THE RUNDOWN
The Rundown Powered By Arcane Research
• Small inflows were seen into long investment products in regions other than the US such as Brazil, Canada, Germany and Switzerland totaling US$20m. This highlights investors are adding to long positions at current prices, with the inflows into short-Bitcoin possibly due to first-time accessibility in the US rather than renewed negative sentiment.
• Bitcoin saw little inflows over the week, totaling just US$0.6m. Short-Bitcoin saw record inflows totaling US$51m after the product launch in the US.
• Ethereum saw a second week of inflows totaling US$5m last week, breaking the 11-week spell of outflows.
• A range of altcoins saw inflows suggesting investors are beginning to diversify again. Notably Solana, Polkadot and Cardano totaling US$1m, US$0.7m and US$0.6m respectively.
• The crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital has started its liquidation process after defaulting on a massive loan from crypto lender Blockfi. Both crypto exchange FTX and crypto lender Lend are allegedly attempting to acquire the struggling Blockfi.
• The financially solid FTX also considered buying failed crypto lender Celsius but walked away from the deal after seeing the state of their finances. Celsius' finances don't seem to have scared Goldman Sachs, as the investment bank raises money to buy their assets.
• Grayscale had its application for converting its bitcoin trust into a spot bitcoin ETF rejected and is now suing the SEC. European customers have a myriad of bitcoin spot ETP alternatives and will soon have two more, one in the Netherlands and one in Switzerland.
A Deep Bite
Survivors of 2018-20 Crypto Winter Show the Way Through New Bear Market
It’s no secret that crypto markets can be brutal. In 2018, Bitcoin cratered 80%, and many lesser-known projects didn’t survive. For the next two years, the market endured a crypto winter. Forget trying to predict these severe downturns. Timing the market has long been a fool’s errand. It’s wiser to accept the cyclical nature of the market and prepare for a bearish period. To learn how, we draw lessons from the past in the second installment of our Surviving a Bear Market series of guides. More here
Weekly Bites
The Era of Easy DeFi Yields Is Over
Alpha in DeFi is about to get a lot scarcer (although still super attractive). Luckily, risk management will eventually get much simpler. Decentralized finance (DeFi) has been one of the areas of crypto most affected during the recent market downturn. From the collapse of Anchor and other DeFi protocols in the Terra network to the constant pressure in LIDO and stEth as well as the insolvency of large asset managers that were active in different protocols, there have been many events that have challenged DeFi’s entire value proposition. More here
Grayscale Suing SEC After Its Spot Bitcoin ETF Is Rejected
Grayscale Investments said it had sued the US Securities and Exchange Commission after the agency rejected a bid to convert its Bitcoin trust into an exchange-traded fund. Chief Executive Officer Michael Sonnenshein tweeted late Wednesday that Grayscale was suing the regulator and the company said it had filed a lawsuit in US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. More here
Are expiring copyrights the next goldmine for NFTs?
Most people think of digital art when it comes to NFTs, but in the future, expiring copyrights could be preserved, refreshed and repurposed using nonfungible token technology. Although nonfungible tokens (NFTs) are most commonly known in the form of digital art, they exist in many other forms and represent much more than just art. A lot more real-world applications of NFTs are still to be explored and one of them is the digital publishing industry. More here
Hacker asks for 10 bitcoin for allegedly stolen data of a billion Chinese citizens
Hackers are selling personal records of Chinese citizens stolen during a cybersecurity breach that allegedly targeted a database of Shanghai National Police (SHGA). The security breach, which occurred sometime in 2022, exposed the personal data of over 1 billion Chinese citizens. The information has now been put it up for sale on both the open and the dark web. It includes names, addresses, government ID numbers, mobile numbers and other sensitive details. More here
How a fake job offer took down the world’s most popular crypto game
Hackers duped a senior engineer at Axie Infinity into applying for a job at a fictitious company. The scheme resulted in the loss of $540 million in crypto earlier this year. Details of how the hack was carried out are being reported for the first time by The Block. More here
June NFT data wrap: bear market seeps into the metaverse
NFT marketplace trading volume fell 94% between January and June this year. Prices and sales volume fell on metaverse platforms across the board. The number of ONE tokens in DeFi Kingdoms dropped significantly in the days following the Harmony bridge hack. More here
Tweet Of The Week
I don't know who needs to hear this, but there are no actual factions in Bitcoin. There's a network. It works, or it doesn't.
— ???????? (@eric_lombrozo) July 6, 2022
