Crypto Research

Funding has remained consistent the past few weeks at about ~$230M per week. Infrastructure made up the bulk of the deals this week, with $80M in funding and 12 total deals. Infrastructure funding was led by Monad Labs, which raised $19M from Dragonfly Capital. Monad Labs is the team supporting the Monad blockchain, a blockchain looking to optimize execution and process 10,000 transactions per second. CeFi and Web3 & NFTS...

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...

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...

This week’s funding totals were on par with last week, declining slightly from $231 million to $226 million. Funding amounts were concentrated in the Infrastructure and CeFi verticals, raising $104 million and $64 million, respectively. SALT Lending closed a $64 million Series A deal, representing the largest deal this week and comprising the entire amount of CeFi capital raised. SALT Lending is a crypto lending platform that paused its business following the...

FS Insight members now have access to the Crypto Core Strategy, a crypto portfolio and allocation tool for investors looking to explore this emerging asset class.  Sean Farrell answers your most common questions about the Crypto Core Strategy, including:How should I allocate to bitcoin, ethereum, altcoins, and stablecoins?What digital assets are included in this portfolio and are there limitations?What % of an investment portfolio would you recommend allocating to the...

INTRODUCTION Human nature and gambling have been linked together as far as history goes back. Pick any time period, and there is evidence of humans wagering on games in one way or another. Whether it was betting on your favorite gladiator in the Colosseum or strolling into a Vegas casino and playing the slots, history has proven that humans love to gamble. In modern society, there are more and more...

GOLDEN CROSS APPROACHES The golden cross is a commonly used technical indicator. It is characterized by the intersection of two moving averages, where a short-term average crosses above a long-term average. The most commonly used moving averages are the 50-day and 200-day. This crossover pattern is widely interpreted as a signal of a potential trend reversal from bearish to bullish, suggesting an upward momentum in the asset's price. As demonstrated...

After an impressive $749 million was raised last week, funding totals came back down to earth to $228 million. Zero-carbon Bitcoin mining company TeraWulf completed a $32 million public equity sale, representing the largest deal of the week. Additionally, mining company Pow. re completed both a Series A and Strategic fundraising round this week, valuing the company at $150 million. The uptick in mining deals over the last two weeks...

WHAT IS A MEME? A meme is defined by Webster’s New World College Dictionary as “a concept, belief, or practice conceived as a unit of cultural information that may be passed on from person to person, subject to influences in a way analogous to natural selection.” Memes have always existed but have grown rapidly in popularity due to the internet and social media. Sites such as Twitter and TikTok are...

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...

For the first time in over a year, we’ve seen mining dominate crypto funding, comprising $625M of this week’s $746M of funding. There were two mining deals, Core Scientific and Blockstream, which received $500M and $125M, respectively. This heavy funding in mining caused total funding this week to skyrocket from last week, increasing nearly 4x from $194M to $746M (one of the most funded weeks in months). Aside from mining,...