You’re Not Bullish Enough On ETH

GM Anon! ETH has surpassed the $3K milestone amid a flurry of developments, including the possibility of spot ETFs, innovative DeFi projects built on its network, and its dominant position in TVL within the DeFi sector. Additionally, Ethereum's deflationary nature adds to its appeal. With these factors in play, ETH appears primed for a potential parabolic surge unlike anything seen before. Let's dive in!

State Of The Market

Industry Updates

• In the United Kingdom, Economic Secretary to the Treasury Bim Afolami announced plans to introduce legislation for stablecoin and crypto staking services within six months, signaling the government's recognition of the growing importance of digital assets.

• European Central Bank states Bitcoin’s fair value is still zero, and is not suitable for payments or as an investment. 

• Nvidia adds $277B in market value, the largest single-day gain in history.

• Reddit disclosed it has been investing excess funds into BTC and ETH.

• Meanwhile, the CME Group announced the upcoming launch of euro-denominated micro Bitcoin and Ethereum futures in response to increasing demand in the derivatives market. The move follows the success of their US dollar-denominated counterparts and is pending regulatory review, with a launch date set for March 18.

• In Asia, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority provided guidance on custodial services to enhance regulatory clarity, while Japan is considering allowing Venture Capital firms to hold crypto assets, aiming to support innovation in the tech sector.

• Honduras took a different stance by banning cryptos and related derivatives like ETFs in banking operations, diverging from the broader trend of crypto adoption seen in Latin America.

• GoFundMe halted a crowdfunding campaign for Tornado Cash legal defense due to a violation of its terms of service, reflecting the platform's commitment to upholding standards.

• eBay is reassessing its NFT strategy and downsizing its Web3 team.

• Ripple expanded its global presence by collaborating with the CIB in Egypt.

• Binance announced the shutdown of several leveraged token services associated with BTC, ETH, and BNB.

Project Updates

• ETHDenver 2024, the world's largest Web3 #BUIDLathon, is scheduled to take place from February 29 to March 3. 

• Additionally, the Uniswap Foundation announced a tentative launch date for Uniswap v4, indicating that it is likely to debut in Q3 of this year.

• Andreessen invest $100M in EigenLayer. 

• YCombinator's latest “Request for Startups” list includes a focus on crypto stablecoin startups, reflecting the growing interest in stablecoins within the startup ecosystem.

• The Worldcoin app has achieved a significant milestone, surpassing over 1M daily active users, indicating a strong uptake and adoption of the platform.

• Three Arrows Capital and Alameda Research continue to hold substantial amounts of WLD (WorldCoin).

• Chiliz's partnership with South Korea’s premier football league involves integrating "K League Fantasy" into the Chiliz chain, enhancing fan engagement and expanding the platform's reach into new markets.

• Fixed Float's confirmed hack of $26M hack.

• The dYdX DAO is currently engaged in a voting process to consider adding an EOS market to the dYdX chain, potentially expanding its offering and user base.

• With $375.28M of AVAX set to unlock on February 22, there may be potential market impacts as these tokens become available for trading or other purposes.

• Biconomy's integration of Account Abstraction infrastructure into Trust Wallet's new smart contract wallet offering enhances user experience and functionality, providing seamless access to decentralized applications.

Consistently, the Optimism Mainnet maintains over 60% of the daily active addresses among the top optimistic rollups.

Optimism has recently launched its 4th airdrop for creators within its ecosystem, with a significant amount of OP still available for upcoming distributions. 

• If you're a frequent user of Layer-2 solutions, now might be an opportune moment to consider transitioning some of your activities to Optimism to capitalize on future rewards.

The rise of Liquid Restaking Tokens (LRTs) has injected new life into Ethereum's DeFi arena, Platforms such as Puffer and Ether.Fi have attracted substantial deposits, leveraging EigenLayer's restaking protocol, which taps into Ethereum's security framework. 

• While investors are enticed by the promise of higher yields, skeptics caution against the speculative nature of the "points" frenzy associated with these liquid restaking platforms. 

• These points, offering potential future rewards and airdrops, have driven a surge in deposits reminiscent of the yield farming frenzy of 2021. 

• Despite the risks involved, proponents argue that there is genuine value beyond the hype, as liquid restaking presents a novel method for securing blockchain protocols and networks.

• Consider staking ETH on platforms like Ether-fi, Puffer, and others if you find this intriguing and have funds you can afford to potentially lose.

• Use these invite links for Puffer, Swell, Renzo, Kelp DAO, Claystack, and  Ether.Fi to get started.

