CMC Market Pulse delivers actionable market insights, giving you all the key narratives and developments you need in under 5 minutes.
Market Overview 📉
The week saw Bitcoin (BTC) trade largely sideways for the majority of the week with slight deviations both upwards and downwards before closing the week slightly higher. The 100K level remains hotly contested as bulls and bears take their shot for control over the market. The total crypto market cap continued to climb, with a slight gain to $3.77T this week.
Bitcoin (BTC) saw a small increase of 2.80% across the week, while Ethereum (ETH) weakened against it, eking out a mere 0.64% gain from the week prior.
Daily liquidations surged primarily on the longs, after a leverage flush in the middle of the week resulted in more than $1.5B in longs wiped out. Short liquidations remain largely muted, with an average of $150M liquidated per day. Funding rates across the board fell to healthier levels as liquidations flush the leverage out of the market. BTC, ETH and SOL have all settled at 10%, much lower than in the middle of the week at 30-35%.
📌 Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy acquires another 21,550 BTC for a total of $2.1B at an average price of $98,783, making this MicroStrategy’s fifth consecutive week of BTC purchases. - Link
📌 El Salvador modifies their Bitcoin Law to as part of the deal with the IMF for access to up to $3.3B in loans. Under the new law, merchants are no longer obliged to accept BTC for payments. - Link
📌 Bitcoin mining platform, Riot Platforms, propose a private offering of $500M in convertible senior notes for the purpose of acquiring additional BTC and for general operations. - Link
Why does it matter?
This week saw the attempt to reclaim the $100K level after losing it the week prior, while the market hovers between above and under $100K, the leverage situation is much healthier, after an earlier leverage flush in the week. In fact, this week’s liquidation event was the largest liquidation event since 2021, positioning the market well for a more controlled, spot-driven move to new highs. Traditional markets did not see much action this week, with the S&P 500 falling ~0.51%, while the Nasdaq did much better with a gain of 0.76% instead.
The market strength was led by BTC, with BTC dominance rising more than 2.33% this week to 56.63%. Interestingly, BTC dominance was another 2% higher before the leverage flush, suggesting that altcoins fared much better during the liquidation.
Notable outperformers among altcoins were distributed across various categories, including Ethereum DeFi coins and AI agent coins. Top performers included Fartcoin (FART), ai16z (AI16Z), Aave (AAVE) and Sushi (SUSHI).
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Narrative of the Week 📰
AI agent infrastructure tokens took the spotlight in the AI memecoin narrative as speculators shifted their focus to bet on the ‘picks and shovels’ of the narrative.
📌 DWF Labs announces a $20M AI Agent Fund dedicated to the development of autonomous AI agents. Aside from financial backing, projects will also receive support and guidance from the DWF team. - Link
📌 AI agent infrastructure protocol, Virtual Protocol, releases their AI Agent Sandbox, enabling users to fully customize their AI agents, in personality and goals. - Link
📌 ai16z flips Goatse Maximus, the first AI agent to capture the attention of the crypto world, cementing the shift in focus to AI agent infrastructure. - Link
Why does it matter?
AI agents took the crypto world by storm just two months ago, with Goatse Maximus (GOAT) leading the charge. However, as hundreds of new, similar agents spawned, the market quickly moved past the cookie-cutter agents being released. As such, focus gradually shifted to projects working on infrastructure for AI agents, with projects like Virtual Protocol quickly rising the ranks to surpass a market capitalization of $1B. With ai16z flipping GOAT to take the spot of the largest AI agent coin on Solana, this further cements the shift in market attention for the AI agent space.
Major Project Updates 🗓️
📌 Binance and Circle announce a strategic partnership, in which Binance will make USDC extensively available across their suite of products and in their corporate treasury, with support from Circle. - Link
📌 ETH restaking layer, EigenLayer, introduces Rewards v2, enabling greater flexibility over distribution and claim of rewards for operators and users. Rewards v2 is expected on mainnet in January 2025. - Link
📌 Sonic (previously Fantom) will be launching their public mainnet next week. The launch will also introduce Sonic Gateway, a bridge between Ethereum and Sonic. - Link
📌 Ethereum L2, Fuel, introduces their token, FUEL, which will secure their sequencer as well as enable a gasless experience for their users. The token will be launched in the coming two weeks. - Link
📌 Decentralized social network, Farcaster, introduces Snapchain, a data layer built specifically to support the operations of Farcaster, which is built in Rust and is capable of 10k transactions per second. - Link
📌 The Degen L3 chain completes its migration from Conduit to Alchemy, following a standoff and a series of operational issues with Conduit. - Link
📌 Gaming-focused network, Beam, announces the launch of an accelerator with Sophon and Aethir focused on gaming and AI, as well as BeamAI, their very own AI division. - Link
Why does it matter?
