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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN BONDS HAVE A HIGH EMISSIONS SCHEDULE Traditional markets have undeniably faced a whirlwind of volatility over the past week. The bond market continued its recent trajectory with the long end of the yield curve soaring to new multi-decade highs. At one juncture, the 30-year yield even brushed against the 5% mark, a development that has rattled both bond and equity investors. Concurrently, the DXY index maintained its...
DOVISH FED STATEMENT On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve raised the target Fed Funds rate range by 25 basis points (BPS), marking the ninth increase in just over a year. The FOMC statement hinted at a nearing end to rate hikes by removing the reference to "ongoing increases." According to the FOMC's updated forecast, there will be one more rate increase this year, and officials expect slower economic growth in 2023...
Fundstrat’s recently launched Crypto Core Strategy offers subscribers a digestible tool to manage their crypto portfolio, with the goal of outperforming bitcoin. For those looking to amplify the returns of their long positions, this complementary issue of DeFi Digest strives to cast light on some of the best risk-adjusted yields. We first describe our methodology to filter for yield opportunities, then dive into the protocols offering the yields, and describe...
REGULATORY THREATS MORE BARK THAN BITE (TO ASSET PRICES) Last week we discussed that more regulatory actions would be coming – and they certainly were. On Monday morning, Paxos was ordered to shut down its services surrounding Binance’s BUSD stablecoin on the grounds that it might be deemed a security. There were worries that there would be additional regulatory action against other centralized stablecoin issuers, but as the week progressed, it...
BACK TO LIFE If you were 100% deployed on January 1st and decided to lock in your returns for the year, frankly, we wouldn’t blame you, especially not after the carnage witnessed last year. However, as we discussed last week, we view this current rally as a sign of more opportunities to come and are excited to help our clients navigate the crypto market in 2023. The choppy, directionless crypto...
FIGURE: PEPE TRYING TO GET AN UNCOLLATERALIZED LOAN ZERO-TO-ONE (Z2O) SERIES Given the decentralization and transparency benefits of blockchains, many have pointed to DeFi as crypto’s ‘killer use case.’ After all, finance today is built along opaque and slower traditional finance rails ripe for disruption by distributed ledger technology. Sobering up from the highs of the bull market of ‘21, however, DeFi advocates are now left wondering: ‘How much of...
DESPITE MARKET PULLBACK, JACKSON HOLE WAS NOTHING OF SUBSTANCE Fed Chair Jerome Powell took to the microphone on Friday afternoon for the first time since he announced the Fed’s prior 75 bps rate increase. Powell has mastered the art of tactful political speech, as he used 10 minutes of words to say nothing of substance. While there was a small corner of the market that thought Powell would cavalierly announce...
FIGURE: PEPE CROSSING BRIDGES TO EXPLORE ALTERNATE LAYER 1S / LAYER 2S Although ETH remains the dominant Layer 1 for most on-chain activity, alternate Layer 1s have demonstrated product-market fit throughout the bull market run of ‘20/’21. Solana ($SOL) emerged as the ‘high-throughput chain’ focused on complex DeFi / gaming, BNB Chain ($BNB) offers easy fiat on/off-ramps through Binance CEX, while Avalanche ($AVAX) and Cosmos ($ATOM) are building application-specific blockchains...
NOT-SO-PRIVATE KEYS This week started with a pair of high-profile exploits – the first of which came in the form of a bridge hack, as interoperable bridging protocol Nomad was hacked for $200 million. Ironically, the vulnerability appeared to stem from a known bug highlighted in a previous audit. Despite this, the Nomad hack furthered widespread skepticism surrounding multichain bridge security. To seemingly one-up Monday’s hacker, an entity on Tuesday...
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...
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...
