Crypto Research

SBF VS. CZ As we addressed in our daily note on Monday, one thing few can argue is that crypto always keeps things interesting. As many know by now, two industry giants, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) and Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ), sparred over the weekend following circulating rumors that FTX was on the verge of insolvency. _TO RECAP RECENT EVENTS:_Rumors initially emerged from a COINDESK REPORT last week implying that...

IDIOSYNCRATIC OPPORTUNITIES ABOUND The euphoric part of the bull market for crypto was largely about finding the fastest horse paired with one’s relative risk appetite. Unfortunately, in a bear market, most horses, notably the weaker or tired ones, no longer want to race. However, the past few months have revealed that ample opportunities exist to find the few horses that have some giddy-up in them. The two environments require fundamentally...

This week, funding increased to $191 million from a measly $105 million last week. The bulk of fundraising came from the infrastructure and gaming sectors. Infrastructure has been the strongest category for most of the year, but gaming saw a notable increase, rising to $51 million from $15 million last week. Other categories, such as NFTs, Web3, DeFi, and CeFi have been consistent with the amounts raised over the previous...

COINS DO NOT CARE ABOUT EPS As we have addressed over the past month, cryptoassets were nonreactive to the onslaught of gruesome tech earnings this week. At the time of writing, bitcoin, ether, and the rest of the crypto ecosystem have vastly outpaced the Nasdaq. As we can see below, a major contributing factor to crypto doing so well is yields rolling over for the first time since early October....

Funding this week fell once again, dropping from $191M to just $105M. Surprisingly, the bulk of this decline came from the infrastructure segment, which has generally been strong this year. Infrastructure funding fell from $142M to $35M, but still saw a fair number of deals, with seven of this week’s 17 deals being infrastructure-related. It’s important to note that the financing amount for two of the infrastructure deals this week...