$PEPE: Mysterious Whales The memecoin surged by 1000x in just 4 days, making some users go from rags to riches. We've spotted a few wallets that, with an average cost of 0.61 $ETH ($1210), managed to make over $9M - a 7500x return. However, the timing of the buys is curious:

Today, Celsius announced it will sell all altcoins from its customers starting on July 1st and convert them into $BTC and $ETH The total altcoin sell pressure amounts to $215M: • $CEL: $70M • $MATIC: $52M • $ADA: $26M • $LINK: $17M • $LTC: $14M

$131M worth of $CRV is at risk of liquidation if the price drops by 35%. The Curve Founder has borrowed $110M in stablecoins against all his $CRV - 50% of the circulating supply. This could have severe implications for DeFi, with lending protocols at risk of accruing bad debt

1/ $ARB Top Seller An unusual transaction was spotted in the ARB/USDC Uniswap pool by 0x88e6. This wallet triggered the sale of 6250 $ARB tokens at a price of $10.27, resulting in a total profit of $64,187 and setting a record for the highest $ARB selling price.

38 minutes ago, a large 9,800 $BTC transaction, valued at $264 million, was rumored to be sent from a US Government-controlled wallet. As a result, BTC's price fell by 5.3%. However, after examining the origin of the funds and receiving confirmation from Arkham, there is no substantial evidence to support the rumor.

Monthly Alpha - ZK season - BTC smart contracts - Decentralized stablecoins - Protocol updates - Tokenomic changes

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Monthly Alpha

We have found that Celsius has sold $243M worth of $ETH over the past 30 days. This selling activity happened despite their initial plan to redistribute those assets in kind, meaning they should not be liquidated for cash. They still have $3.94B in digital assets remaining, with 84% of that in $BTC and $ETH.

We're excited to put out our report on the Bitcoin L2 landscape. We believe some of these projects are worth paying attention to given the amount of idle capital on Bitcoin, their potential for yield generation, and the possibility of investment opportunities.

Top $PEPE Traders $PEPE has surged 11x in the past few days, nearly reaching a $2B market cap, driven by major exchange listings such as Binance. After analyzing over 200k Uniswap transactions, here are our findings on some of the most profitable $PEPE traders:

Monthly Alpha - Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade - MT Gox repayment deadline on April 6th - $JOE major upgrade - $FXS V3 - $XRP lawsuit news - $crvUSD stablecoin rumored to launch

It appears that the recent transfer of 9.8k $BTC, sent from a wallet mistakenly labeled as US-government controlled, can be traced back to a speculative tweet by Pentoshi on April 14th. After an extensive analysis, we couldn't find enough evidence to support the rumor.

7/ It is important to note that, due to the thin liquidity available on-chain, should they sell even 10% of their holdings, it would be enough for the token to plummet completely. Hence, it is crucial for current holders to monitor the activity of these whales.

The recent crackdown by the SEC against centralized stablecoins and their possible classification as a security has put some spotlight on decentralized alternatives. Here is everything you need to know about the decentralized stablecoin landscape:

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2/ When analyzing the distribution of trades on Uniswap V2, we spotted some unusual activity. A group of freshly funded wallets bought $PEPE within just a few minutes after the token started trading, and are still holding them. Together, they control almost 10% of the supply.

Monthly Alpha Upcoming Narratives and Catalysts of November

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Weekly Alpha

6/ This behavior raises questions about whether these wallets belong to insiders or the dev team, as not only did they have impeccable timing, but they are also holding a considerable amount after a significant run of 1000x.

9/ On the other hand, it is also impressive that these wallets demonstrate strong conviction by holding onto their positions even after a massive 1000x run.

3/ First, a group of seven wallets funded from the Fixed Float exchange purchased a total of 17.7 T $PEPE with an average cost of 0.34 $ETH, and are now facing a $5.5M unrealized profit

Gnosis DAO $GNO Thesis This thread presents our thesis on Gnosis DAO (GNO), which we believe is underpriced relative to its assets and operations. In our view, it represents a highly asymmetric investment opportunity.

