CMC Market Pulse delivers actionable market insights, giving you all the key narratives and developments you need in under 5 minutes.
Market Overview 📉
Crypto markets climbed higher this week, driven initially by quiet positive price action over the weekend, which culminated in two large positive days for the markets. Total Crypto Market Cap rose more than 9% in the week, currently sitting at $2.411T.
Bitcoin (BTC) saw a rise of 12.34% across the week, while Ethereum (ETH) fared much weaker, closing the week with a gain of only 8.91%.
Daily liquidations skewed towards the short side, with short liquidations peaking at $205M on Monday, before the figures balanced out across long and short liquidations. Funding rates on BTC rose towards 10%, while ETH’s fell instead, potentially indicating a short-term lowered interest in ETH as an investment.
📌 Tesla moves their Bitcoin holdings for the first time in two years, transferring more than $760M in BTC to fresh wallets. - Link
📌 Grayscale has filed for a new cryptocurrency ETF with the SEC, this time proposing for an ETF with a mix of assets, including Bitcoin, Ether, Solana and several other digital assets. - Link
📌 Robinhood launches futures trading and index options to their app, enabling the trade of Bitcoin futures on the platform. - Link
Why does it matter?
The markets seem to have shrugged off the uncertainty of the prior week, both in relation to the Middle East conflict as well as inflationary concerns in the US. Additionally, reports of potentially higher incoming stimulus in the Chinese markets helped to alleviate the negative sentiment from the week prior as well. A sudden rise in Trump odds on popular prediction market platform, PolyMarket, has also convinced more investors of a Trump victory, possibly leading the market front-running this result. That said, speculators have also questioned if the odds have been skewed by a specific large trader on the platform who controls more than $25M in bets on a Trump victory.
The week saw strength return to BTC from the altcoins the week prior, with TOTAL3 plunging more than 5% in the week against BTC and BTC Dominance surging almost 1.6%. Notable outperformers among altcoins continue to center on memecoins with popular choices MEW, MOG, BOME and BITCOIN making huge moves against the broader market. Individual altcoins with their own catalysts also did exceptionally well. This includes tokens such as Ethena (ENA) and Raydium (RAY).
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Narrative of the Week 📰
The Sui blockchain captures the spotlight for the week, with many debating if Sui can execute a Solana-style run.
📌 Prominent crypto trader, lightcrypto, lays out a bearish thesis on Sui, citing valuation concerns against Solana and alleged insider dumping of $400M in SUI tokens on the recent rally. - Link
📌 SuiLend founder, 0xRooter, shares his experience on building on both Sui and Solana, comparing developer experience, user experience and the builder ecosystem on both chains. - Link
📌 Sui refutes claims that $400M of tokens have been sold by neither the team, employees nor investors. They have also refuted claims that the suspected wallet belongs to any insider, although skeptics are still doubtful of these statements. - Link
Why does it matter?
Since the beginning of this cycle, Solana has taken the mantle of the dominant L1, with its impressive comeback after the collapse of FTX. As the bull market progresses, newer L1s such as Sui have begun to challenge Solana’s position. With the recent SUI rally, all eyes are once again on the Sui blockchain, especially with its TVL surging more than 50% in the past month to breach the $1B mark. However, it remains to be seen if Sui can follow in Solana’s footsteps and cement its position as a dominant L1.
Major Project Updates 🗓️
📌 Leading stablecoin deployer, Tether, has announced plans to diversify its business into traditional finance lending as well as commodities trading, separate from their stablecoin business. - Link
📌 Circle’s stablecoin, USDC, has been enabled as a gas token on the Base L2, unlocking new opportunities for improved user experience on the chain. - Link
📌 Fuel Network launches Fuel Ignition, a high-powered Ethereum L2, with the focus on home validation and consumer hardware requirements. - Link
📌 Data availability layer, Celestia, completes the Shwap Upgrade, making data availability sampling 12x faster while reducing storage requirements on nodes by 16.5x. - Link
📌 Sonic (formerly Fantom), drops their latest Litepaper, introducing the newest additions to their tokenomics, including a 6% supply mint six months after the launch of the network for the Sonic airdrop. - Link
📌 SingularityDAO, Cogito Finance and SelfKey propose a strategic merger to launch Singularity Finance, an EVM Layer 2 blockchain for the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) from the AI economy. - Link
📌 Sony-backed L1, Soneium, unveils the 30 winners of the Soneium Spark incubation program, spanning across categories including DeFi, NFTs, gaming, social and more. - Link
Why does it matter?
