TokenFi

@TraderNoah Source?

Feels like we're experiencing some mid-bear market complacency in crypto. The leaders are starting to show signs of weakness after reaching aggressive valuations. Although recent liquid fund surveys suggest cash levels are elevated and people expect higher btc dominance, the same survey suggests that people believe majors will be up materially through eoy and they're overweight majors/bluechip defi. It's hard to see on-chain kpis materially inflecting, so although valuations are much lower than 6 months ago, the range of fair valuations has compressed as well.

@hasufl @mdudas People forget what Covid 2020 was like, we had no idea how deadly that disease was going to be (turned out pretty deadly but not the worst case possible), at the time requesting masking + vaccine was more than reasonable expectation

@mdudas Only difference: who's in charge right now

@Shaughnessy119 1. Is wildly out of touch. Closer to liberalism vs fascism

The Three Wars 1. Capitalism vs. Socialism (2028 election) 2. AI vs. Human Meaning 3. Crypto vs. Fiat

@phtevenstrong Very naive take, words lead to violence all the time throughout human history. Different ideologies lead to wars.

@phtevenstrong Insane as it sounds, there are limits on free speech and always have been. The amount of mis/disinformation over the past few years has lead to a regime that shows similar traits to fascism (idk about this clip tho).

I cannot express how important it is not to give anti-free-speech people even an inch. Insane as it may sound, we need to protect hate speech, conspiracy theories, and all manner of inflammatory opinions, or else speech laws will silence rational dissent against future tyranny.

@NathanWorsley_ Seems like a waste of resources

They don’t want you to know you can just Deep Research things

@DefiIgnas @Slappjakke Pendle and curve have had staying power with be

@Slappjakke Aerodrome or other protocols?

Amazing how many once hot & high potential crypto experiments failed. Just a few on my list: - Fractional NFTs / ERC-404 - NFT lending - Music NFTs - Elastic supply tokens/stablecoins (although $AMPL still alive) - $YFI style 'fair launches' - (3,3) - Move-to-Earn (and similar Earn slogans) - Two-token model (Bera might be last to try it) - Algo-stablecoins (UST but sUSD depegged despite 750% col. ratio) - "Stable asset" controlled by interest rates, not pegged to fiat: $RAI - Stables backed by Protocol controlled value (PCV) like $FEI. (Olimpus DAO keeps similar Protocol Owned Liquidity (POL) idea alive.) Failure is part of innovation. And crypto is amazing as we experiment a lot. Perhaps those ideas were ahead of their time, like YouTube was before adequate internet speeds. Still, I feel innovation in tokenomics and demand for complex mechanics have declined. The UST collapse gave us PTSD. Experimentation still exists. e.g.: - Berachain's Proof-of-Liquidity (PoL) -> Chain-Owned Liquidity (COL) - Intia's Enshrined liquidity - Internet Capital Markets - Memecoin launchpads: Boop, pumpfun - L2s Remember that experimentation is great but don't marry your bags and the latest hot trend will likely fade away.

@JustDeauIt Do you really think it was the cuts that lead to the negative GDP? Cmon man

Trump is right about this. The Fed cut 100 bps last year right into the election season. Since that time: 1. Crude is down 8% 2. The Atlanta Fed was projecting Q4 growth of 3.2% (actual 2.4%). It's projecting Q1 growth of -2.2% 3. Unemployment rose from 4.1 to 4.2%. Announced layoffs are at higher levels since the GFC (not yet reflected in the labor stats). --- The Fed seems happy to sit on its hands as the Move Index (bond volatility) and VIX (stock volatility) hit their highest levels since the GFC and Covid. It is telling the market "we cannot cut because we don't know the tariff policy impacts on inflation." Read: the Fed has become politicized. And the market is in the crosshairs. I expect this to lead to increasingly reflexive turmoil as Trump threatens to fire Powell or tap his replacement before Powell's term is up (feeding even further market turmoil)

@JustDeauIt Just put the analytics in the bag

What Trump is trying to do to re-route global trade flows so that America can capture more value is akin to what Ethereum is trying to do with the L2 roadmap, so that ETH can capture more value. Both transitions will be messy. Analysis backing up why (for Ethereum) in the first reply below 👇

@toghrulmaharram Crypto community is cringe, therefore the slogans are too

Why are all the crypto slogans so fucking cringe? Wall Street hedge funds have more relatable slogans than stuff that people cook up around here

@divine_economy lol surely not

all coins are the same unless they're giving dividends to holders

@blockworksres @cburniske Does this account for the increase in ETH price?

2/ Quarterly DEX volume is back to increasing after bottoming in Q3 2023. ETH-USD and Stablecoin Swaps are the two most important trading pairs, driving over 60% of total spot volume.

1/ We just released a new dashboard covering DEX activity on Ethereum. Built by @0xSharples, the dashboard covers Ethereum's major trading pairs and DEXs. Here are the highlights

@ryanberckmans Why RWAs to stables specifically?

