Revenge of the ETH!

Week in Review:

• In a watershed moment for the industry, the BTC ETF was approved on January 10th and began trading on January 11th. $4.6B in volume was traded ($2.3B if you exclude GBTC). This was an opening day record for ETF volume, despite platforms like Vanguard and Merrill Lynch banning the ETFs on their platform. A resounding success! Additional data:

• Ethereum, which has been noticeably quiet the past few weeks, surged as traders speculated it would be the next crypto to get an ETF. The price broke $2600 and is up 14.6% on the week. ETH L2s like Optimism and Arbitrum faired even better. Analysts predict a 70% chance of an ETH ETF approval by May.

• The SEC Twitter account was hacked, saying an ETF was approved when it was in fact, not. $17M in liquidations occurred as a result. They subsequently approved the BTC ETF on January 10th. Twitter would confirm the account was indeed hacked due to a lack of security and an absence of 2FA.

After being left for dead, ETH had its best week in months. The BTC ETF fake announcement spurred this move. Investors immediately speculated what was next, and attention shifted towards ETH. ETHUSD is up over 20%, while ETHBTC is up 15.6% and is testing the 0.06 level.

ETH beta also had strong weeks.

• LDO - 18%

• ARB - 22.5%

• OP - 21.5%

The ETH ETF is now a meme the market can turn to. Analysts are predicting a 70% chance of approval between May-August. Blackrock, which has a 99% ETF approval, had this to say:

Things can change quickly in crypto. In the last couple of months, ETH was considered dead by many. Now it's “next” and pumping against BTC and SOL.

🤑 Notable Raises

• Polyhedra - Undisclosed series A. Sector: Infrastructure. Lead investor was OKX

• Saros - $3.7M private. Sector: DeFi. Notable investors include Solana Ventures & #Hashed.

• AI Arena - $6M private. Sector: GameFi. Lead investor was Framework.

• Bracket - $2M pre-seed. Sector: DeFi. Notable investors include Binance Labs & NGC Ventures.

• CharacterX - $2.8M seed. Sector: SocialFi. Lead investors were Lightspeed & INCE capital.

• Berachain: High profile project Berachain just released launched its Testnet. Its Galxe quest had 100K+ users in the first day.

• EigenLayer: EigenLayer fosters a partnership between Ethereum and Cosmos.

• Base: Unveils their 2024 mission, strategy, and roadmap.

• Synthetix: Launches on BASE. Rewards are being emitted on Aerodrom to SNX/USDC LPs.

• Starknet: Approves vote to add STRK token to pay for gas fees. This is seen as a preliminary step before token launch.

• Cosmos: Voting to reduce the inflation rate to 0%

• Circle: Crypto payments firm and USDC issuer has filed for an IPO

• Paypal: Paypal’s stablecoin PYUSD say 70% growth in supply in 30 days.

• Vitalik: proposes 33% gas limit increase to 40M - 45M.

• Elon Musk: removes NFT support from Twitter

🫡 Chart of the Week

ETH God candle. Beautiful

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.