Enabling USDC as a gas token on Base is a huge step forward for the Base chain, which has long aimed to be the chain to onboard the next billion retail users. The step reduces the need to hold ETH, which could subject users to unwanted volatility during market turmoil. However, there are skeptics as well, who speculate that if other large L2s take this stance as well, the position of ETH as the gas token for the entire Ethereum ecosystem could falter, greatly reducing the demand for ETH as there would be no inherent need to hold ETH on these chains anymore.
DeFi Brief 🏦
📌 Donald Trump kicks off the token sale for World Liberty Finance, enabling accredited investors in the US and KYC-ed users outside of the US to purchase the token. The project has since raised $12.5M out of their $300M target. - Link
📌 Ethena proposes the addition of SOL to its backing assets, in addition to the current ETH and BTC. While some believe this would increase USDe’s reach, some question the stability of the SOL price. - Link
📌 Multi-chain lending platform, Radiant Capital, has been exploited on Arbitrum and the Binance Smart Chain, with approximately $51M in funds stolen. - Link
📌 Solana DEX aggregator, Jupiter Exchange, launches Ape Pro, a mobile-friendly interface to ape into the latest memecoins on the go, while accessing advanced charts and data with optimized MEV protection. - Link
Why does it matter?
The highly anticipated token sale for the Trump-backed DeFi project, World Liberty Finance, flopped immediately after launch, with the token sale raising only $12.5M more than 24 hours after the sale first opened. Many attribute this to the non-transferability of the WLFI token, which has no announced unlock date at the moment. Several critics have also lamented the decision to conduct the token sale just weeks before the upcoming Presidential Elections, which could jeopardize Trump’s odds in the elections.
Meme Coins 🚀
📌 An AI agent, funded by a16z’s Marc Andreessen, has created an AI memecoin, GOAT, seemingly of its own will. The memecoin has taken the crypto space by storm, quickly surging to a peak market cap of over $300M. - Link
📌 Vitalik Buterin continues his selling of memecoins that have been sent to his public address for free, this time selling off 257 ETH worth of memecoins including MSTR, ETH6900, POPCAT and more. - Link
Fundraises 💰
📌 Bitcoin-based yield aggregation protocol, Solv Protocol, raises $25M from investors including Blockchain Capital, Binance Labs, Laser Digital and Spartan Group, among many others. - Link
📌 Praxis Nation raises a total of $525M in a financing round led by GEM Digital, Arch Lending, and Manifold. Praxis Nation seeks to build the first network state, aimed at accelerating technological progress. - Link
📌 Data verification platform, Opacity Network, raises $12M in a seed round led by Archetype and Breyer Capital, with support from a16z Crypto CSX, Bodhi Ventures and more. - Link
📌 Ithaca, a team spun off from the Paradigm venture capital firm, has raised $20M from Paradigm. Ithaca is building Odyssey, an open-source Layer 2 testnet built on the OP Stack, Conduit and Reth. - Link
📌 RPG game studio, Azra Games, raises $42.7M in a Series A round led by Pantera Capital, with participation from a16z Crypto, a16z Games and NFX. - Link
📌 Predicate raises $7M in a funding round, with investors including 1k(x), Tribe Capital, Figment Capital and angel investors including Polygon’s Sandeep Nailwal, among others. - Link
Airdrops Abound 🎁
📌 Hyperliquid announces their upcoming token, HYPE, and token airdrop. Users must review and accept the Genesis Event Terms by 11 November to be eligible for the airdrop. - Link
📌 ETH liquid restaking platform, Puffer Finance, opens claims for the the PUFFER token airdrop. Users can now also participate in governance and reward boosting through staking vePUFFER. - Link
📌 Cross-chain bridging platform, DeBridge, opens up claims for the DBR airdrop for 491,000 eligible wallets. Users who have opted to claim directly to a centralized exchange have also received their tokens. - Link
📌 AI data layer, Grass, announces the date for their upcoming airdrop checker on 21 October. Claims will be opened at a later date. - Link
📌 Orderbook liquidity protocol, Elixir, teases a snapshot, potentially hinting at an upcoming token airdrop. - Link
Tweet of the Week 📝
Source: truth_terminal
Find yourself a KOL who works for their bags as hard as the terminal of truths.
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