Crypto Research

The SPX showed just minor downside follow-through after Tuesday’s reversal but might not immediately weaken down to prior lows ahead of the US July 4th holiday.   As mentioned, prices reversed on cue Tuesday due to a combination of Elliott-wave analysis with Gann analysis which provided price and time targets based on the prior June 16th bottom.  I expect that the next couple days might show prices attempting to stabilize and...

Over the past two weeks, we have seen the bear markets bringing out the worst in digital asset markets. While 3AC exemplified the opacity of CeFi dealings, not all DeFi protocols are transparent and immutable, despite users self-custodying their own funds.  We attempt to define and outline the differences and similarities of CeFi, DeFi, and the grey area in between. CRYPTO DEFI DIGEST: CEFI, DEFI, AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN

Last week we noted that Three Arrows Capital (3AC), a prop shop headed by the once-beloved Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, was on the brink of exiting the industry. Well, if you have been following our daily market updates, you know by now that this did indeed happen, and 3AC unleashed chaos of leverage unwinds on its way out the door. In the past week, we witnessed yet another bout...

DEAL OF THE WEEK FalconX, a digital asset platform for institutions, raised $150M in a Series D funding round at a valuation of $8.0B. The funding round was led by Singaporean wealth fund GIC as well as B Capital and included new and existing investors. New investors include private equity firm Thoma Bravo and Adams Street Capital, and existing investors include Tiger Global Management and Wellington Management. FalconX offers institutions...

Following the decrease in liquidity in the public markets, venture funding continued to drop lower this week. Weekly funding made a new low of 2022 with total deals declining from 28 deals to 24 deals and total amount funded dropping from $410M to $284M. Similar to last week, CeFi funding remained relatively strong and was the most funded segment of the week at $84M. Interestingly, Metaverse and Gaming saw a...

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...

Venture funding slid lower this week, with the lowest weekly amount of money raised all year. There were 28 deals, raising a total of $410M. Despite general VC funding weakness, CeFi funding has been resilient and had made up roughly ~60% of funding for the week at $235M, an increase from last week's CeFi financing of $190M. DeFi came in second for the most funding and rose from $10M to...

MERGE UPDATE If you recall, several potential catalysts for this year were highlighted during our 2022 preview. A major one was the proposed transition of Ethereum from its current Proof-of-Work (PoW) to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) architecture through a process colloquially termed the “Merge.” This is a catalyst that we felt the market was heavily discounting due to Ethereum developers’ track record of delays (Some thought this would take place five...

While liquid markets continued to chop this week, venture funding remained relatively robust with over 45 deals completed for a total of $574 million – a slight downtick from last week’s $600 million. Web3 projects raised $227 million, the most of any other category, with CeFi coming in second having raised $190 million. Metaverse/gaming projects were overlooked this week; however, Japanese game developer Akatsuki raised a $20 million fund that...