1/ Sudo vs Blur Recently, a governance proposal to make $SUDO transferable was passed, causing a surge in its value and $XMON. This follows the anticipated launch of $BLUR, generating significant interest on these tailwinds Let's take a look at metrics and on-chain activity:

After the rumors involving the Multichain team being arrested, we decided to take a look at the protocols with the highest exposure to it. In first place comes Fantom, with 35% of its total TVL locked in it and a significant portion of the chain's assets issued by the bridge.

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8/ In conclusion, although it's impossible to affirm these wallets belong to insiders, their behavior definitely raises questions. It wouldn't be surprising if confirmed, given the nature of memecoins and their history.

1/ $LQTY was listed on Binance just a few hours ago, causing its price to double in value. Once again, there are suspicions that some individuals may have had access to this information beforehand, giving them an unfair advantage. Let's take a look:

Monthly Alpha

Will the GMX Trader face liquidation? There is speculation that the 0x61 trader, who holds a $12M highly levered $ETH short, will face liquidation if $ETH hits $1945. However, a deeper analysis suggests that people may not be seeing the complete picture.

1/ Today, $SYN was listed on Binance, causing the token to soar 33% within minutes An address bought $90k worth of $SYN via Cowswap 12 minutes before the announcement, leading to suspicions that it may have had access to this information beforehand Let's take a look:

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After securing court approval, Celsius will start the sale of all customer altcoins starting on July 1st, converting them into $BTC and $ETH. The total altcoin sell pressure amounts to $279M: • $CEL: $100M • $MATIC: $58M • $ADA: $29M • $LINK: $20M • $LTC: $19M

Weekly Alpha - $GBTC discount narrowing - Mt Gox's $3B repayment postponed by one month - Silvergate shutting down operations - Shanghai Upgrade delayed to early April - Coinbase launches Wallet as a Service

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Investigating the $USDT Depeg Over the past week, large amounts of $USDT were swapped for $DAI and $USDC Since CEX transactions are private, we looked on-chain to see if we could find any definitive behavior After investigating a few suspected wallets, here is what we found:

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1/3 Weekly Alpha 24/02 This week's fundamentals

Monthly Alpha - $PEPE CEX listings - $BTC Ordinals Inscriptions - $SUI Mainnet launch - $stETH withdrawals - Protocol updates - Tokenomics changes

4/ Second, comes two wallets funded from the ChangeNOW exchange. They've bought a total of 5T $PEPE tokens at an average price of 0.1 $ETH, sitting at a $1.5M portfolio value.

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Weekly Alpha

5/ Third, an entity, that was initially funded from ByBit and then spread 0.17 $ETH across four wallets, bought a total of 6.2T tokens and currently sees a $2.2M profit.

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Weekly Alpha

$ARB Airdrop - Selling the News Analyzing the recent price performance of Arbitrum ecosystem tokens shows that the anticipated alt season post-airdrop failed to materialize. Instead, we saw a sell-the-news event and strong frontrunning of this narrative.

Michael Egorov, the founder of Curve Finance, currently has an open debt of 17.85M FRAX on Fraxlend, backed by 59.1M CRV (currently $36.1M) as collateral Assuming the pool utilization ratio remains close to 100%, his borrow interest rates will double every 12 hours (contrary to the 4 hour figure in the docs) In approximately 4 days, it will max out at 10,000% APY

Here are the most significant token unlocks in July. The total unlocked value amounts to $149M: • $APT: $35.6M • $APE: $33.8M • $OP: $31.9M • $AXS: $21.3M • $IMX: $13.6M • $DYDX: $12.8M

