Crypto Research

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYThe digital assets space has witnessed a Cambrian explosion of alternative crypto networks over the past few years, with many projects experimenting on concepts pioneered by Bitcoin. Despite the new options for crypto investors, we believe Bitcoin remains differentiated as the only sound monetary cryptoasset due to its unique technical characteristics around decentralization, consensus, and supply. Bitcoin is also fundamentally superior to other existing monetary assets such as the...

Venture capital investors took a breather heading into March after investing around $4 billion in the previous three weeks. CeFi projects continue to get a substantial portion of investments, raising $123 million this week. A DeFi project received $70 million in funding, and NFT/Metaverse investments totaled $52 million. Infrastructure was an unusual laggard in the venture space, raising $35 million. Most of this week’s capital flowed into two new venture...

We continue to focus on the key narratives surrounding bitcoin and assess recent adoption trends driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.We review on-chain data (realized cap, STH SOPR, and wallet addresses) to determine whether there is a sustained level of organic demand supporting the recent uptick in bitcoin’s price.Recent price action gives us some confidence that there will be buyers that step up in the $34k-$35k area should we witness...

The biggest news in venture capital this week was the $1 billion private token sale with Terra, which we wrote about in more detail in our Crypto Weekly report. Other than the Terra private sale, Centralized Finance projects took home the bacon, raising $475 million across just three projects. Infrastructure investments raised $103 million mostly in early-stage, low price tag funding rounds. Three gaming / NFT projects received $13 million....

Markets continue to experience turbulence in the face of growing geopolitical tensions and full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine.We examine recent growth in spreads on major exchanges, highlighting a persistent low-liquidity environment.Option volumes point to the likelihood that many investors are maintaining long positions while hedging risk with derivatives.The market is already questioning the ability of the Fed to raise rates as indicated by a decline in projected rate hikes.We...

Walter Teng provides a brief overview of DeFi, decentralized finance, as it compares to traditional centralized financial systems. DECENTRALIZED FINANCE: A PRIMER

Infrastructure remained the hottest sector in crypto this week, with Helium’s $200 million raise as the stand-out. NFT/metaverse projects also remain of interest to investors broadly. The sub-category of DAO tooling is gaining more traction with RabbitHole’s $18 million raise. Like last week, DeFi was relatively inactive, with only a few deals closed focusing on derivatives and cross-chain liquidity. Active investors this week include Multicoin Capital, Tiger Global, Alameda Research, Polychain...

GEOPOLITICAL NOISE After briefly eclipsing $45k and $3.2k, both bitcoin and ether tumbled on Friday afternoon following indications from the US government that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was imminent. On Tuesday, these fears were quelled when reports surfaced indicating that troops were being removed from the Ukrainian border and crypto rebounded alongside equities. At the time of writing, the global crypto market is slightly lower on the 7-day chart,...

Cryptocurrency rally looks to have temporarily stalled out after a sharp three-week rally.  Ethereum has stalled out in its relative performance vs Bitcoin, and for now, Bitcoin is an outperformer over Ethereum and should be favored. Weekly momentum remains negative and Cycle composites start to turn lower in early March into April/May, so given low retail interest and not many inflows, this could limit the larger rally continuing to all-time highs...