Friend.tech Gains Traction, Recur Winds Down
Market Update
- Amidst record-high bond yields, large tech stocks led market indexes higher on the week's open. The US30Y is at its highest levels since 2011, yielding 4.46%, while the US10Y is at its highest levels since 2007, yielding 4.34%. SPX (+0.15%) and QQQ -0.07% (+0.71%) opened higher before retracing to nearly flat at time of writing, with tech stocks leading the majority of the open's gains. BTC (+0.0%) and ETH (+0.1%) have also been flat over the last day after shedding 11% and 9% in the past week. New social media platform Friend.tech has captivated the attention of Crypto Twitter in the past week, elaborated on below.
- Friend.tech, a new decentralized social media platform, has gained traction among crypto users. Launched on August 11th on Coinbase's Ethereum Layer-2, Base, the platform allows users to tokenize Twitter accounts and trade "shares" in social media personalities. Within just days of its launch, Friend.tech doubled its unique user interactions from 31,500 to over 67,400 and generated $1.12 million in transaction fees in a single day, outpacing market leaders like Uniswap and even Bitcoin. Notably, the platform's success also boosted Base's daily transactions to a new high of 900k, nearly double that of its Layer-2 competitors Arbitrum and Optimism. The platform uses a steep bonding curve for automated pricing and charges a 5% fee on transactions, counting Y Combinator founder Garry Tan and NBA player Grayson Allen as users.
- Recur to Wind Down Despite $50M Funding and High-Profile Backers. The NFT platform announced its decision despite forging partnerships with prominent brands such as Nickelodeon and Hello Kitty. Launched in 2021 with a valuation of $333 million, Recur aimed to provide Web3-based "building blocks" for other companies to create in-game assets, digital collectibles, and loyalty programs. However, the firm cited "unforeseen challenges and shifts in the business landscape" as reasons for its closure. Recur's decision illustrates the broader volatility in the NFT sector, as digital collectibles face a downturn in market interest. The company plans to migrate NFT metadata to the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to preserve existing digital assets.
Daily Technical Strategy
Mark L. Newton, CMT
Head of Technical Strategy
Orchid's ability to show weekly gains over the last two of three weeks is encouraging during a time of broader deterioration across most cryptocurrencies. Daily OXT charts show the ability of price to have recouped prior lows from early 2023 which is a technical positive which should lead to a coming rally back to $0.095 in the weeks/month ahead. Volume has begun to expand in recent weeks which has helped to add conviction to this recent rally. Overall, the downtrend channel will remain intact and short-term gains will prove tactical only until $0.095 can be exceeded. Such a development would turn the trend more bullish on an intermediate-term basis, allowing for a larger rally to $0.20, then $0.50.
Daily Important Metrics
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All metrics as of August 21, 2023 9:58 AM
All Funding rates are in bps
Crypto Prices
| Symbol | Market Cap | Last Price | Daily Change | Year to Date | Relative to BTC YTD |
 BTC | $508B | $26,117 | ↑ 0.01% | ↑ 58% | |
 ETH | $199B | $1,655 | ↓ -4.99% | ↑ 38% | ↓ -20% |
 ADA | $9.2B | $0.2615 | ↓ -3.34% | ↑ 5.94% | ↓ -52% |
 SOL | $8.7B | $21.27 | ↓ -7.72% | ↑ 115% | ↑ 57% |
 DOT | $5.5B | $4.51 | ↓ -4.25% | ↑ 3.76% | ↓ -54% |
 MATIC | $5.3B | $0.5693 | ↓ -5.63% | ↓ -25% | ↓ -83% |
 LINK | $3.3B | $6.13 | ↓ -7.38% | ↑ 10% | ↓ -47% |
 NEAR | $1.1B | $1.13 | ↓ -5.58% | ↓ -11% | ↓ -69% |
 DOGE | $0.0000 | $0.0001 | ↑ 0.00% | ↓ -100% | ↓ -157% |
Exchange Traded Products (ETPs)
| Symbol | Premium to Nav | Last Price | Daily Change | Year to Date | Relative to BTC YTD |
| GBTC | ↓ -26% | $17.29 | ↓ -0.63% | ↑ 109% | ↑ 51% |
| BITW | ↓ -49% | $11.23 | ↑ 1.17% | ↑ 109% | ↑ 51% |
| ETHE | ↓ -39% | $10.00 | ↑ 2.15% | ↑ 110% | ↑ 52% |
| BTCC | ↑ 1.92% | $4.78 | ↓ -1.65% | ↑ 58% | ↑ 0.10% |
News
MARKET DATA
Coin Telegraph Friend.tech generates over $1M fees in 24h, surpassing Uniswap, Bitcoin networks The platform was launched in beta version on Aug. 11 and allows users to tokenize their social network by buying and s... |
CoinDesk Scheduled Unlocks for LDO, AVAX, YGG Tokens Promise Busy Week Ahead Research by The Tie show coins tend to drop in the days leading up to the unlock. |
CoinDesk Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin Sends $1M ETH to Coinbase Vitalik Buterin transferred over $1 million worth of ether to crypto exchange Coinbase on Monday. |
REGULATION
Coin Telegraph Bitget mandates KYC requirements in line with tightening global regulations The exchange operator is instituting new KYC requirements for users from September 2023 to comply with developing glob... |
FUNDRAISING AND M&A
CryptoPotato Ethereum Foundation Announces $9M in Q2 Project and Conference Funding The Ethereum Foundation has just released its quarterly report detailing project funding for the second quarter. |
NFTS
Decrypt.co NFT Platform Recur to Shut Down Despite $50M Raise and Big Name Backers Recur is the latest NFT-centered firm with big-name partnerships to announce its platform is shutting down. |
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