Upcoming June Crypto Catalysts - Monthly Alpha • Assets listed as securities in the recent SEC lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase could be impacted, with constrained market liquidity as market makers pull back, as well as them being possibly delisted. These assets include: - BNB, ADA, SOL, MATIC, BUSD, ATOM, ICP, FIL, NEAR, ALGO, SAND, MANA, AXS, FLOW, CHZ, DASH, NEXO, COTI, VGX • $XRP lawsuit settlement news is expected soon; given the recent events, it will be very important as it could establish a precedent regarding tokens being considered securities. Hinman documents, which could provide insights on the SEC's decision to classify cryptocurrencies as securities, will become public on June 13th. • Aave's stablecoin, $GHO, is on the horizon. There is an ongoing proposal to launch $GHO on the Ethereum Mainnet. $GHO will start with a debt ceiling of 100M and a 1.5% borrow rate, with a 30% borrowing discount for $AAVE stakers • Mantle's governance token, $MNT, is on the verge of launch following the recent passage of the MIP-22 proposal. $BIT holders can convert to $MNT at a 1:1 ratio. BitDAO has the largest treasury, worth $3.81B, and is well-diversified with $800m in $ETH and stablecoins. Mantle has also plans for its own ZK Rollup and $meth, a yield-bearing ETH LSD • $MKR is set to increase DAI Savings Rate to 3.49% on June 12th, causing a large impact across DeFi as borrow and supply rates will significantly increase across all stablecoins • Following the successful $crvUSD launch, it is expected to start supporting $wstETH as collateral on June 8th, with a debt ceiling of 150M, a 15x increase from current levels, as sfrxETH is the only collateral currently supported. This will effectively increase the protocol revenue generation, with $crvUSD fees accruing back to $veCRV holders. • $GMX V2, currently on the Testnet, is rumored to go live in late June, bringing synthetic assets, lower fees, isolated pools and implementing Chainlink low-latency oracles • $LVL is expected to deploy on Arbitrum in June. In terms of protocol revenue, at least temporarily, it beats $GMX and $GNS in 24-hour Fees • $SNX's v3 launch is expected soon. Already in Alpha on Optimism, the upgrade could enable Synthetix to become the liquidity layer for derivatives, with new markets and protocols built on top of it • $YFI has two major upcoming products launching soon. First, $yETH, a basket of 5 different LSDs with boosted yields. In order to earn staking rewards, users must stake it, while also receiving protocol rewards such as swap fees and bribes on top of the already existing staking rewards. $veFYI, which will enable protocol revenue-sharing, will also launch next. • As LSDs and stablecoins backed by them emerge, $Y2K is well-positioned as a hedge play, allowing traders to protect their exposure by betting against the pegging of these assets. Currently 50% of all protocol fees are distributed to $vlY2K holders • $OSMO has an ongoing proposal to implement a 0.15% taker fee for every Osmosis swap, burning all fees paid in $OSMO and redistributing 67% of the remaining ones to $OSMO stakers • $BLUR will unlock 39% of the circulating supply, worth $98m to investors and the team on June 14th, followed by a linear vesting schedule • The $LTC halving is set for early August. Historically, Litecoin has exhibited strong performance a few months prior to it • $VELA launches on June 26th, supporting the trading of 25 assets across crypto, forex, equities, and metals. During its beta, it attracted $5B in trading volume with 51k unique users • $OP Bedrock Upgrade, which went live on June 6th, brought lower network fees, an 83% block time reduction, and the support of zk proofs. It comes a week after the large $OP unlock, but on-chain data doesn't show signs of investors’ selling pressure • As Apple sets the pace in Augmented Reality with Vision Pro, tokens in this sector could benefit from it, with the leading contender appearing to be $OVR • $UNIDX perpetual aggregator V3 is expected to launch in mid-June, integrating DEXes various from chains such as Arbitrum, Polygon, Optimism, and BNB Chain • Crypto trading tools have surged, with Maestro, a sniper bot, amounting a $6M in revenue in May and holding 7th place in 24-hour revenue among crypto projects. While Maestro lacks a token, similar projects like $UNIBOT with a revenue-sharing mechanism might benefit from this narrative • The Decentralized Identity narrative is gaining momentum with Worldcoin raising $115m. Tokens that could act as a proxy include $KEY and $MASK (with its Next ID project) • $SYS wallet upgrade, Pali V2, goes live on June 5th. Additionally, Syscoin's Layer 2, Rollux—an EVM-equivalent rollup secured by Bitcoin— is set to launch on June 28th

