Lido Staked Ether
$STETH
9 Results
KRAKEN DOWN ON STAKING AS A SERVICE On Wednesday, Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, tweeted that he heard rumors that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) might ban retail investors from engaging in cryptocurrency staking. In his tweet, he expressed concern about this possibility and said that he believes it would be a terrible path for the U.S. if that were to happen. Then on Thursday, Kraken, another...
CARNAGE GIVES WAY TO INDIFFERENCE There are few cohorts of people more excited to turn the page to a new year than crypto investors. After nearly 12 months of unwinding leverage, we have finally reached a point in the cycle where indifference has crept into the market, as demonstrated by the continued decline in volumes and realized volatilities. Aggregated ETH volume is the best proxy for trading activity in crypto....
EARNINGS REVISITED Below is a chart that is both slightly jarring and fairly intuitive at the same time. The jarring aspect is obviously the rapid ascent of the expected terminal fed funds rate over the past six months. The intuitive part is that bitcoin does not like tightening monetary conditions and has steadily declined in direct opposition to the expected terminal rate. Note that we are using the futures market...
DATA DUMP Last week, we discussed the market’s positive reaction to the deluge of negative economic data. Despite a continued murky economic outlook, risk assets performed well. This was an encouraging sign that gave us confidence that we have seen the market put in this year’s lows. We also mentioned that this past week would be another crucial week of data, with an expected negative real GDP report, a consequential...
CORRECTION: IN THE FIRST DISTRIBUTION OF ‘DEFI DIGEST 14: A REFLECTION ON LIQUIDITY DYNAMICS THROUGH THE CONTAGION & GHO STABLECOIN’, WE INCORRECTLY REFERENCED VOYAGER INSTEAD OF CELSIUS AS HAVING A 1.2B HOLE IN ITS BALANCE SHEET. THE AMOUNT LENT TO 3AC BY VOYAGER WAS $350M IN USDC AND 15,250 IN BTC, WITH THEIR CURRENT ASSET-LIABILITY MISMATCH UNKNOWN. In last week’s DeFi Digest, the team discussed liquidity dynamics that were prevalent...
GOOD PRICE ON BAD NEWS IS GOOD NEWS Last week, we discussed the piping-hot inflation print and expected additional volatility around this data point. On the contrary, markets behaved resiliently, with legacy markets and crypto rallying hard from last Thursday to today. The market had what seemed to be its first winning week since March as $BTC surged 18%, while $ETH left the rest of the market in the dust...
FIGURE: $GHO LAUNCHING AMIDST THE BLOWUPS AROUND IT Seeing the CeFi realm blowing up around us, it is perhaps pertinent to reflect and hammer the lessons into our collective crypto consciousness. Drawing from CeFi, DeFi and Everything in Between, it is clear now that Celsius, BlockFi, and Voyager Digital function as ‘CeDeFi,’ similarly to TradFi banking entities and are prone to the same weaknesses such as position opacity and human...
FIGURE: 3AC’S CONTAGION AFFECTING CEFI, DEFI, AND CEDEFI Over the past two weeks, we have seen the bear markets bringing out the worst in digital asset markets. Rumors of insolvency flew rampant in the face of volatility, affecting behemoths that were previously deemed ‘too sophisticated/large to fail.’ Celsius, which we covered in detail in The Tide Pulling Out, was one of the first to waver, fueling fears of contagion in...
THE BLOODBATH The bloodbath that has persisted for the better part of the past seven months continued this weekend, with the market shedding an additional $200 billion in total market cap, falling below the $1 trillion mark for the first time since late 2020. Yesterday was the single biggest decline for bitcoin (-16%) since March 2020. At the time of writing (early morning hours of June 14th), there have been...
