BTC Nearing Key Technical Area, xNFTs Bring some Buzz to Solana
Market Update
- The $NDQ has slid 0.3% on Monday as investors anticipate corporate earnings reports from major tech companies, while the $SPX is effectively flat. Investors are closely watching for earnings results from mega-cap tech firms, including Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta, marking the halfway point of the earnings season. Both $BTC and $ETH are moving lower in concert with major equity indices, and most altcoins, including $MATIC and $SOL, are following a similar trajectory. This bearish price action is occurring despite a decrease in treasury yields and a move lower for the $DXY. Of note, the spread between the 1-month and 3-month t-bills continues to widen (pictured below). This morning it reached an all-time high of 180 bps, perhaps suggesting that the market is anticipating an earlier "drop dead" date for the US debt ceiling and consequently reducing demand for treasuries beyond this date. As our note on Friday mentioned, all else being equal, it is prudent to de-risk ahead of this event. Resolving the debt ceiling issue could result in liquidity being withdrawn from the market.
- The Solana NFT market received a boost on Friday with the successful launch of the Mad Lads NFT series. Initially scheduled for Thursday, the minting of Mad Lads was postponed to Friday due to high activity, including billions of requests from automated bots trying to dominate the mint. Coral, the developer behind Mad Lads, briefly redirected bots to a fake mint, gathering around $250,000 worth of SOL in a "honeypot." Coral ultimately refunded all affected users. The collection, comprising 10,000 profile picture pieces, quickly sold out and generated over $10 million in secondary trading volume within 24 hours, surpassing all Ethereum projects during the same timeframe, as per CryptoSlam. The Mad Lads launch is significant for two reasons. First, as discussed in recent notes, it marks the first high-profile NFT launch on the Solana blockchain in some time, a network needing new users. Second, it is the first NFT project launched within Backpack, which supports xNFTs (Executable NFTs). An xNFT is a novel digital asset combining executable applications with NFTs, enabling decentralized web3 applications. For example, a game developer can mint their game as limited-edition xNFTs, allowing users to own, trade, and run it directly from their crypto wallet.
- According to digital asset management firm CoinShares, investment products in the digital asset sector witnessed a $30 million outflow last week, ending six consecutive weeks of inflows. According to their findings, this outflow occurred as Bitcoin reached the crucial psychological threshold of $30,000, hinting that the sell-off was driven by profit-taking, especially given the absence of macroeconomic factors. Regarding regional demand, North America experienced outflows of $54 million, while Germany displayed a more positive sentiment, with inflows totaling $29 million. Interestingly, outflows for Bitcoin amounted to $53 million, while Ethereum saw $17 million in inflows, suggesting growing investor confidence following the Shapella upgrade. Other assets like Polygon and Solana also experienced inflows, with Polygon receiving $1 million and Solana attracting $0.74 million.
Daily Technical Strategy
Mark L. Newton, CMT
Head of Technical Strategy
Bitcoin's consolidation over the last seven of nine trading days looks to be nearing an attractive area of support which should provide a low to this recent decline in the next 12-24 hours. Hourly $BTC charts show the breakdown of this near-term structure and ideal targets could materialize near 26,700 which would be a 200% extension of the first decline off the 4/14 peaks. Overall, given the lack of technical damage, it remains early to expect that BTC 's trend has turned from bullish to bearish, but much will be learned on the ability of price to bottom and turn back up into late April. Overall, technically it looks right to consider $26,500-$26,700 as a key zone of support. On rebounds, it will be necessary to climb back up above $29,122 to prevent this larger structure from mid-March to morphing into a Head and Shoulders pattern. Weekly momentum, per MACD has not turned negative, and this initial dip should be one to buy dips in the days ahead on further weakness. However, the inability to climb back up to test highs into late April/first week of May would likely be problematic, signaling a good likelihood of weakness in the month of May. Bottom line, upcoming lows to this two-week decline look near.
