be converted to LINK
MANTRA launched a $108M ecosystem fund for RWA innovation
Paraswap introduced Velora - a cross-chain DeFi trading protocol that will enable instant cross-chain swaps
Pro-crypto Paul Atkins has been confirmed as the new chair of the SEC
Kaito announced a strategic KAITO reserve
Trump’s WorldLibertyFi project started selling the ETH they bought at $3.2k💀
Ethereum announced that the Pectra Upgrade, its largest upgrade ever, will happen on May 7. Pectra will introduce account abstraction among other things
Euler Finance has been deployed on Avalanche
Resolv has integrated BTC as a new backing asset
Pancakeswap proposed the CAKE Tokenomics 3.0 upgrade, aiming to achieve a ~4% annual deflation
Ethena expanded USDe and sUSDe to BNB Chain
That’s all for this week!
Until next time,
The DeFi Investor
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