Monthly Alpha Upcoming Narratives and Catalysts of December

Weekly Narratives and Catalysts • $BTC: The long-awaited Spot ETF approval could happen this week, as the SEC can approve them until November 17th, after which a new comment period begins. • $MATIC is expected to have an important announcement on November 14th. It has rallied 22% over the past days before the event, and a sell-the-news following it might happen. • $TIA: Devconnect, one of the largest Ethereum conferences, happens from November 13-19. One of the main themes this year is modularity and Data Availability, topics for which Celestia stands at the forefront. Also, compared to its competitors, it trades at a significantly lower market cap, with the first wave of unlocks only one year from now. • $BLUR: The Season 2 airdrop happens on November 20th, with 28% of the circulating supply worth $112M distributed. As NFT activity resumes after a year of downtrend, $BLUR might be the best proxy to bet on the sector's performance. • $YGG Summit, one of the largest gaming conferences, takes place from November 18-25 • $VRTX officially launches this week, with the LBP program occurring from November 13-18, after which it will be freely traded. Vertex Protocol has also received a 3m $ARB grant as part of the STIP. • $APE will unlock 4% of the circulating supply, worth $23M, on November 17th • $ROSE is set to unlock 4% of the circulating supply, worth $14, on November 15th • $XEC will have a Network Upgrade on November 15th, featuring staking rewards and a miner fund increase

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1/ Over the next few hours, ~$550m worth of $OP will be unlocked, all of which will be distributed to early investors and team contributors. This represents 115% of the circulating supply hitting the market. Here's what you need to know:

Weekly Token Catalysts - $DYDX V4 is expected to launch this week, featuring revenue-sharing with stakers and $DYDX as the AppChain's native token - $400M worth of $DOT from crowdloans will be unlocked on October 24 - $FTM's Sonic is set for October 24, the upgrade is expected to increase transaction processing up to 4x - $SOL's Breakpoint conference starts on October 30th. It has historically outperformed leading up to the event - $POL, Polygon's rebrand of $MATIC, has been announced for Bybit's Launchpool on October 25, indicating that its launch will be happening soon - $OP is set to unlock 2.74% of the circulating supply worth $31.65M on October 30 - $FLOKI will be making a special metaverse-related announcement on October 24 - $SCRT Network will release its 2024 development roadmap on October 26 - Timeswap token pre-mine has begun, users can earn $TIME by providing liquidity on its USDC/ARB pool

Weekly Alpha

For those that want to monitor live announcements from the White House / Trump team for things like the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, this is the best and easiest way to do it!

Weekly Alpha

Monthly Alpha

The ZK narrative has been trending lately, triggered by catalysts such as the upcoming zkSync and Starknet token launches and the Polygon ZK-EVM on the horizon. Let's take a look:

An Overview of the Perpetual DEX Industry The collapse of FTX is still fresh in the mind of users, with many still fearful of keeping funds on centralized platforms. This presents a unique growth opportunity for decentralized perps trading platform. A thread:

6/ These findings make certain that 0x3dca used an automated strategy to claim and sell the airdrop, securing significant profits quickly.

4/ If liquidation occurs, there isn't enough on-chain liquidity to market sell Egorov's position without drastically affecting $CRV prices. This would likely lead to bad debt across lending protocols, including Aave, Frax and Abracadabra.

2/ Given these risks, new deposits and loans have been paused on Aave V2. This action, along with an active governance proposal to freeze $CRV assets on Aave V2, aim to limit further risk exposure and mitigate potential damages due to market liquidity concerns.

