🐐 The GOAT is Here

This week’s summary:

1. Majors post impressive returns

2. GOAT takes center stage

3. a16z’s “2024 State of the Market” report

4. Tron continues to defy expectations

📊 Market Overview:

After weeks of boring price action, majors showed signs of life. BTC is up 10.7% on the week, while ETH and SOL are up 8.8% and 7.5%, respectively.

While majors primarily led crypto, certain alts had outperformance. Names include ETHENA (+49.8%), MEW (+35.2%), DOGE (+24.1%), & APT (+17.2%)

We are now on the cusp of breaking the bearish trendline that has plagued crypto for the past seven months.

Source

📰 News Spotlight:

1. $GOAT

A cryptocurrency named GOAT ran to $448M this week, which many saw as the beginning of AI-generated wealth. The story begins with two LLMs trained on Reddit and 4chan data. Through “Infinite Backrooms,” or an open space for LLMs to interact with each other, they were allowed to have unfiltered conversations. The result of this was a desire to create memes, and with that, Goatseus Maximus (or GOAT) was born.

This cryptocurrency was airdropped to an AI-based Twitter account named Truth_Terminal. This account is known for humor and non-stop shitposts (an example of his groundbreaking work below).

What did the Truth_Terminal do upon receiving GOAT?

They acted like anyone on CT after they received free money.

Turned into a full-blown KOL and was obsessed with his free money. With the benefit of years of AI data to train from, it was the Terminator of shillers. The twitter account increased its followers by 40K and a cult has formed around the project.

The price action followed. At one point, the return was 7000x+. The screenshots of people turning hundreds to millions are all over the timeline. At a $500M marketcap, Truth Terminal will be the first AI-created millionaire.

People have long envisioned AI-generated wealth as a use case. But GOAT is the first instance of it happening in the real world, and it won’t be the last.

2. a16z State of Crypto

a16z released their state of crypto for 2024. Most of this will be known if you are a full-time crypto, but it’s nice to have some data to filter out the noise on social media.

Key findings:

• In September, 220M addresses interacted w/ a blockchain at least once (growth led by Solana)

• Crypto has become a key political issue, particularly in swing states

• Stablecoins have a clear product market fit - did $8.5T in volume

• Blockchains have 50x throughput compared to 5 years ago

• DeFi has $169B in TVL across protocols

• 34% of projects say they use AI

• New onchain applications are emerging - Farcaster, Zora, & Polymarket, for example

Overall the tone of this report is cautiously optimistic. There are areas of growth and innovation even if it doesn’t feel like it. Reports like these help me zoom out. We are not out of the woods by any means but if these metrics continue to improve another bull market is inevitable imo.

Report

🔎 Onchain

GOAT was the big winner of the week. Other "AI meme coins "MEDUSA and GMIKA pumped to $31M and $13M, respectively, but have since corrected (GMIKA is down 90%). AICRYNODE is a SOL-based AI meme that went to ~$9M.

Murad coins had a rough week. Murad's fame reached a fever pitch last week with all his podcast performances, so, predictably, we are seeing a pullback. While these names were down, they had a massive couple of months (SPX up 100x+ since September for example)

Murad coins this week:

• SPX (-25.7%)

• MINI (-21.2%)

• RETARDIO (-14.3%)

• LOCKIN (-8.1%)

• POPCAT (-2.4%)

Tron

Tron continues to defy expectations. Often only talked about to mock Justin Sun, Tron has legit fundamentals.

• $60B in stablecoins (half of USDT volume)

• TRX = $0.16, up 48% YTD

• $152M in Revenue in Q3, $1.1B lifetime

While TVL has been down slightly YTD, it ranks second among L1s for this metric. Its EIP 1559 mechanism decreased supply by 580M TRX ($93M USD).

It is ironic how much expectations have shifted. Tron was mocked in 2017 for copying ETH. Guess what we have now? Hundreds of L1s and L2s copy ETH and use incentives to drive activity.

Anecdotally, I have friends abroad who use TRON for stablecoin rails. Outside of BTC, ETH, and TRON, I never hear about crypto being used for payments.

🤑 Notable Raises

• Praxis - $525M Seed. Sector: Network State. Notable investors include Gem Digital & Manifold.

• Azra Games - $42.7M Series A. Sector: Gaming. Lead investors is Pantera. Notable investors include a16z & NFX.

• Predicate - $7M. Sector: Infra. Lead investors include 1kx & Tribe Capital. Notable investors include Hashkey Capital & Near Foundation.

• Towns - $25.5M Series A. Sector: Messaging. Lead investors include a16z crypto, Benchmark, & Framework.

• Opacity Network - $12M Seed. Sector: zk. Lead Investors are Archetype & Breyer Capital. Notable investors include Bodhi Ventures & North Island Ventures.

👊 Quick Hits

• Hyperliquid: Unveils HYPE token. Geofences US citizens from claiming.

• DeBridge: Announces their DBR token is live.

• Radient: Suffers a $53M hack

• FBI: arrests man behind SEC account hack who posted fake ETF approval

• Tesla: Moved 11,509 BTC ($760M) to multiple wallets. As of now they have not sold any.

• Arthur Hayes: Arthur’s latest essay delves into geopolitical tensions and its affect on portfolio contruction.

• Alex Good: Musings on Murad and Memecoin mania. Concludes the true cult is AI.

• Arthur0x: Lays out his thesis for DeFi 2.0 szn.

🫡 Meme of the week

Please I promise

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.