September Blues, Arbitrum Goes Off, NFTs Aren't Dead
SEP 13, 2021 • 4 Min Read
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Market Update
Crypto markets looked muted today as L1 tokens continued to grind up. A fraudulent press release announcing Walmart would accept payments in Litecoin (LTC) made the rounds, leading to some short-term volatility earlier this morning. LTC jumped over 30% in a matter of minutes, only to drop back to its previous trading level.
A Fearful Market
- Crypto markets recently moved into “fear,” as measured by the Fear & Greed index. For much of August, the market was in a state of “extreme greed” as prices rose across the board.
- September tends to be a negative month for crypto as a whole. While the month kicked off strong, sentiment has deteriorated rather quickly.
Speculators on Arbitrum
- While L1 tokens pumped last week on the back of several liquidity mining programs (Avalanche, CELO, Fantom, Algorand – just to name a few), it almost looked like a bad time for L2s like Arbitrum to launch. For context, on Friday, ~$170M worth of ETH had been bridged onto Arbitrum.
- That changed over the weekend though, as yield farms for speculative tokens like ArbiNyan and Carbon.fi (which is already down 99%) managed to spur FOMO and cause bridge volume to spike. Arbinyan’s ETH pool currently has over $1.45B of ETH. Meanwhile, Arbitrum’s ETH bridge custodies over ~$2b worth of ETH. It’s worth noting that a single whale wallet was responsible for ~168K ETH bridged.
- Since then, several high-risk forks have shown up to meet degen demand. Arbitrum’s openness means the network is also susceptible to rug pulls — just like any other permissionless smart contract chain — so it’s recommended to proceed with extra caution when looking at these early projects.
Optimistic Comparisons
- Over the weekend, we saw a massive uptick in Optimism bridge activity with over 9,000 unique depositors. Notably, the Optimism Twitter handle teased a ‘big news’.
- However, bridge TVL only grew $2m for such high activity. To put things in perspective, Arbitrum grew >$2b in bridge TVL with only ~500 unique depositors.
- Speculators might be hopping onto the AVAX Good Bridging ($GB) airdrop train and transacting on Optimism in the hopes of being included in a future token airdrop.
Weekend in NFTs
- Cool Cats recently unveiled its plans to launch $MILK tokens that are passively earned by holding and an egg that can be claimed per Cool Cat (try sending that to your friend who isn’t crypto-pilled). The token will gamify the project, and potentially bring value to Cool Cat holders.
- CyberKongz has been gaining steam, in part due to its yield generating capability. The price floor for Genesis Kongs sits at 62 ETH today. Each Genesis’ Kong yields 10 $BANANA (~$240) per day which enables different features such as custom name and bio, or the ability to breed a ‘Baby’ Kong. Holding a CyberKongz also gives you access to the Wall Street Kongz discord which has been known for great alpha plays.
- Given the success of utility-embedded NFTs, future projects might implement similar mechanics to boost their attractiveness.
Notable Tweets
Interactive Brokers announces support for select crypto assets
It’s a big day for #crypto markets. Today, $IBKR @IBKR is opening buy/hold/sell capabilities for $BTC $ETH $LTC & $BCH to its US Clients, as #PoweredByPaxos and our Crypto Brokerage solution. Learn More. https://t.co/TsYI2EnEMr
— Paxos (@PaxosGlobal) September 13, 2021
Media outlets pick up on a fake Walmart press releases announcing support for Litecoin payments
litecoin walmart press release is fake
— Neeraj K. Agrawal (@NeerajKA) September 13, 2021
Recur announces $50M Series A fund raising led by Steve Cohen
We raised $50m in Series A funding from DIGITAL, a metaverse fund led by the legendary hedge fund manager @StevenACohen2, @markdaniel94 and @AxieKing .
We can’t wait for what’s ahead. ?
Read more from Co-CEOs @ZachBruch and Trevor George: https://t.co/VkzCq8xdnZ#NFTs
— RECUR (@RecurForever) September 13, 2021