With the strategic partnership between Binance and Circle, this move could incentivize more traders and investors to utilize USDC due to Binance’s dominance as the top centralized exchange, while Binance is able to better comply with regulations thanks to Circle’s heavy focus on compliance.
DeFi Brief 🏦
📌 Multichain DEX, SushiSwap, proposes the liquidation of its treasury, which is currently held in SUSHI tokens, into a breakdown of 70% stablecoins, 20% blue-chip assets such as BTC and ETH, as well as an optional 10% allocation into DeFi tokens such as AAVE. - Link
📌 SushiSwap’s “Head Chef” Jared Grey unveils the project’s 2025 roadmap, including plans for the launch of four new products, including a perpetual DEX and delta neutral trading strategies. - Link
📌 Leading Solana lending platform, Kamino, introduces Kamino Swap, an intent-based exchange for users, powered by Pyth Network. Limit orders have now been enabled on the platform. - Link
📌 Weighted automated market maker (AMM), Balancer, launches Balancer v3, which brings to the platform increased customizability over pools, 100% boosted pools for higher yields, and more. - Link
📌 Frax Finance kicks off a rebrand of their project, with the FRAX stablecoin changing their ticker to frxUSD, while Frax Share (FXS) rebrands to FRAX to realign with the core brand. - Link
📌 Trump-backed DeFi project, World Liberty Finance, has acquired $10M in ETH, and $1M each in AAVE and LINK, on-chain. - Link
Why does it matter?
SushiSwap’s proposal to liquidate their own treasury into a stablecoin-majority treasury showcases the lessons learnt from the last bear market. Many projects held their treasuries entirely denominated in their native token, resulting in a much smaller treasury once the market was deep into the bear, where most altcoins fell 70-90% over months. This also highlights the maturing of the industry, especially across long-standing projects which have weathered multiple cycles in this volatile industry.
Meme Coins 🚀
📌 Remilia Corporation launches the CULT token, airdropping the meme token to holders of their NFTs, including the Milady Maker and Redacted Remilio Babies collections. The CULT token hit a peak market capitalization of $850M on launch day. - Link
📌 Coinbase continues their streak of memecoin listings, this time with Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT), much to the dismay of many investors who lamented to the lack of “utility” tokens being listed on the platform. - Link
📌 The LUIGI memecoin launches on pump.fun after the arrest of the suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter, Luigi Mangione. The token reached a peak market capitalization of $77M. - Link
📌 Memecoin launcher, pump.fun, bans UK users from using the platform after a warning from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). - Link
Fundraises 💰
📌 Self-custodial BTC investment app, Relai, raises $12M in a seed round led by Ego Death Capital, with other investors including Plan B Bitcoin Fund, Solit Group and Timechain. - Link
📌 Verifiable AI builders, Hyperbolic Labs, raises $20M in a Series A funding round led by Variant and Polychain Capital, with support from Faction VC, Chapter One, GSR, Wintermute and more. - Link
📌 Diversified crypto holding company, COSIMO, raises $25M in a funding round led the Eolas Capital founder, Des Mac Intyre, in a move to consolidate the company’s suite of services. - Link
📌Decentralized computing services provider Exabits raises $15M in seed funding led by Hack VC, with participation from other undisclosed investors. - Link
📌 Stablecoin infrastructure project, Perena, raises $3M in a pre-seed raise led by Borderless Capital, with other investors including Primitive Crypto, Binance Labs, Maelstrom and more. - Link
Airdrops Abound 🎁
📌 Multi-chain marketplace, Magic Eden, opens claims for their governance token, ME. Eligible users have until 1 Feb 2025 to claim their tokens, after which unclaimed tokens will be redistributed to stakers. - Link
📌 Move-based Ethereum L2, Movement, releases their MOVE airdrop to eligible users. Users can now claim their airdrop on Ethereum or wait to claim on the Movement mainnet for a 1.25x bonus. - Link
📌 Solana DEX aggregator, Jupiter, passes the governance vote for their upcoming airdrop, Jupuary, with the snapshot having been completed on November 2nd. The airdrop will commence in January. - Link
📌 Commonware, a collective ‘crypto primitives’ toolkit, raises $9M in a funding round led by Haun Ventures and Dragonfly, with support from angels including Mert Muntaz, Nick White, Smokey the Bera, Sreeram Kannan and more. - Link
Tweet of the Week 📝
Source: Stocktwits
As Hedgeye points out, Fartcoin’s MCap is now greater than 38% of all American publicly-traded companies. ‘Hot air rises’ indeed.
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