Mattison Asher

Rapture #257: Looks like more Corruption in Crypto

Dominos are continuing to fall because of the FTX implosion. While much of the initial news centered around liquidations, more recently light is being shed on the fact that FTX looks to be at the center of widespread corruption throughout the ecosystem. Let's look at the latest allegations

Rapture #256: Potential Further Contagion

Well, it looks like I might have spoken too soon regarding the major crypto native contagion being finished. In the past 48 hours, information is being disseminated that indicates one of the largest institutional trading platforms in east Asia might be going bankrupt. Furthermore, crypto lender Genesis owes creditors far

Rapture #255: Market Musings

My calls this year have been accurate, though I wish I would have pulled the trigger on basically fully liquidating a bit quicker rather then near the end of January. Still, if you are a consistent reader of Rapture, you will know I have been crypto and macro bearish for

Rapture #254: The Cypherpunk Era is Over

The beginning phase of crypto is now officially over. The cypherpunk ideals the industry was founded upon are fading away. Replacing these ideals are ones that center around growth, mass adoption, and regulatory viability. While there will still be privacy preserving tech that can be accessed via crypto, most of

Rapture #253: FTX Looks Like it was a Criminal Organization

In Rapture #252, I was really still trying to give SBF the benefit of the doubt in terms of not being a likely felon, despite consistently pointing to his questionable business practices, referenced in Rapture #234 and Rapture #236. The allegations that have come out over the past few days,

Rapture #252: FTX Goes Down

Wow, what a wild, wild week. FTX, the fourth largest exchange in crypto, was dethroned. FTX had the backing from some of the leading institutions in the world, including BlackRock and Sequoia. Furthermore, SBF (Sam Bankman-Fried) was one of the largest political donors to President Biden. Both FTX and Alameda

Rapture #251: JPY, EURO, and GBP are Donezo Part 2

In Part 1, I discussed how GDP growth had stalled in Japan, the EU, and the UK while debt had skyrocketed. In an inflationary environment, rising debt and GDP stalling is incredibly toxic in terms of how the market views a country's sovereign debt and, eventually, its currency.

Rapture #250: JPY, EURO, and GBP are Donezo

This past week, I have been practicing a presentation I will be giving to a group of family offices in Barcelona at a conference hosted by Real Vision in a couple weeks. The title of the presentation is "The Point of No Return for (Most) Fiat Currencies: Why Dollar

Rapture #249: Market Update and News Commentary

I will be (and already have been) decreasing the Rapture cadence in order to focus on something I am excited to discuss further soon. Right now, the aim to is to get Rapture out on a weekly basis. With that being said, let's dive into a market update.

Rapture #248: Market Update and Various News Items

Not much has changed price wise for the market since early June. BTC has traded incredibly tightly in a range of approximately $19,000 to $24,500. Recently, the volatility of BTC has even dropped below the S&P 500. This low volatility, low volume market is driving traders

Rapture #247: Changes to Rapture

There will be some upcoming changes to Rapture. These changes mirror my personal career changes, which I will share soon. History of Rapture Rapture has been an incredible success. I love writing this newsletter. Rapture has become a vital step in my investment research process. The newsletter plays an integral

Rapture #246: Trading Update and GoldenTree Invests in SushiSwap

Markets overall have been pretty slow, so no real change there. Many of my favorite crypto traders think we have either bottomed macro wise and are about to initiate a new bull trend or at the very least are in the early stags of another bear market rally. I am

Rapture #245: US Government Related Updates

Lots of movement in terms of regulatory and legislative action recently. Specifically, the CFTC made moves on a derivatives exchange and a DAO. Furthermore, a leading US Senator proposed an incredibly friend crypto bill. Finally, the SEC charged Kim Kardashian for unlawfully touting a crypto security. Let's dive

Rapture #244: Crisis

I took another hiatus in order to travel, as the market is offering little opportunity for profit. It's bad I don't know what else to say besides the macro environment has continued to worsen. I sound like a broken record at this point. I recently finished

Rapture #243: White House Framework for Digital Assets and SEC Claims all Activity on Ethereum is Under their Jurisdiction

Two big items related to how the US government views crypto came out this week. The first was the White House releasing their framework for responsible development of digital assets. The second was SEC announcing lawsuit against Ian Balina. Let's dive into each. SEC wants purview over all

Rapture #242: Bear Market Punt

While I wait for the market to show its hand regarding its next big move (which I think will be down), I decided to try my second bear market punt. I discussed how I wanted to develop this skillset further in a previous Rapture. My first was in ORCA, which

Rapture #241: Technical Differences Between Solana and Ethereum

Coinbase recently came out with an excellent post explaining some of the technical details of how Solana works. After reading this post, I came away with a much deeper understanding of the technical underpinnings of Solana. Since Solana and Ethereum are often viewed as competitors, I thought I would take

Rapture #240: Market Update, Tradfi News, and Solana NFT Boom

Boy o boy, did the inflation miss to the upside knock this market back to reality. While I had seen many bullish narratives proliferate these past few weeks (inflation had peaked, Germany had solved their energy crisis, the Russian war was dying down, the Ethereum merge would pull the entire

Rapture #239: Arbitrum Commentary, Flashbot Revenue, and Binance Removes USDC as Tradeable Asset

Wild price action in the markets right now. ETH desperately wants to break out in anticipation of the merge, but BTC's heaviness will not allow it to do so. Clearly, BTC price action is being affected by the deteriorating macro environment, with the two largest most recent items

Rapture #238: Survey on Institutional Adoption of Crypto and Sudoswap Token Distribution Announcement

Research wise, the last few days have been incredibly exciting. I have discovered some incredibly interesting new projects that I will likely write about in the future. Yet for today's newsletter, I am going to cover some insights I garnered from an institutional report I read and some

Rapture #237: More Research Resources and Conflict Brewing at MakerDAO

This past month, I have been devoting a much larger amount of my time to research. In fact, the only period when I was doing more research was in 2018 and the first half of 2019. The best time for uncovering the next 10 - 100x in crypto is in

Rapture #236: Market Update, Major Retirements, and Compound V3

The key turning point I mentioned in Rapture #230 is now behind us. As hypothesized, the crypto's bear market rally ran out of steam and BTC currently sits close to its low point thus far for the bear market. The catalyst for this breakdown was Jay Powell'

Rapture #235: NFT Update

Since it has been a while, I wanted to give a quick update on some of the latest data and news items coming out of the NFT ecosystem. Overall, NFT based activity has been steadily decreasing for months now. That being said, NFT adoption by larger corporations has accelerated. Let&

Rapture #234: Market Dumps, Trad Hedge Funds Seek Crypto Talent, FTX News, and Potential BAYC Liquidations

So far, the market is continuing to match my hypothesis (most recently touched upon in Rapture #230 and Rapture #233) that the bear market is indeed not over and we have more pain to come. I won't consider the hypothesis to be confirmed unless BTC breaks to new

Rapture #233: Regulatory Changes in Canada, BitGo Acquisition falls Through, and Research on Insider Trading at Coinbase

Interesting movements in the markets today. Could always be wrong, but I think this gyration might be the beginning of the next down leg in crypto. My base stance is still bearish, as I have iterated before, and crypto seems to sputtering despite the rebound in equities. We shall see.