Rapture: Mattison Asher's Crypto Takes

Whelp, it looks like I was seriously underestimating the distress 3AC is enduring. While I deeply respect Kyle and Su as traders, they messed up to a point where it looks like 3AC will not be able to recover. That being said, I just saw a tweet asking a 3AC

As promised, now that we have clearly broken $30,000, we are undoubtedly in goblin town. Boy, there are plenty of indicators. Carnage Rumors around Celsius, one of the leading centralized crypto lenders, being insolvent on their ETH positions started early last week. Yesterday, Celsius halted their user's

In part 1 of this series, I examined just how dominant Lido is with their current monopoly over the ETH liquid staking space. For this post, I will discuss what other players in the staking ecosystem are doing in reaction to Lido's dominance. Institutional flavored operators to build

Ever since I started to work for SSV, I have been enmeshed in the world of Etheruem staking. I have to say, this area of crypto is super interesting and not well covered yet at all. From operators to infrastructure to pools to innovative financial productization, there is a TON

As I mentioned on May 8th's Rapture, regulatory enforcement from the SEC was likely on the horizon. Today, a former OpenSea executive was arrested and charged with allegedly committing wire fraud and money laundering in connection with a scheme to commit insider trading. This individual faces up to

With volumes low across the board recently, the current market environment is undoubtedly shaking up the crypto exchange industry. Certain exchanges did a far better job raising capital and releasing new products during the bull market than others, meaning they are better positioned for the bear. As crypto volumes generally

There have been multiple major wallet announcements in the couple few weeks. Leaders in the wallet industry such as MetaMask announced new features that improve the UX of their wallet and existing powerhouses like Zerion declared they are moving into the wallet industry. Let's go over some of

The decoupling event has been on everyone's Twitter fingertips. From Barry Silbert to Zhu Su, many of the most prominent investors in the space have been calling for a decoupling event for weeks. This week, we have seen the decoupling event, yet it has been received with little

I have been scrolling through DeFi land, which has taken an absolute beating since May of last year. Annihilation DPI, the index like token fund that tracks major DeFi projects, is down almost 85% from its all time high in May 2021. Furthermore, monthly DEX volumes are steady at approximately

I took a week off from writing to attend the Permissionless conference and EDC. While I won't comment on the hottest new trends in electronic music, I will discuss some of the most salient announcements stemming from Permissionless, which mostly catered to the established projects in crypto, before

On May 5th, The Block released their Layer 2 Scaling Solutions: A Framework for Comparison [https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/145059/layer-2-scaling-solutions-a-framework-for-comparison-commissioned-by-polygon] . While this report was commissioned by Polygon, and thus gives special treatment to Polygon in particular, the data undoubtedly was insightful and presents the justification for why scaling

I have been spending a lot of my time thinking about bridges in crypto. Bridges are the names of the entities that allow users to port over their assets from one blockchain to another. These entities attract significant amounts of TVL because they are necessary for users wanting to access

While my base case is still we have more downside to go, there are multiple signs of capitulation that I am noticing. Specifically, exchange volumes, transfer volumes from whale addresses to exchanges, and rumors of major funds going belly up are can be major indicators of capitulation. Additionally, there has

If you were looking for hope in Coinbase's earnings report [https://s27.q4cdn.com/397450999/files/doc_financials/2022/q1/Coinbase-Q122-Shareholder-Letter.pdf] to assuage you of any bearish sentiment, you assuredly did not find it. While I think Coinbase is ridiculously undervalued at this point (P/E ratio

The hero to villian arcs in crypto are probably the most epic out of any industry. On March 24th, 2022, Do Kwon was the savior [https://rapture.ghost.io/rapture-176/] of the market. Today, he is the the cause of the market's woes. UST implodes Everyone in crypto

We are on the outskirts of goblin town at this point, having broken our previous YTD low of $35,180. The breaking of $30,000 would undoubtedly confirm to me we are in goblin town, which is crypto talk for a prolonged bear market. Better than expected CPI numbers on

Recently, Dan Robinson [https://twitter.com/danrobinson] (Paradigm) and Gordon Liao [https://twitter.com/gordonliao] (Uniswap) released a report [https://uniswap.org/blog/uniswap-v3-dominance] analyzing the liquidity on Uniswap. Now, I will start off by saying that there is likely some bias in this research considering Paradigm was a lead

As many of you know know, I have been pretty bearish starting in late November of last year, and quite a bit more bearish since the beginning of the year. While BTC has held on better than I have expected the past few months with all of the macro turbulence,

While the crypto market overall has been in a serious slump, DeFi tokens in particular have been decimated. DPI, an index product that roughly tracks a compilation of the top DeFi projects, has drawn down nearly 80% [https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/defi-pulse-index] from its all time high a

By far, Genesis' quarterly crypto reports are my favorite research pieces that track institutional adoption. Last week, Genesis released their Q1 2022 Market Observations [https://info.genesistrading.com/hubfs/quarterly-reports/2022/Genesis-Q1-Report-2022.pdf] . You know the drill, let's dive into some of the major takeaways. High level

Continuing the theme of yesterday's Rapture, today I will go through more of Bankless' Q1 2022 state of Ethereum report [https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/state-of-ethereum-q1-2022?s=w]. Yesterday, I covered the adoption that occurred on the Ethereum protocol itself and within the DeFi ecosystem. For today&

Bankless recently released their Q1 2022 State of Ethereum report [https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/state-of-ethereum-q1-2022?s=w]. While the Bankless guys are generally Ethereum permabulls, I do find the data they amalgamate for the report quite useful in terms of tracking the adoption of Ethereum. So, lets dive into

Today, a bipartisan set of representatives from the House introduced the digital commodity exchange act of 2022 [https://republicans-agriculture.house.gov/uploadedfiles/digital_commodity_exchange_act_of_2022.pdf] . If passed, this bill would squarely put certain areas of crypto under the regulatory purview of the CFTC, which is seen

While the goblin's roar is ever increasing with every 1% drop in the US equities market... whoops I mean crypto... (what's the difference right now?), there remains plenty of tokens to remain optimistic about in the short term. Optimism's upcoming token launch [https://optimism.

I just got back from a week in Amsterdam for Devconnect, and I can definitely say that if you want to know where the industry is going in terms of innovation, developer conferences like EthDenver/Devconnect are the places to be. At these events, you directly interact with the sources