We've entered a new month and with it, the winds appear to be changing.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said in a speech yesterday that December would likely bring smaller interest rate hikes - resulting in a boost to markets. Investors have long been looking for a Fed pivot.
The Fed has upped interest rates by 75 bps four times in order to get inflation under control this year and a 50 bp hike would lift short-term rates to a target range to 4.25 to 4.50%.
Recall: The Fed has been consistent in stating their goal of reaching 2% inflation.
Important to note that the Fed has stressed that monetary policy is likely to stay restrictive for "some time" until real signs of progress emerge on inflation.
On the other hand, SBF continues his spree of public interviews, each highlighting how disordered FTX actually was. His lawyers must hate him.
Daily Bullets:
- The Fed likely to slow its rate increases. CME's FedWatch tool says 77% of a 50 bp increase next
- SBF interview at the New York Times' DealBook Summit paints messy picture
- Telegram has sold more than $50M in usernames via Fragment. Plans wallets and DEXs
- Russia's Sber bank integrates Metamask into its blockchain platform
- Ethereum Ropsten testnet winding down, with a full shutdown sometime between Dec. 15-31
- The Graph will soon add support for the Polygon blockchain
- Near Foundation loyalty points program for one of Latam’s largest processed food companies
- Italy’s proposed 2023 budget plans to extend a 26% levy on capital gains to digital assets
- Binance completes the Hooked Protocol subscription launchpad and will open trading
- Chainlink Staking v0.1 launching on Ethereum mainnet on December 6th
- Blur's second airdrop is arriving December 5th and is 10x bigger than Airdrop 1
- MoonPay is rolling out a "soulbound" NFT loyalty program Dubbed the "Web3 Passport"
- Timex will make 500 watches for Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club holders
Now for a more expanded and detailed look at the day for those who like detail and sources:
Crypto News:
- SBF apologized or admitted failure at least 12 times during his appearance at the New York Times' DealBook Summit
- Telegram has sold more than $50M in usernames via Fragment, a platform that secures name ownership on the blockchain. Plans to expand beyond usernames and build a host of blockchain tools for Telegram including crypto wallets and decentralized exchanges
- Russia's Sber bank integrates Metamask into its blockchain platform
- The Ethereum Foundation announced that the blockchain’s Ropsten testnet has begun to wind down, with a full shutdown anticipated for sometime between Dec. 15-31
- Indexing service The Graph will soon add support for the Polygon blockchain - will allow Polygon developers to find the data they need to improve the efficiency of their dApps
- Numbers Protocol: ushering in a new era of digital media trust with Avalanche Subnets
- The Near Foundation will be rolling out a loyalty points program for Grupo Nutresa, one of Latin America’s largest processed food companies
Economic/Government/Regulatory:
- The Fed is likely to slow its rate increases in December. CME's FedWatch tool says 77% of a 50 basis point increase
- Italy’s proposed 2023 budget plans to extend a 26% levy on capital gains to digital assets for profits larger than 2,000 euros
Exchange News:
- Binance completes the Hooked Protocol subscription launchpad and will open trading for HOOK
- Capital markets firm TP ICAP has received approval from the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to register as a crypto asset exchange provider to institutional clients
- Bitmex launched a system that will allow all depositors to self-verify their liabilities in the crypto exchange's total liability balance sheet
- Broker-dealer INX has joined Binance in submitting a non-binding letter of intent to buy distressed assets from bankrupt asset manager Voyager Digital
DeFi News:
- Chainlink Staking v0.1 launching on Ethereum mainnet on December 6th
- Compound is set to vote to increase the supply cap for WETH supply to $194M in ether on v3 protocol
NFT/Gaming/Metaverse News:
- Apple blocked Coinbase Wallet last app release until they disabled the feature of sending NFTs. Apple’s claim is that the gas fees required to send NFTs need to be paid through their In-App Purchase system, so that they can collect 30% of the gas fee
