Crypto Research

Macro continues to dominate the crypto discourse as the 90-day rolling correlation between BTC and the BVP Emerging Cloud Index approaches 1.We discuss our thoughts pertaining to where Bitcoin sits on investors’ risk curves, how it will move to a lower risk bucket in 2022, and why this would be a major tailwind for the asset.SOPR gives us a view into the profile of recent sellers. Meanwhile, long-term holders continue...

This week’s venture capital was heavily weighted towards infrastructure projects, with some dabbling into NFTs, Gaming, DAOs, and DeFi. Crypto infrastructure projects raised over $1.3 billion, with interoperability and usability as the biggest attractions in the space. Token sales were effective fundraising instruments this week, raising $85 million for 3 protocols. Signs point to a massive influx of capital in future Funding Fridays, as 3 new funds raised $7.9 billion...

On Wednesday, the global crypto market experienced some partial relief as the Labor Department released a December CPI figure that met analyst expectations. Consumer prices increased 7.0% over the prior 12 months, up 0.5% from last month.Funding rates in the perpetual futures market turned negative leading up to the CPI print, reducing the near-term risk of a long squeeze.Open interest continues to climb, as we are now well beyond the...

Venture capital funds kicked off 2022 with $359 million invested in NFT projects that are focused on continuing to grow the NFT ecosystem through creator and project incubation. DeFi investment was also highly active, raising $396 million this week, mostly for expanding existing protocols’ product and service offerings. Web3.0 infrastructure projects raised $30 million, $6 million went to gaming, and Bitfarms is keeping its foot on the gas with a...

Risk-on assets, including Bitcoin, drop upon the release of the latest Fed minutes, which signals the potential to reduce the balance sheet in Q1 2022. The 10-year has increased over 12% YTD and seems on its way to 2.0% for the first time since 2019.Contrary to apparent market trepidation, the implied volatilities of Bitcoin options have been trending downwards over the prior month.The leverage ratio has surpassed the levels witnessed...

ALPHA OPPORTUNITY: Despite a broad market shift away from DeFi, we think Sushiswap (SUSHI) presents an intriguing opportunity for investors at its current price. We discuss this further below.We note that leverage in the Bitcoin market is increasing, which may signal near-term volatility.Bullish indicators, including exchange outflows, increasing short-term SOPR, and a decreasing put/call ratio point toward a bullish breakout upon any liquidation event.BOTTOM LINE: As Bitcoin’s leverage increases, investors...

Sean Farrell provides insight on recent liquidations, the hawkish Fed announcement, and our outlook  heading into late December. RESEARCH: HAWKS START TO CIRCLE

VENTURE CAPITAL DEALS Africa Blockchain Lab is a blockchain technology business and creator of African crypto application VIBRA. The company has raised $6 million in a Series Pre-A investment to help support the launch of its VIBRA wallet. Investors include Dragonfly Capital, Hashkey Capital, Fenbushi, Cadenza Capital, Lateral Frontiers, CRE Venture Capital, among others. Africa has received plenty of investments from top global venture funds in 2021, projects like Ejara...

The Fed announced an expedited tapering of monetary stimulus and anticipates three rate increases in 2022. We discuss the implications.Based on recent price action, BTC still behaves more like a high-beta tech stock than an asset designed to offset the effects of inflation.This week, SOPR broke through to profitable territory. Short-term SOPR is lagging, which signifies that the market may need to shake out a few more "paper hands" before...

Hedera (HBAR) is a public Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) network designed for the creation of secure decentralized applications (dApps) with near real-time consensus. Due to its enterprise focus, the network was constructed with an emphasis on regulatory compliance across jurisdictions and includes tools that allow dApps to run KYC/AML checks and identity verification.Scalable transaction fee design. Hedera leverages its native cryptocurrency, HBAR, to fuel and secure the network while incentivizing...