A key metric for large chains is the ratio of RWAs to stablecoins. More RWAs shows maturity and is an early indicator of onchain economy network effects. Ethereum has $1 of RWAs per $20 of stablecoins, up 100% YoY.

@divine_economy Not lack of apps, but lack of quality apps that people want to use. Some of the most OG popular protocols are lucky to get 1k daily users.

the problem with crypto isn't the tech or even lack of apps anymore—and it's outdated to think they are. the problem is with incentives. and this space is about to see massive changes, because the incentives are totally fucked for... VCs. let me explain. for the past couple years, we've seen barbell funding in private markets: deals in hype-of-the-day categories like L2s and AI agents could command $100M+ valuations pre-product. anything else struggled to get funded. it's clear now that following hype cycles was a terrible strategy for most funds. the hype would die three months later, the token would launch 12 months later, and it would *start to unlock* 12 months after that. but the reason these cycles are so brutal isn't just that hype dies. after all, hype can often return years later too. the reason they're brutal is because the incentives are stacked for the token to fail. >the legal requirement to airdrop means that projects put their tokens into the hands of mercenaries who want to dump >liquidity farmers last 2-3 months and move to the next chain >centralized exchange listings demand giant transaction numbers, so protocols *try* to get botted. i deal with this constantly at @jokerace_io when i tell major protocols they can use us to make money *and* get real users, and they tell me they aren't interested in either. >market makers effectively have a short against their tokens by borrowing it, so they're incentivized to sell. to counter this, they normally offer a call option with a strike price, but this becomes a delta-neutral hedge for market makers to guarantee returns by keeping tokens within certain ranges. >there is massive pressure to get a high FDV for the sake of narrative and paper returns, but as we continue to see, a highly overvalued token will collapse under the weight of rationality and present a down-only narrative. >founders who have spent years on a project that is now highly overvalued will always do the rational thing: sell secondaries and OTC. private investors rarely can do this, so they're stuck holding the bag. and ultimately, by the time tokens actually unlock, and they're able to sell, private investors are lucky if they make any money at all. (they might not care if they just wanted paper returns). this effectively means that VCs have not only been memecoin investors, but the worst kind of memecoin investors—the ones who get locked up and can't sell until well after the memecoin has collapsed. of course, it's easy to say that the funds are getting what they deserved: if they invested in overhyped projects with 0 pmf that spent all their time and effort playing games to manipulate markets, it's probably a good thing for them to get washed out. but it also means that many actual great projects and altcoins have to weather completely misaligned incentives in the first few years just to stay alive. of course, in some ways that's also a good test of who actually has product-market fit. but the real issue is that product-market-fit barely matters to the market right now at all. and this is why things need to change. i'm cautiously optimistic that this whole space will come to it senses, stop trying to cash out on 3-month cycles, and actually invest in long-term generational products. but that's just hard to do in a short-termist environment that doesn't care about those. so we should also be worried—that funds will just move to liquid investments so they can be *more* short-term and not face locked tokens. either way, the era of overvaluing overhyped tokens is nearing its end in private markets, just as it did in public ones with memecoins a few months ago. at least for now.

@JustDeauIt @publius_val What are we doing here, please Occam’s razor this

@token_fi @publius_val Yes, I think it was. He went after them first to send a message to everyone. Then he negotiated with them. They were not on the April 2 list.

"Look, Trump is losing. He caved to the markets and other countries." No. Trump and the US were max exposed on "Liberation Day." That was the day when other countries had some leverage. They could have banded together and worked against the US. Instead they got in line to negotiate. Now, Trump will seek to turn everyone against China.

Ah yes. Threatening to kill yourself unless your financially dependent partner promises to stay with you forever, as a test to see if they love you. The art of the deal.

@JustDeauIt @publius_val Seems like there are other ways to do it rather than lying about the tariff rates, plummeting the market, and hurting relationships with our closest allies. So what was the tariff idea originally with Canada and Mexico about? Was that also alll about china?

@token_fi @publius_val Ha, why is this so hard to comprehend? The countries that got the highest tariffs are the countries that were routing Chinese goods through their markets after Trump imposed Tariffs on China during his first term. He wants to close that loop and freeze China out in my opinion.

@publius_val @JustDeauIt He also backed down with Canada and Mexico, his supporters are just too dumb to realize it

@JustDeauIt @token_fi I think he is a true believer in tarrifs as the end game, not just a tool But he needed a market bounce - what’s to change his mind 24hr from now? Pray he doesn’t read that he “backed down” otherwise the music just comes back on!

@JustDeauIt @publius_val Are you one of those 4D chess people?

@token_fi @publius_val If you believe he actually wants to impose tariffs on everyone outside of China, then you would think he is backing down here.

@JustDeauIt @publius_val Trump continually blinks and backs down

@publius_val It's not a good setup. Feels like both sides don't want to budge.