Overview
- TVL standouts in goblin town
- Nine down weeks in a row!
- Luna 2.0 releases, sell off quickly.
- NFT: Blue Chips continue to sell-off
TVL Standouts in goblin town
Happy Monday Banter fam,
Despite the enduring bear market blues and liquidity drying up, we’ll continue to monitor the Total Valued Locked (TVL) among chains and protocols. Mainly to maintain a routine and to help find outliers of current trends. A network or protocol that showcases promising action during a continuing bear market can represent one hell of an indicator of strength.
Looking at the top 15 protocols in TVL, or total valued lock-in smart contracts, we can see the market continued to bleed out in the previous month. Ethereum (ETH) continues to retain a large portion of TVL at nearly 64%.
One chain that’s bucking the monthly trend is Tron (TRON), after its release of USDD, an algorithmic stablecoin with similar attributes to Luna’s UST. Although many question the move, Tron (TRX) continues collecting TVL in its JustLend (JST) protocol. Algorithmic stablecoin have fallen from grace following the UST collapse, but if the crypto market has proven anything, it’s that there are always people ready to gamble.
Source: DefiLlama
Near (NEAR) protocol, although at a loss for the month, has fared significantly better than competitors in retaining TVL. Near (NEAR) only lost -3.69% of its TVL in the previous month, compared to the -36% average loss for the 15 chains.
Looking deeper into TVL metrics and Ethereum (ETH) protocols, many are struggling to retain TVL. However, in the mix of pain lies one protocol experiencing robust and steady growth. Arrakis Finance (SPICE), ranked 14th with a TVL nearing $1 billion, has doubled its TVL in the previous month with a gain of +102%.
Source: DefiLlama
The SPICE token, not available on exchanges, is a community-owned incentive token for providing liquidity on Arrakis Finance. This protocol simplifies liquidity mining on a complex Uniswap V3 (UNI) interface.
Always do your research on any investment. DYOR. Mentioning projects in the newsletter does NOT represent a recommendation.
Market update 🌍
New records aren’t always positive, like Bitcoin (BTC) hitting a record nine weeks of downward price action. That said, there are promising signs in price action, particularly the strength of the 28-30k support level that’s (so far) proven pretty resilient.
Source: Trading View
If you’re like me and looking for suitable areas to Dollar-Cost-Average (DCA), the Blockware Intelligence team noted the Bitcoin: Realized Price chart in a recent article. The realized price of BTC represents the average cost paid of all BTC on the market. It currently sits at 24k. So when the price has fallen below, it is an excellent opportunity to buy. On Friday, we covered the MVRV Z-Score, a favorite buy indicator among JPM analysts.
Friday’s Close:
| US markets close | Gain |
| S&P 500 | -0.63% |
| Nasdaq | +0.31% |
| Dow | -0.11% |
| VIX | +2.27% |
Notable Gainers (7d):
| Protocol (Coin) | Price ($) | Gain (%) |
| Evmos (EVMOS) | 2.87 | +101 |
| Chain (XCN) | 0.17 | +91 |
| Ethereum Classic (ETC) | 23.45 | +15 |
| Tron (TRX) | 0.08 | +9 |
| Tezos (XTZ) | 1.98 | +9 |
| Everdome (DOME) | 0.03 | +36 |
| Safemoon (SFM) | 0.00073 | +24 |
| Bitcoin Gold (BTG) | 22.88 | +22 |
| Synapse (SYN) | 1.29 | +13 |
| Olympus (OHM) | 19.40 | +10 |
| Achor Protocol (ANC) | 0.29 | +252 |
| PlatonCoin (PLTC) | 1.11 | +103 |
| Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index | 14 Extreme Fear |
| “Crypto” Google Trends 90d | 81 |
| “Bitcoin” Google Trends 90d | 78 |
Newswatch 📰
Terra Luna 2.0 goes live and quickly sells off. Terra Luna 2.0 officially launched over the weekend, an event we covered in a previous newsletter. The price of the new LUNA token (the old LUNA token goes by LUNA Classic (LUNC)) began at $7.00. By the time a majority of airdrop receivers could access the token on Saturday night, the token fell to a low of $3.37 on some exchanges. LUNA appears to be steadying out around the $5.50 mark. Expect volatility to remain high in LUNA for the coming weeks or months.
Source: Trading view
MoneyGram CEO sees the obvious. MoneyGram, one of the largest money-transfer companies in the world, is preparing to launch a service in partnership with Stellar Blockchain that would allow the transfer of stablecoins across nations. Additionally, the program would convert the stablecoins into the local currency. It’s a no-brainer. These price-gouging remittance payment companies are beginning to realize if they don’t adopt, technology will likely phase them out.
News Tidbits:
- Space X begins accepting Dogecoin (DOGE) for merch.
At the protocol level
Attack of Frax. Frax Finance is a fractional-algorithmic stablecoin project that is making some significant moves in the Curve wars after the collapse of UST and the 4pool. In an article by Heathen, the writer mentions the initiation of the Frax Basepool (FRAX-USDC pool), which could alter the landscape of the Curve protocol (CRV) and Curve Wars altogether. Heathen labels the Frax Basepool “The Manhattan Project” for Frax Finance, which will drain and weaken liquidity from 3pool tokens: USDC, DAI, and USDT.
Layer-2 Updates: One of my favorite weekly posts by faina.eth (@bitsplaiining) covers all the essential updates occurring on Ethereum Layer-2s. This week includes:
- Hop Protocol (HOP) requested to reimburse 1 million OP tokens to people that bridged,
- Immutable (IMX) building a cross-rollup liquidity layer,
- An incredible week on Optimism (OP),
- Much More….
At the protocol level tidbits:
- Anchor Protocol (ANC) was exploited for $800k after LUNA 2.0 launch.
- USN deposits live on Aurigami. Gives users exposure to PoS staking rewards on Near. (NEAR)
- Immutable (IMX) creating a Cross Rollup NFT liquidity project. (MOVE NFTs among L2s).
- How Frax Finance (FRAX) works.
- Bancor 3 (BNC) update.
- Aave V3 whitepaper walkthrough.
NFT & metaverse update 🐵
Bargain City. Blue chips NFTs continue to fall in price over the previous month, highlighted in a chart provided by a Delphi Digital report. If you believe strongly in NFT bluechip projects and the next couple of weeks could begin to open some opportunities.
Banter’s take
The stock market experienced a great Friday. Hopefully, some positive vibes will spill over into crypto this week. Unfortunately, stocks and crypto have recently been uncorrelated, something we want but in the opposite direction, with Nasqaq climbing +6.3% in five days and Bitcoin falling -5%. But it’s all part of the process.
A subject covered on Friday’s star-studded Fundamentals show (featuring Raoul Pal, Dan Tapiero, Jurrien Timmer, and Ran) was how sentiment amongst the crypto community feels like its bottoming out. People are just… angry.
I attribute the anger to three significant factors. One, many participants became trapped in a cycle pattern idealism. Historically the cycle included a final pump and blow-off top. An event that never transpired. Two, the market is larger than ever before. And three was the complete collapse of a major network in Terra that held 15% of crypto’s TVL at the time. Something the crypto market has never experienced before. And hopefully, will never experience again!
While many see declining sentiment as a bad sign, let’s remember a few things. First, sentiment is highly fickle and can change at a whim. So step back and don’t ask yourself, “how everyone else is feeling,” take the high road and ask, “what does it mean when sentiment is so low?” You’ll likely find more peace and become a more clear-headed investor over time.
Thanks for reading!
Gabri