Weekly Alpha

Weekly Alpha

KyberSwap seems to be facing an ongoing exploit. $47M has been drained in just 22 minutes

Weekly Alpha

Weekly Alpha - Arbitrum airdrop announced - $USDC briefly depegs to $0.87 - Shanghai Upgrade announced on April 12th - CZ announces a $1B recovery fund conversion into $BTC, $ETH, and $BNB

Over the past 7 hours, there has been a 257k $ETH net outflow, led by 153k full withdrawals following the Shanghai Upgrade • Full Withdrawals: -$321M • Partial Withdrawals: -$245M • Deposits: $28M • Net: -$538M

Monthly Alpha

19 tokens have been listed as securities by the SEC across the two recent filings against Binance and Coinbase. The most notable ones are $BNB, $ADA, $SOL, $MATIC, $BUSD, $ATOM, and $ALGO.

Weekly Alpha

Today, the crypto market was hit hard. The SEC announced a lawsuit against CZ and Binance, triggering panic across the board with over $1B in withdrawals and prices crashing. Interestingly, some savvy traders may have known and acted on it beforehand.

Weekly Alpha

Weekly Alpha

We're excited to announce our investment in @redstone_defi. Redstone is the fastest-growing modular oracle, securing over $4 billion in TVL across over 60 chains & 100 projects. Led by @Marcin_Kaz13 and @kuba_eth, the team has demonstrated a profound ability to ship and execute

LSDfi - the next Lego on top of DeFi composability As $ETH staking infrastructure matures and users get increasingly comfortable holding and earning with $ETH in its staked form, it is time to look forward to the next step in DeFi composability - LSDfi. Let’s explore:

6/ Despite the ongoing FUD around $CRV, Egorov has stated he removed everything from Aave v3, preventing people from borrowing $CRV and selling it, which would further intensify the sell pressure and risk of triggering liquidations.

State of the $CRV OTC deals Egorov sold a total of 37M $CRV for $14.8M OTC yesterday, at an average of $0.40/$CRV. All buyers still hold their tokens, but some have exchanged $CRV for other yield-bearing $CRV tokens such as $yCRV and $cvxCRV, and subsequently staked them.

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Weekly Roundup Most Important DeFi Developments and News of the Week

Weekly Alpha

Weekly Narratives and Catalysts • $SNX has recently turned its inflation to zero, with a buyback & burn mechanism to be implemented soon. It also has other strong upcoming catalysts, such as the Andromeda Upgrade in December, a chain expansion to Base, and the full v3 rollout, and currently, nearly 70% of all of its supply is staked, heavily favoring the demand side. • $INJ Volan Mainnet Upgrade, the largest in Injective history, is expected to happen soon. • $FXS halving will happen on December 20th, with additional upcoming catalysts such as Fraxchain launch in January, featuring $frxETH as its native gas token, and BAMM, an innovative oracle-free lending mechanism. • Starknet V0.12.3 Mainnet happens on December 11th. Currently, the only protocols in the Starknet ecosystem with tokens are $IMX and $RBX, which might serve as a proxy to speculate on the upcoming $STRK airdrop. • $193M worth of $APT, representing 9% of the circulating supply, will be unlocked on December 11th, mostly to team members and investors. • As the Ordinals censoring movement grows stronger by the conservative side of the Bitcoin community, the SRC20 standard might start to be adopted as these inscriptions can't be as easily censored. This effectively puts $STAMP and $KEVIN as a good hedge to BRC20s. • $MATIC public demo of its upcoming ZK product happens on December 14th. • Eigenlayer will reopen restaking deposits on December 18th with support to 6 different LSTs, as it increases the global cap to 500k $ETH. The highly anticipated Eigenlayer token is expected to be airdropped to depositors. • $FLUX FluxCore Beta, a major update for decentralized computing infrastructure , takes place on December 15th.

