Supercycle?

Week in Review:

• Bitcoin breached its ATH, reaching a price of $69,410 before wicking down to $59,313. Price has now recovered at the $66K range. Amid this price action, IBIT saw $3.7B in volume, a new daily trading record. IBIT has $10.7B AUM, another record for a new NFT.

The good thing about the flash crash was it reset funding rates, which were at historically high levels over the past couple of weeks.

• Cartoon-based memecoin $BODEN reached a $28M marketcap in a few days. Other copycat memes have been created for high-profile figures such as Kanye West, Elon Musk, Kim Jon Un, and more. Select traders made 1000x gains in three days.

• The Dencun upgrade will activate on the Ethereum mainnet on March 13, 2024. The key change in this upgrade is EIP-4844 blobs, which aim to reduce Layer 2 transaction fees.

Everyone talks about AI and memes being the dominant narratives in crypto. However, in America, financial nihilism is the dominant narrative among the youth. Financial Nihilism is the idea that Americans, who feel no agency in their financial future, will take more and more risks to try and get ahead. This has fueled all-time high interest in sports gambling and crypto.

In part two of this essay, Travis goes into the numbers:

• Median home prices to income increased from 4.5x → 7.5x. The average home is ~$500K.

• The real-estate market grew from $7T → $45T from 1989 to 2023. Millennials held 13% of this market when they turned 25 compared to 33% for Baby Boomers at the same age.

• Household wealth grew $20T → $143T from 1989 to 2023. When the youngest reached 25, millennials held only 5% of this wealth, significantly less than the 20% held by Boomers at the same age.

This paints a bleak picture for the average Millennial and Gen-Z. How does this express itself in crypto? Memecoins pumping, alts being treated like lottery tickets, and the acceptance that none of this stuff will do anything but it might make us rich. That is the most significant difference between now and 2017. In 2017, builders thought they were changing the world for the better.

Yes, there are serious builders, but much of that energy is gone. Now it's how I can make as much money as possible before the market dumps -99%. We are resigned to the fact this stuff probably does nothing. But given that backdrop, prices are testing prior ATHs across many assets. We are farther along this cycle than previous cycles & this could be the biggest cycle yet.

🤑 Notable Raises

• Scallop - $3M Strategic. Sector: Sui DeFi. Lead investors were CMS & 6th Man Ventures.

• Taiko - $15M Series A. Sector: Layer-2. Lead investors were Lightspeed Faction, Hashed, & Generative Ventures.

• Orbit Protocol - Undisclosed Strategic. Sector: Blast DeFi. Notable investors include Gainzy, Andrew Kang, & Manifold.

• Humanity Protocol - Undisclosed Strategic. Sector: Identity. Notable investors include Mechanism, Hashed, & Mythos Ventures.

• Morpho - Undisclosed Strategic Sector: DeFi. Lead investor was Pantera.

• Kamino: Announced an airdrop. Final snapshot is March 31st.

• Wormhole: Announced an airdrop for various users across multiple chains.

• Pantera: Speculation they are buying SOL from the FTX estate.

• Kimchi Premium: the BTC price premium in Korea is at 10%, representing a two year high.

• NIM: The NIM network will be the first RollApp on Dymension.

• Farcaster: Loses -60% of users after going viral last month.

• Cryptopunk: Alien sells for $16M.

• $SAFE: Gnosis SAFE tokens will be transferable on April 23.

🫡 Chart of the Week

Jeets stopping BTC from breaking its ATH

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.