- Blur's second airdrop is arriving December 5th and is 10x bigger than Airdrop 1
- Crypto payments infrastructure firm MoonPay is rolling out what it calls a "soulbound" NFT loyalty program for its users - Dubbed the "Web3 Passport," the token will grant its owner access to exclusive events
- Timex will make 500 watches for Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club holders, decorated with their NFTs - follows a similar move by Tiffany & Co. for CryptoPunk holders
- The word “metaverse” has made it through to the top 3 finalists for the Oxford Word of the Year competition. The word will go against other contenders, including “IStandWith” and “Goblin Mode”
- Pudgy Penguin's 'Snowed In' collection sells out at Sotheby's for an average of $12,900 each
- The first Web3 project Porsche has planned is a 7,500-piece NFT collection based on the classic Porsche 911. The NFTs are scheduled to be released in January 2023
Fundraises:
- Web 3 developer platform Fleek has raised $25M in a Series A round led by crypto-focused venture capital firm Polychain Capital. Other investors in the round included Protocol Labs, Arweave, Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group, North Island Ventures, Distributed Global, The LAO and Argonautic Ventures
- Cybersecurity startup Cyvers raised $8M in a seed round led by Elron Ventures. Other backers include Crescendo Venture Partners, Differential Ventures and HDI
- Liqwid Labs, the DeFi startup building the Liqwid algorithmic lending & borrowing protocol raised $2.7M in a seed round led by cFund
- UnUniFi Protocol raised $1.5M in Seed Round led by gumi Cryptos Capital to build the first Decentralized Cross-Chain NFTFi Platform / Marketplace with Auto DeFi Yield
- Cypherock, a hardware wallet startup with a mission to accelerate web3 adoption, raised $1M from an array of reputed industry leaders including Consensys Mesh, Infinite Capital, Gnosis
Early Stage Projects:
- AXL airdrop site is live
- The Onomy Network is live
- SUI Delegation Program - critical step towards decentralization & in supporting the community's participation
- LensPort 2.0 has been released. LensPort is now a marketplace AND a complete Lens social app
- Incentives for Aleo Testnet 3 will be activated on December 2nd
- Aztec Connect has launched a stable developer testnet - Aztec Connect Testnet v1
- Cedro Testnet 1.0 is here - an Omnichain Lending and Borrowing platform that unifies fragmented liquidity across multiple chains
Data:
TL;DR: CME's FedWatch tool is predicting a 77% of a 50 bp increase in December. Will be highly reliant on upcoming inflation data.
Telegram’s TON has also been popping up a lot recently so taking a look, we can see that its ETH and BTC pair is near all time highs, while its USD pair is recovering from summer lows. Weekly active developers and commits have also seen a boost. They’ve sold $50M in usernames so far and have been busy getting their name out there.
TON Price versus USD, BTC, ETH
Developer Activity
Research/Reads:
- Bankless - Is Solana Dead? - source
- DeFi Options: Mapping Hype to Reality - source
- Why RWAs Are Important to DeFi - source
- Venture Capital Is Ripe for Disruption - A world where a billion is a drop in the bucket - source
- Building Game Studios as Venture Capital Runs Dry - source
Crypto Twitterverse:
SBF was just on the NY Times DealBook Summit
He chats about regulatooooors, charity, and more
Check out our intern call notes 🍿
@SBF_FTX hope the La Croix was good 👍
— The Crypto Illuminati (@0x_illuminati)
Dec 1, 2022
Intern notes from SBF’s interview @dealbook Summit on:
- Alameda commingling funds 💰🤝
- SBF’s political donations 👨⚖️
- FTX houses & drugs 🏖️💊And frankly too much more
@andrewrsorkin <> @SBF_FTX
— CMS intern (@cmsintern)
Nov 30, 2022
Over 330 funds are actively investing in crypto.
However, only a handful of funds have a consistent track record of backing successful companies. We looked at @MessariCrypto's fundraising data to determine who these investors were.
The top early stage venture funds in crypto ↓
— Eli Nuss (@nuss_eli)
Nov 30, 2022
Unfortunately lessons are often learned the hard way. The overwhelming consensus now is that DeFi > CeFi - thanks FTX
DeFi however is still a fraction of CeFi, 41B @DefiLlama compared to 24T in the U.S. equities market alone.
Ok so how do we get there? A thread 🧵
— GammaSwap 🦇🔊 (@GammaSwapLabs)
Nov 29, 2022
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