🐳 Who is this Bitcoin Whale?
PLUS is DeFi a failed experiment?
🗞 Market commentary.
A fresh-faced GM to you,
Nvidia is in charge, it’s the market dominator, the holy grail of stonks and AI-brypto as the AI narrative-driving chip maker posted better-than-expected earnings yesterday (potentially) proving that this AI bubble is here to stay for a little longer.
Another week and another vulnerability identified in DeFi, making me ask the question “is DeFi just one big failed experiment or are we still on track to become the future of France?”
Are we about to see the pillars of DeFi come under attack one by one?
Curve Finance was featured last week but old news becomes old news real fast as this week it’s Balancer. The team announced a “critical vulnerability” had affected 100 of its v2 pools spanning eight chains, exposing the possibility of an exploit taking place.
This is not the first time Balancer has come under fire as back in January the team warned liquidity providers that $6.3 million of funds were at risk which, at the time, looked to be part of a more significant potential exploit.
HsakaTrades posts “So this Balancer vulnerability had been out there sitting in the wild for two years?” as we rewind back to June 2020 when Balancer was hit by a white hat hacker with over $450,000 drained.
What is refreshing to see, at the time of writing anyway, is that no LP’ers or degenerates lost money as the Balancer team acted fast enabling users to exit the LP’s. Over 97% of the liquidity initially deemed vulnerable is now classified as SAFU, whilst TVL has dropped from $748M to $546M.
Controversial, but is DeFi just one big failed experiment as the DeFi ecosystem continues to shrink with stablecoins bleeding out of the system? Or are these continual, exploits, hacks and vulnerabilities just teething issues on the road to a robust era of centrally decentralised financial instruments?
🤓 In today’s email.
Degen corner. That you Larry?
DeFi insights. 11 actionable insights
ICYMI. Podcast w/ Unison, Research on Tenet and A thought-provoking piece of Solana
Top Tweets. Su zhu is a jeet
And finally. Will Nvidia pump AI tokens again?
🔥 Degen corner.
That you Larry?
Larry… is that you?
Is this your BlackRock Bitcoin-holding wallet?
Or did you buy the dip of the dip back in January when Bitcoins price crashed down to $16,000 in preparation for your Spot BTC ETF?
We’ve said before that if BlackRock really wanted to do they could slurp up the whole supply of spot Bitcoin across all exchanges, with it only making up a small percentage of their assets under management.
And speculation might indicate that wallet #3 is BlackRock as they coped a smol bag of spot Bitcoin before a Spot BTC ETF application filing news came to light in June.
Who is this new #3 BTC whale?
There’s a new Bitcoin whale wallet #3 who has casually accumulated 118,300.2 BTC, worth a couple of shekels over $3BN dollars with over 100,000 Bitcoins being transferred (or purchased) between May 16th & June 14th. The final top-up was at the almost peako local top at $30,057.
Which yes, like Saylor, puts this anon whale wallet #3 at a $107,515,020.2 loss… peanuts.
After digging and sleuthing this newly crowned Wallet #3 whale could be Gemini as previous BTC wallets 1P5ZE and 1FzWL appear to have connections. WuBlockchain also claims it to belong to Gemini whilst Arkham Intelligence has labelled the address as “Robinhood: Jump Trading Custody” as Jump Trading is reported, by Bloomberg, to be Robinhoods trade executors.
Ok so maybe this isn’t Larry Finks BlackRock BTC holding but it does make for an educated speculative guess. Logic rarely ever applies to crypto but why would Robinhood, who recently limited crypto trading, need to hold the 3rd largest stack of Bitcoin?
As the plot thickens, is this an exchange? Is it tradfi? Or is it Argentina preparing for a new country-wide currency upgrade?
👀 DeFi insights.
The important bits.
Aerodrome Finance - Goes live on Base next week revealing tokenomics and airdrop alpha - read
Bracket Labs - Introduce “Passage” a new range-bound product - read
Dexalot - Received $3m in Avax multiverse incentives, rumoured to go live on September 1 - read
Eigen Layer - EigenWorld mint went live, you have until Aug 30th - read
Elusiv - Private swaps launched on Solana - read
Hashflow - Integration with Moonpay giving 160+ countries access to Hashflow - read
Lybra - Everything you need to know about V2 - read
Mori Finance - Reveal what ETHS (ETH Stable) and ETHC (ETH Coin) are - read
NoloBot - Faster trades than Binance - read
Ociswap - The DEX of Radix launches “hooks” - read
Tenet Protocol - Tenet Trooper NFTs by completing tasks on Mercle - read
📰 DeFi news.
Even more important bits.
Binance invests in Pendle Finance as they launch there first real-world asset (RWA) based product using MakerDao’s boosted Savings (sDAI) and Flux Finance’s fUSDC - read
DeFi TVL lowest since February 2021 as DeFi continues to shrink as the future of finance looks in danger - read
Maple Finance secured a $5m funding round co-lead by Block Tower - read
Nvidia beat earnings expectations stating “sales will jump 170% this quarter” - read
Pro-BTC candidate wins Argentinia primary election - read
SBF to blame Fenwick & West Lawyers in his defence after pleading NOT GUILTY on Tuesday - read
🫠 ICYMI.
Life gets busy so here’s what you’ve missed.
Podcast: The LayerZero Yield Aggregator: Unison & Omnichain Yield
Listen & Watch.
Grant was joined by Mnsh from Unison.gg a new yield aggregator/enhancer that is being built on top of LayerZero. In this conversation, you will learn about how next-generation yield strategies in DeFi will become possible thanks to Unison.
Tune in on Spotify | YouTube →
Tenet Protocol: Unlocking the True Potential of LSDfi & Beyond
Research.
Essentially, Tenet will allow users to bridge over their LSTs from popular L1s to Tenet and receive a tLSD (Tenet Liquid Staking Derivative) by restaking said LST, a liquid representation of their share of LSDs staked with Tenet’s network validators.
What is Dead May Never Die: The Solana DeFi Ecosystem Overview 2023.
Thought Provoker.
Soylana, SBF Chain, Sam Coin, This cycle’s NEO, Ghost chain, VC chain, the list goes on… If you were one of those who had your Solana conviction put to the test over the last 18 months and still live to tell the tale, kudos.
🐥 Top tweets.
To save you doom scrolling.
InvestmentHulk, out ponzi the ponzi without making it look like a ponzi
HsakaTrades, in the casino of sh*tcoins it’s the MEVs that win
Tanoeth, now ain’t that the truth!
🦍 And finally…
Nvidia may just spur on another leg up in the AI narrative as it beat earnings yesterday which soft lands us into the start of Jackson Hole today with Fed Chair J Powell speaking tomorrow (Friday 25th) to close the week out.
Flip a coin.
Heads, JP doesn’t surprise us and we can all enjoy a weekend of touching grass.
Tails, JP tanks the market (again), and our portfolios get crushed as the weekend of touching grass isn’t quite as fun.
Your guess is as good as mine!
much love,
blocmates team 🫡
🤝 A final word.
A quick word from our super awesome sponsors who help us make this all possible...
Discover how your skills could power the next generation of web3 and blockchain technology. Your next career move could be one you never imagined. Start your search today at Web3nomads.jobs.
Uuuuuuuge stack Dan, kudos