Daily Important Metrics
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All metrics as of April 24, 2023 1:12 PM
All Funding rates are in bps
Crypto Prices
| Symbol | Market Cap | Last Price | Daily Change | Year to Date | Relative to BTC YTD |
 BTC | $529B | $27,329 | ↓ -0.70% | ↑ 65% | |
 ETH | $220B | $1,831 | ↓ -1.34% | ↑ 53% | ↓ -12% |
 ADA | $13B | $0.3846 | ↑ 0.13% | ↑ 56% | ↓ -9.17% |
 DOGE | $11B | $0.0786 | ↑ 0.27% | ↑ 12% | ↓ -53% |
 MATIC | $9.2B | $0.9942 | ↓ -0.00% | ↑ 30% | ↓ -35% |
 SOL | $8.4B | $21.38 | ↑ 0.61% | ↑ 116% | ↑ 51% |
 DOT | $7.0B | $5.93 | ↑ 1.59% | ↑ 36% | ↓ -29% |
 LINK | $3.7B | $7.11 | ↑ 1.93% | ↑ 28% | ↓ -37% |
 NEAR | $1.7B | $1.89 | ↑ 0.81% | ↑ 49% | ↓ -16% |
Exchange Traded Products (ETPs)
| Symbol | Premium to Nav | Last Price | Daily Change | Year to Date | Relative to BTC YTD |
| GBTC | ↓ -39% | $14.99 | ↓ -1.40% | ↑ 81% | ↑ 16% |
| BITW | ↓ -56% | $10.61 | ↓ -3.81% | ↑ 98% | ↑ 33% |
| ETHE | ↓ -50% | $8.92 | ↓ -1.55% | ↑ 87% | ↑ 22% |
| BTCC | ↓ -0.26% | $5.04 | ↑ 0.20% | ↑ 66% | ↑ 1.37% |
News
QUICK BITS
The Block Ethereum after Shapella: Developers make progress on Cancun-Deneb upgrade Following the recent, Shapella upgrade, Ethereum developers are now making progress on the next upgrade — referred to as "Cancun-Deneb." ... |
The Block Ethereum ICO participant awakes after 7.7 years of dormancy The Ethereum ICO participant transferred only one ether to a new address — which some speculate indicates a test transaction. The po... |
The Block Gemini intros new platform for users abroad amid US regulatory headache Gemini Foundation is launching a derivatives platform for users outside of the U.S. The post Gemini intros new platform for users ab... |
MARKET DATA
The Block Tiger Global’s $13 billion venture fund discloses 20% loss after crypto startup writedowns As the losses mount up for Tiger Global Management, the once-voracious tech investor is now getting bruised by its bets on blue-chip crypto businesses. ... |
REGULATION
Decrypt.co French Regulator Considers ‘Fast-Track’ to MiCA For Registered Firms The Markets in Crypto Assets law will ‘increase the competitiveness’ of French and European crypto businesses, the AMF said. |
Coin Telegraph LUNA is not a security, South Korean court rules in Terra co-founder’s case The court says that It is difficult to see the Luna token as a financial investment product regulated by the Capital M... |
FUNDRAISING AND M&A
CoinDesk DeFi Protocol Thetanuts Finance Raises $17M for Expansion, New Partnerships The startup offers multi-chain structured financial products with plans for a buy-side altcoin options market. |
NFTS
Decrypt.co Solana NFTs Come to Portfolio App Floor Amid Mad Lads Boom The Floor app now supports Solana NFTs, with the feature launching just days after Solana’s buzziest mint in months. |
HACKS, EXPLOITS, AND SCAMS
The Block Bitcoin Ordinals extension UniSat Wallet hit by ‘large number’ of double-spend attacks An early investigation by UniSat Wallet claims 70 transactions were affected out of 383. The extension said it will refund affected users. ... |
Coin Telegraph KuCoin to reimburse victims of the short-lived Twitter account hack The crypto exchange announced that it will fully reimburse all the verified asset losses from the fake giveaway promot... |
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