Weekly Narratives and Catalysts • $DYDX will unlock 84.4% of the circulating supply worth $488M on December 2nd. However, these tokens will initially have restricted movement since major exchanges do not support the DYDX chain yet. Also, it has been rumored that investors plan to stake their tokens as all trading fees will be accrued to $DYDX stakers on V4, potentially building up to a bullish setup despite the large token unlocks. • Vertex Protocol has taken the spotlight as it is currently the largest perpetual DEX in trading volume and has a 50% revenue-sharing program with $VRTX Stakers. However, this trading activity might be inorganic, mainly farming driven by large incentives. • $LINK Staking v.0.2 starts on November 28th with the Priority Migration, followed by Early and General Access in December. • Following the successful proposal to cap $ATOM's inflation rate to 10%, its cofounder Jae Kwon has proposed forking the networking and launching a new $ATOM1 token. • Even though Blast attracted $600M in TVL in a week, deposits and $BLUR staking activity have slowed down significantly, potentially marking an exhaustion in the token after its huge rally recently. • $ILV's Illuvium Beta 3 game will be listed on the Epic Games Store on November 28th. • The GTA VI Trailer is expected to be announced on December 1st, with rumors that they might have in-game crypto mechanics. Gaming tokens that might benefit the most from this narrative might be $ILV, $GALA and $PRIME. • With the imminent launch of X's Grok AI, the memecoin $GROK has been acting as a proxy for betting on this event, quickly rising to a $200M market cap. • $SUI will unlock 7.9% of the circulating supply worth $45M on November 30th. • $1INCH will unlock 9.5% of the circulating supply worth $34M on December 1st. • $NEO Mainnet Upgrade will take place on December 4th.

Weekly Alpha

BRC-20 tokens have reached $600M in total market cap in just one month after launching. In the last 24 hours, BRC-20 also saw a $200M trading volume, led by ORDI with $198M.

Weekly Alpha

$SOL Breakpoint Rally The recent market rally has acted like a rising tide, lifting prices across the board for all tokens. $SOL however, had been gaining in strength weeks before the surge. At the tail end of September, the token sparked its own rally, breaking away from the pack in pursuit of its own yearly-high, rising more than 100% in less than two months. While many have attributed this surge to the currently-ongoing Breakpoint conference based on 2021’s performance, the rally has also been a culmination of other factors, such as the news on September 13th when FTX was granted permission by the court to begin its asset liquidation process. With FTX in possession of more than 58M $SOL, bearish narratives circulated of a selloff leading to traders prematurely front-running the liquidation process, when in reality, the FTX Estate had yet begun selling. This resulted in ill positioned shorts that aided in the grind up in price over 1.5 months. Fast forward to 24th October, the FTX Estate began transferring assets to CEX and unstaking $SOL in the midst of the recent rally sparked by false news of a $BTC ETF being approved, taking advantage of improved liquidity conditions within the market. With the Breakpoint conference underway, speculators saw a confluence of factors and attempted another short, a move reflected by rising open interest and a flip in funding rate at the time, providing fuel for a further squeeze up. Along with strong organic spot volume, these shorts in anticipation of the asset liquidation proved to be risky as seen from the blowout with OI decreasing on $SOL’s pump to $46.80 and funding returning to normal. Based on information from a recent asset filing and accounting for its recent ‘sell’ transfers, FTX still holds more than $3.5B in non-stablecoin assets, a fair portion denominated in locked $SOL that will unlock over the coming years. FTX liquidators have thus far been methodical with their selling, choosing to sell when liquidity conditions are optimal. It is important to note as well that transfers to CEX may not necessarily equate to selling and OTC deals may have already been made for some of its assets. Attempting to predict how the liquidators would act is not a simple task and caution should be taken when attempting to time a short on $SOL.

1/ Large on-chain movements prior to the Binance indictment A few hours before the Binance CFTC Indictment, there were large stablecoin withdrawals across centralized exchanges, totaling almost $1.5B in just 12 hours Notably, Binance itself saw an $850M outflow.

Weekly Alpha

Our analysis is also on substack: apesprologue.substack.com/p/…

Earlier today, the influencer Bitboy sold his entire $BEN holdings, 7 days after promising he wouldn't do so for at least 6 months. In total, he made a total profit of 44.7 $ETH ($80k), after selling the tokens he previously received for free from ben.eth

1/ Euler protocol suffered a $191M exploit, ranking it among the top 10 DeFi hacks. Projects relying on Euler for yield were also impacted, showcasing the downsides of composability as risks spread across DeFi Some projects may now face systemic risks going forward, a thread:

Weekly Alpha