Bull market back on?

Week in Review:

• The Wall Street Journal reported that Hamas raised over $90 million in crypto, leading over 100 lawmakers, include Elizabeth Warren to urge President Biden to address terrorists' use of crypto. However, Elliptic, the research firm cited by the Journal, stated that their data was misinterpreted and there is "no evidence" that Palestinian Islamic Jihad raised such an amount. As of today, the WSJ has not retracted the article.

• Sam Bankman-Fried is expected to testify before a jury Friday, after an unusual move by the judge to have him speak first without jurors present. SBF is being charged with eight counts, including wire fraud, securities fraud, commodities fraud, money laundering, and campaign finance violations.

• Polygon Labs has launched its new token, POL, which is intended to replace the current MATIC token. The token is a cornerstone of the Polygon 2.0 roadmap and will power a range of zk-based L2 chains and their shared staking layer. No token swap between MATIC and POL is necessary at this time.

Green candles spread into every sector of crypto, but the big winners were memecoins, in particular, the newer meme coins. These include SPX, BITCOIN, & Real Smurf Cat. We saw large inflows throughout the month preceding the rally in these coins. Now that they have had big weeks, we are starting to see profit-taking from whales as 30D inflows flip negative. Real Smurf Cat is the big winner, and although there is profit-taking, the rally is continuing.

ATOR

High Level:

• Ticker: ATOR

• Price: $1.37 (+114% this month)

• MC: $89M

• FDV: $122M

• Circulating Supply: 73M

• Total Supply: 100M

• 4% Tax on Buys + Sells

Many assume the battle for privacy has been lost.

I disagree. ATOR is a project fighting for our fundamental freedoms and in the process take a piece of the billion dollar privacy industry.

Overview:

Privacy is a fundamental right that has been stolen from us. VPN providers and search engines like Google monitor all our transaction history while farming us for profits.

TOR is a system that allows users to surf the internet privately but is not a realistic alternative.

Why?

• Speed

• Scalability

• Reliance on outdated hardware

Moreover, TOR relies on volunteers. There's no economic incentive to contribute to TOR, which leads to an unusable experience compared to search engines like Google. Yet, adoption is at 10-year highs.

This is despite all its issues and zero economic incentives. I was shocked to see this graph: TOR has more users than BNB, ETH, & DeFi.

There's a large market for privacy-preserving tools that's untapped.

In addition to privacy, ATOR benefits from another narrative: DePin

DePin is a network of physical devices incentivized to be put to work in exchange for crypto.

Advantages

• Cost

• Scale

• Speed

• Data Availability

Paying people in crypto to put hardware to use allows these networks to scale FAST.

Consensus Mechanism

ATOR uses Proof of Uptime (PoU) to reward relayers. Nodes (new + old) use PoU to verify activity. PoU assesses a relay's reliability based on bandwidth, uptime, exit policy, and performance.

Better metrics equate to better rewards.

Tokenomics:

ATOR is a fair launch (No VCs) ERC-20 token. 4% on buys + sells with the goal of eliminating this tax.

• 75% - Circulating

• 15% - Team

• 10% Token Rewards

Token Rewards Breakdown (10%)

To receive rewards, users must lock 100 tokens for 180 days. Reward pool starts with 10M tokens (10% of supply), and 0.1% of the pool’s tokens are distributed daily.

Hardware

The team plans to release routers for preorders in Q4. Purchasers receive an NFT, with 30% of sales funding the Physical Device Reward Pool (PDRP). Staking the NFT doubles relay rewards.

With low costs ($250 device, ~$26 yearly electricity), breakeven is possible in 6 months, with potential for higher returns similar to Helium.

Phase II

ATOR will start with TOR but overtime want to expand into anonymized services such as storage, file sharing, streaming, and more. 100% of the revenue from these services will be shared among ATOR token holders and relay operators.

Risks

Tokenomics: Biggest risk in DePin projects is incentivizing long-term participation w/o token dumping 90%+ at some point.

Hardware: Shipping HW is considerably more complex than just SW, but fwiw Testnet is currently at 1700+ w/o HW.

Conclusion

ATOR is not just a project, it's a movement. Incentives will allow privacy-preserving networks like TOR to scale like never before. Crypto's pillar has always centered around self-sovereignty & with ATOR, we are one step closer to that reality.

🤑 Notable Raises

• Neon Machine - $20M Series A. Sector: Gaming, Avalance. Lead investor was Polychain. Notable investors include Franklin Templeton

• Nocturne - $6M Seed. Sector: Privacy. Lead investors were Bain & Polychain. Notable investors include Vitalik & Bankless.

• Noble - $3.3M Seed. Sector: Infra, Cosmos. Lead investor was Polychain. Notable investors include Borderless & Wintermute

• TonUp - TBD seed. Sector: TON. Notable investors include TONcoin, Waterdrip, & BitFund.

• Cube Exchange - $9M Seed - Sector: DeFi. Notable investors include Asymmetric & Susquehanna.

• Celestia: Ready for Mainnet Beta

• DYDX: Launches Dyhain

• Astrid Finance: Astrid Finance, an EigenLayer-powered Liquid Restaking Protocol launches.

• Maestro: Suffered an exploit. Team said they would refund all losses. Revoke access if you haven’t done so already.

• Paradigm’s Fred Ehrsam: Steps down from Paradigm

• Arthur Hayes: Prolific crypto writer details how macroeconomic and geopolitical factors could be a boon to cryptocurrencies.

🫡 Chart of the Week

Real Smurf Cat God candle. Up over 7x in a week. It pays to be in memes.

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.