Bitcoin Weekly

Bitcoin has demonstrated limited price movement, remaining within a narrow range of 50.5k to 53k throughout the previous week. This stability suggests a period of consolidation in the market.

• A notable technical development is the emergence of a bearish divergence, wherein the price of BTC has recorded higher highs while the Relative Strength Index has formed lower highs. This discrepancy indicates a weakening of the upward momentum, hinting at a potential reversal in price direction.

• The significance of this bearish divergence lies in its implication for market sentiment. If the weekly RSI fails to sustain its climb and establish a higher high, it could foreshadow an imminent downturn in BTC's price. This suggests that a market correction or a significant downward movement may be on the horizon.

• Traders and investors should closely monitor the behavior of the weekly RSI to gauge the likelihood of a price reversal. Additionally, attention to key support and resistance levels within the specified price range can provide further insight into potential market movements.

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Blue Chip and Majors Overview

• Bitcoin (BTC): Price surged past $50k but struggles to gain momentum after hitting $52k. Predictions suggest a potential surge to $150k fueled by spot Bitcoin ETFs approval and upcoming halving event. Some anticipate a cooling down period for Bitcoin prices.

• Ethereum (ETH): Surged past $3k before retreating slightly, driven by factors like the Dencun upgrade and spot Ethereum ETF news.

• AltLayer (ALT): Closed a $14.4M strategic round, facing community backlash over favoritism concerns.

• Starknet (STRK): Token value continues to decline after initial listing, attributed to dumping by airdrop farmers.

• Worldcoin (WLD): Token surged by nearly 250% driven by growing adoption and whale accumulation.

• Optimism (OP): Announced fourth airdrop, currently bullish with an increase of 61% over the past year.

• Gearbox (GEAR): Reported a significant increase of nearly 60% over the past week, introducing leverage into Ethereum re-staking.

• Golem (GLM): Experienced a significant price jump of nearly 70% over seven days, supported by Binance launching GLM perpetual contracts.

• Arweave (AR): Token hit an 18-month high, gaining nearly 60% over 14 days, driven by developments within the Arweave ecosystem.

• Stacks (STX): Registered a 101% increase over the past 30 days, experiencing a slight drop in the past 24 hours.

• Render (RNDR): Made considerable gains with over 60% increase in the past two weeks, buoyed by positive news about Nvidia.

• Chiliz (CHZ): Reported an increase of 36% over the past 30 days, gaining 10% in the past 24 hours following onboarding Paris Saint-Germain.

• WINkLink (WIN): Saw a 22% surge in price over the past 7 days before a slight retreat.

• Ronin (RON): Increased participation in staking initiative drove price from $2.56 to $3.49 before a marginal drop.

• Pixels (PIXEL): Listed on Binance, reaching $0.67 before dropping to $0.46, currently trading at $0.54.

• Heroes Of Mavia (MAVIA): Continued gaining traction, reaching an all-time high of $10.71 before a slight drop, currently trading at $7.14.

Smart Money Movements

Smart Money is still into AI tokens, especially the ones with a working network.

• $NMT is still favoured among the smart money; the team cut the emissions heavily, and the sell pressure has been reduced because of it.

• The $NMT mining rewards were CRAZY, you could mine 1000 $NMT a day with a 4090 GPU, which means that you could cover the cost of the GPU in 12 hours! It got diluted in a few days and reduced to 400 tokens/day for each 4090 GPU, until today that it's around 100 tokens. A 90% reward decrease in a few days, as it got diluted by more miners and also the team decreased the emissions.

• Another interesting AI token that caught the attention of smart money is $CDX. CodeX allows users to create dApps on more than 20 chains, it means that you can deploy your DEX, launchpad, or any smart contracts with a few clicks with zero coding experience. Pretty interesting, yeah?:)

• Smart Money has been interacting with mixer projects like $WHIRL and $LOCK, as the fixed float has been exploited, and the mixer protocols were able to cover their absence pretty well, so they got good traction.

• By the way, WHIRL utilises rhino.fi, and they've built a privacy layer around it. rhino.fi is a new bridge that supports a variety of chains, something similar to Orbiter, which is fast and cheap. One of the most favoured bridges among the airdrop farmers.

• While $LOCK is utilising CEXs' APIs like Binance and OKX, and their privacy layer is built around these exchanges, which is still pretty centralised, but it works really well. FYI, $LOCK is the new version of $POOF, The HoudiniSwap.

• $FLIP has been popular among the smart money as well. Flip chain is basically a cross-chain AMM aka bridge, similar to $RUNE that enables BTC <=> ETH native bridge. It's a new token so you know the drill.