Block Completes Design for ASIC Chip and New Memecoin Enters Top 100 Largest Coins by Market Cap
Market Update
- Crypto had a choppy weekend, which concluded in prices falling last night. At the time of writing, BTC is down 3.68%, and ETH 4.75% is down 2.15%. Altcoins were also down across the board, SOL -1.73% is down 4.75%, and ARB 0.04% is down 3.66%. An exception to this market correction is a new meme coin called PEPE which has rapidly made its way into the top 100 coins by market cap. PEPE is up 66.05% today and we discuss it later in this report. Another altcoin that has held up relatively well is BNB, down 2.0% today and rose ~6.0% over the weekend. Binance is holding a launch event for Layer 1 Blockchain SUI 2.25% and in order to participate, users must stake BNB and TUSD tokens to farm SUI over a 2-day period. This as well as other successful Binance Launchpool events this year has been a tailwind for BNB. Traditional markets are mostly flat today, SPX is up 0.16%, and NDQ is down 0.11%.
- Jack Dorsey's financial services and technology company, Block, has completed the design for its new prototype ASIC chip that it says will fast-track its plan for an "open source" Bitcoin mining rig. Dorsey claims this is key to decentralizing the supply of Bitcoin mining rigs. Block wrote in a blog post last week that developing Bitcoin mining ASIC rigs is both financially and technically challenging, which has resulted in the "excessive concentration of custom Bitcoin mining silicon" in the hands of a few companies. Block hopes to change this by selling affordable, standalone ASICs and other hardware components to optimize innovation and grow the Bitcoin mining hardware ecosystem.
- In what was a relatively slow weekend for most cryptocurrencies, a new meme coin named PEPE, which was created just two weeks ago, has already soared into the market's top 100 largest tokens, with a market cap of $582 million. While most coins were down over the weekend, PEPE rose as much as 400%. The PEPE meme coin is based on the Pepe the Frog internet meme, which has had many NFTs and memecoins centered on it in the past, making it even more surprising that PEPE was able to grow as explosively as it did. One holder was able to turn a $250 investment in PEPE into over $1.02 million in just a few days, showing just how crazy this run has been.
Daily Technical Strategy
Mark L. Newton, CMT
Head of Technical Strategy
Bitcoin's 3.5% decline Monday looks like a temporary negative and turns attention towards important support near late April lows at $26,981 which needs to hold in order to avoid a larger period of downside consolidation in May. Traditional technical momentum indicators like RSI have been diverging negatively since early April (declining despite prices having pushed higher to $31k) and the short-term pattern has begun to resemble a possible Head and Shoulders pattern. However, this can't and won't be confirmed until BTC breaks 26981, which would result in downside acceleration to support near $25.1k or below to $23.3k before lows are in place. Conversely, any rise back above $30k in the days ahead would be considered quite bullish and could drive price higher to resistance near $34k. Near-term cycles for BTC hit on 4/27 and it's also thought that 5/3-5/4 has the potential for volatility. At present, keeping a close eye on late April lows will be extraordinarily important, as any break of this level would suggest a period of negative seasonality might take hold that would directly line up with the bearish cyclical projection outlined in recent weeks for the month of May.
Daily Important Metrics
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All metrics as of May 1, 2023 12:14 PM
All Funding rates are in bps
Crypto Prices
| Symbol | Market Cap | Last Price | Daily Change | Year to Date | Relative to BTC YTD |
 BTC | $545B | $28,155 | ↓ -5.52% | ↑ 70% | |
 ETH | $220B | $1,828 | ↓ -5.38% | ↑ 53% | ↓ -17% |
 ADA | $13B | $0.3844 | ↓ -6.82% | ↑ 56% | ↓ -14% |
 DOGE | $11B | $0.0781 | ↓ -4.07% | ↑ 11% | ↓ -59% |
 MATIC | $8.9B | $0.9613 | ↓ -4.93% | ↑ 26% | ↓ -44% |
 SOL | $8.5B | $21.67 | ↓ -8.94% | ↑ 119% | ↑ 49% |
 DOT | $6.7B | $5.71 | ↓ -5.71% | ↑ 31% | ↓ -39% |
 LINK | $3.6B | $6.89 | ↓ -5.42% | ↑ 24% | ↓ -46% |
 NEAR | $1.6B | $1.83 | ↓ -7.22% | ↑ 44% | ↓ -26% |
Exchange Traded Products (ETPs)
| Symbol | Premium to Nav | Last Price | Daily Change | Year to Date | Relative to BTC YTD |
| GBTC | ↓ -38% | $15.53 | ↓ -5.42% | ↑ 87% | ↑ 17% |
| BITW | ↓ -58% | $10.55 | ↓ -1.95% | ↑ 96% | ↑ 27% |
| ETHE | ↓ -50% | $8.56 | ↓ -5.99% | ↑ 80% | ↑ 9.96% |
| BTCC | ↓ -0.02% | $5.18 | ↓ -4.07% | ↑ 71% | ↑ 1.00% |
News
QUICK BITS
CryptoPotato Justin Sun Transfers $56.4M TUSD to Binance, CZ Warns Whales Over Misuse of SUI Airdrop Sun apologized for the massive TUSD transfer to Binance amid SUI farming, blaming the incident on an ignorant team member. |
Coin Telegraph Mastercard launches Web3 user verification solution to curb bad actors Mastercard’s new solution revolves around providing “secure transactions between users, verified according to standard... |
Decrypt.co PEPE Coin Enters Market’s Top 100 Cryptocurrencies, Soaring 111% Overnight The newly-launched meme coin PEPE has taken crypto by storm after hitting a market capitalization of $540 million. |
REGULATION
The Block While Binance battles regulators, its $9 billion VC arm keeps growing Binance Labs continues to grow even as its parent company faces challenges, with the venture unit amassing $9 billion in assets. The... |
MINING
Coin Telegraph Jack Dorsey’s nano Bitcoin mining chip heads to prototype Block has completed the design of its new prototype ASIC chip which it says will fast-track its plan to bring “open so... |
WEB 3.0
CryptoPotato Google Cloud Introduces New Web3 Startup Program The initiative includes collaboration with a slew of Web3 firms, such as Alchemy, Nansen, and Solana. |
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