We're so back

Week in Review:

• Another excellent week for crypto prices. BTC & ETH touched 37K and $2.1K. Every major alt sector in crypto was up, led by DeFi & GameFi.

• ETH pumped to ~$2K+ after BlackRock announced its intention to launch an "iShares Ethereum Trust" ETF. ETH supply is deflationary again due to sentiment shift, increase in fees, and a renewed interest in DeFi. While ETH fell out of favor of investors the past couple of weeks, this week's news has reversed that for now. 

• NFT Volumes are starting to come back after it was announced NFT marketplace Opensea was marked down -90%. The NFT market has been hit hard, but this feels like a bottom sign. For the moment, the market agrees.

Onchain coins had another strong week, with flows spread across different sectors. Alts have had a great couple of weeks, which has led to profit-taking.

Established coins (7 day flows):

• $BITCOIN ($87K)

• $JOE (-$18K)

• $OX ($98K)

• $Шайлушай (Real Smurf Cat) (-$28K)

These are established coins that consistently get inflows/outflows from traders.

Two notable altcoins that have been talked about a lot online are OLAS & LBR. They’ve had great starts to the month (up 49% & 73%, respectively). These were accumulated by smart money leading up to this run, and now profits are being taken.

Newish Launches (7-day flows):

• GROK (Elon Memecoin) (-$56K)

• LEEROY (World of Warcraft Memecoin) ($17K)

• BANANA (Unibot competitor) (-$21K)

All saw coins that have the potential to be established coins. They have seen consistent attention from smart money traders for the past couple of weeks.

Arbitrum szn started to bubble after the arbitrum incentives were dished out. Smart money has been accumulating:

• Uka ($46K)

• Plutus ($44K)

• Grail ($24K)

• Winr ($21K)

0xJeff has a great breakdown of Arbitrum gems for those interested:

Every week, we look at what VCs are investing in. I literally see hundreds of early-stage projects for this newsletter. This allows me to glimpse into the future and what could take off. In an early bull market (now), you can buy close to VC prices depending on when projects launch, so it's worth tracking. In 2020, you could buy SOL ~$0.50, which was similar to VCs paid.

With that, here are the top 5 VC raises for October:

Neon Machine - Shrapnel($20M GameFi)

FPS game, where players have control over final outcomes. Shrapnel is set in a post-apocalyptic world where a massive asteroid has struck the moon, leading to a catastrophic event on Earth. Their team boasts AAA talent w/ experience building Halo & CoD

Early graphics look fire.

Access Protocol ($1.2M seed - Media)

SOL-based protocol where you can publish writing, Mint NFT, & build communities w/ a single subscription. Media today is broken. Clickbait and perverse incentives lead to a race to the bottom. Content creators face unreliable income streams.

Access flips this on its head.

Users lock ACS tokens into a creator's pool to access their content. Creators receive a percentage of tokens locked.

Benefits:

• New income for creators

• No recurring charges for consumers

• Quality content + upsides for both parties

Baseflow ($2.5M - Identity)

Marketplace for citizenship and residency programs. With draconian taxes and political policies being commonplace, the allure of global citizenship has never been higher.

Baseflow allows citizenship through economic investment in 🇱🇨 🇬🇩 🇦🇬 🇰🇳 🇩🇲 🇻🇺 w/ more to be added soon.

The end goal is a network state, as outlined in Balaji's book “The network state.”

Balaji has been early to BTC, ETH, and more. Anything he touches, I immediately pay attention.

Nocturne ($6M - Privacy)

Ethereum accounts, but with privacy. Eventually, there will be a day when we can use an address without worrying about being Doxxed.

Nocturne is making that a reality.

Nocturne utilizes an anonymous address system known as stealth addresses. Deposit or receive funds though hidden addresses. Nocturne also allows users to prove asset ownership without revealing specifics, supporting private transactions.

Hytopia ($3M GameFi)

Free-to-play video game and dev platform that feels similar to Minecraft. Goal is to address the gaps in creative expression w/ the Minecraft ecosystem and create modern player experiences.

Currently, you can pre-register for beta.

🤑 Notable Raises

• Citadel - $3.3M seed. Sector: GameFi. Lead investor was 1kx . Notable investors Shima Capital & Hashed.

• StablR - $3.5M seed. Sector: Stablecoin. Notable investors include Deribit, Maven11, & Theta Capital.

• Ritual - $25M. Sector: AI. Lead investor was Archetype. Notable investors include Robot Ventures & Accomplice.

• Pimlico - $4.2M seed. Sector: Wallets. Lead investor was a16z crypto.

• Kresko - $1.8M Strategic - Sector: DeFi. Lead investors were Electric Capital & Zero Age. Notable investors include Wagmi Ventures & Oak Grove Ventures.

• Prisma: Retroactive airdrop for veCRV holders & Prisma point holders

• Yuga Labs & Magic Eden: Partner to launch NFT marketplace with royalties enforced.

• Solana Breakpoint: Great recap of the Solana Breakpoint conference

• Ordinals: Ordinals make a return and BTC fees soar nearly 10x

• Wintermute: Accuses Near of Failing to redeem $11.2M USN for USDT

• Opensea: Valuation of the once king of NFT marketplaces is down 90% to $13.3B.

🫡 Chart of the Week

The Total 3 (MC w/o BTC & ETH) chart has shown signs of life, but we are still in a range. Little hopium, but also a reminder to focus for the long haul 🫡.

See you next week,

Mid-Curve Team

The Mid-Curve newsletter is intended purely for educational and informational purposes and should not be construed as financial advice. We encourage all our readers to conduct their own research or seek advice from a certified financial advisor before making any investment decisions. Please note that members of the Mid-Curve team may hold positions in some of the investments discussed in our newsletter.