Rebecca Stevens

what stage of the cycle is it when dez from austin & ally is now the co-founder of an ai startup

“it was built five years ago”

@fintechfrank congrats frank! 💖

After nearly seven years helping build The Block, I’m officially saying goodbye to our flagship podcast, The Scoop. It’s a bittersweet moment, but one filled with gratitude and optimism for what is next and the crypto industry.

you’re welcome everybody

🧵 1/ Stablecoins have emerged as crypto's killer app, surging to a $250bn supply and accelerating the arrival of pivotal legislation. This momentum has ignited an arms race, pushing banks, fintechs, and payment giants including Visa, Stripe, and PayPal to aggressively map out their stablecoin strategies. Demand for exposure to the stablecoin sector is high, as we’ve seen with the success of Circle’s IPO last week. With rapid adoption, our team analyzed traction, competitive dynamics, and value accrual throughout the stablecoin ecosystem.

swim, bike, run is the new live, laugh, love

🧵 1/ In less than 18 months, Ethena has become a bedrock across both DeFi and CeFi infrastructure. Ethena’s USDe has become the fastest USD asset to reach 5bn in supply. With Ethena’s rapid growth, the ParaFi team wanted to do a deep dive into the protocol’s mechanics. We focused on three main areas: 1. Peg Resilience: To what degree has Ethena maintained its peg through massive market drawdowns? 2. Yield Profile and System Backing: How have the protocol’s asset composition and yield drivers changed YTD? 3. Capacity Constraints: Is Ethena nearing DeFi TVL or open interest limits?

I ❤️ NY

🧵1/ Layer3 is now one of the largest routers of on-chain economic activity, formulating its position as a next-generation aggregator. It’s not just a ‘quest platform’ as some misconstrue it, but much more. Layer3 has: -Powered on-chain experiences for 5mm+ users -Facilitated 157mm transactions -Worked with over 500 crypto applications Additionally, it has some of the stickiest users in the crypto space, with top users spending 100+ consecutive days on the platform. 👉Let’s take a closer look at Layer3 and its mission to become the homepage for the on-chain world.

Stablecoins have reentered the spotlight in recent months, especially on the heels of the Stripe<>Bridge acquisition. Settling trillions in value with the likes of banks, governments, and corporates involved, stablecoins can no longer be ignored. We are in the early stages of a new era for payments and fintech, one powered by rapid settlement, programmable finance, and accessible financial services.

friends dont even want to hang out with me anymore unless we are talking token launchpads 😔😔😔

cant believe my duolingo streak reached 2k before bitcoin hit 100k

Let's examine @Polymarket's open interest (“OI”), trader profitability, and potential market manipulation concerns ahead of the election. Through October, OI surged from $120M to $371M on Polymarket, dominated by election-related markets. Over 75% of the $433M in OI hinges on this election’s outcome, including $230M (53%) tied to the presidential election and $75M (17%) to the popular vote. By contrast, the largest non-election market only has $3M of OI. As results roll in, a significant drop in OI is expected, raising key questions: To where will freed-up USDC flow? New markets or withdrawals? Let’s touch on Trader Profitability: Of Polymarket’s 343K lifetime users, only ~26% are profitable. Interestingly, just five accounts have crossed $1M in profit, and only 11% have made over $10. The top 10 most profitable traders hold 16% of total gains and include the most active traders. Fredi9999, along with three related accounts, controls 21% of the “Yes Trump” shares for the election-winner market and 42% of the “Yes Trump” shares in the popular vote market. If Trump wins the election, Fredi9999 stands to make $20M+ in profit from their election winner bet alone. In contrast, “Yes Harris” shares in the election-winner market show less concentration, with the top 5 holders owning only 18%. Polymarket’s most profitable trader, JustKam, has never held more than $3.6M worth of shares at any one time, earning through active trading and market-making. Is There Market Manipulation? We don’t believe so. Fredi9999, now identified as a French national, began accumulating Trump shares in August. Across four accounts, Fredi9999 purchased 47M shares tied to a Trump election victory, primarily in October. While Fredi9999 invested over $25M in the market, their trades only accounted for ~4% of the total volume of "Yes Trump" shares in the election-winner market in October. After accumulating the shares at an average price of ~$0.56, Fredi9999’s unrealized gains stand at $1.8M, peaking at ~$5.3M when Trump’s odds hit 67%. Over the weekend, however, a surge in Harris’ poll numbers saw Trump’s odds decline on Polymarket, and a new account—created October 29th—quickly became the largest Harris shareholder with 10.8M shares, bought with $5M. Disclaimer: The above thread is provided for informational purposes only. It should not be construed as investment advice. Please see parafi.com/disclosure for more information. ParaFi Capital is an investor in Polymarket. PnL numbers were taken on the night of October 31st. Thank you to @Domahhhh, @primo_data, @0xBoxer, and @/lifewillbeokay on Dune for aggregating and sharing data related to Polymarket.

i hate finance halloween, what do you mean you’re janet yellen drinking a beer in beijing?

if i was domestic product i would cry myself to sleep knowing everyone called me gross

how it started vs how it ended

theyre citing polymarket odds on pop tingz now its getting serious

🧵1/ The ParaFi team has been digging into Ethereum’s activity post EIP-4844. We focused on 3 critical questions: 1)What is the latest with Ethereum’s burn? 2)How is L2 traction faring? 3) What is the economic relationship between L2s and Ethereum? After EIP-1559 and The Merge, there was excitement around the economics of ETH as a cash-flow generating asset. Initially after the two upgrades, the supply of ETH did drop, falling ~0.38% from September 2022 to April 2024, but since then the supply has been climbing as the burn rate has slowed. The ETH staking rewards rate has been on a downwards trend over the past 12 months, as the number of Ethereum validators has grown 79% over the past year, and L1 transaction fees have declined. While the burn has decelerated, smart contracts tied to Uniswap, Tether, 1inch, and MetaMask continue to drive a majority of gas consumption on Ethereum.

🧵 1/ In light of @Polymarket's recent explosive growth, the ParaFi team has been analyzing on-chain data to understand two critical questions: 1) What factors are driving Polymarket’s recent traction? 2) To what degree is Polymarket’s growth driven by the U.S. election? As context, ParaFi has been studying and investing in prediction markets since 2018. Today, ParaFi is the single largest investor in Polymarket, having invested in the seed round in 2020 and doubling down in subsequent years. With the 2024 U.S. election approaching, Polymarket has seen $688 million in trading volume year to date and weekly active users grow ~14x from around 1,400 to 20,000+. However, volumes only tell part of the story. There’s much more to unpack under the hood. ⬇️⬇️⬇️