These Memecoins Keep Pumping!
There’ve been so many explosive moves in the crypto markets recently that if you look away for a moment you might lose track of where we’re at.
But don’t worry, let’s catch up now with the key developments of the last few days, starting at the memecoin casino, where tokens have been tearing upwards.
Here’s what’s in today’s issue:
- Sam shares his thoughts on memecoins taking centre stage, Vanguard’s CEO stepping down, FTX assets claims being priced at 2022 levels, VCs coming back to crypto & the US U-turning on BTC mining.
- Week 3 updates for the 10x crypto portfolio.
- This week on chain.
- This week’s trending coins by Rebecca.
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Memecoins Center Stage
The top performing crypto niche right now is the meme department, with a wide sweep of coins printing massive gains over the weekend and setting off a party atmosphere.
Notable top gainers included WIF, WEN and BONK in the Solana ecosystem, PEPE, which reached new all-time highs, old favorites DOGE, SHIB and FLOKI, and some less well-known coins such as POPCAT, MOG, TURBO (a PEPE-era entrant making a comeback), and from the new Blast ecosystem, there’s Blast Pepe.
Basically, these were up across the board, so what can we take away from it all? Firstly, we’re in a market phase where it’s time to left-curve it, or in other words, don’t overthink: people are aping in right now, and trends are there to be caught.
Also, while full-time degens love memecoins, so do people jumping back into crypto after being out of the loop, who are perhaps more likely to go for the more widely-known coins–such as DOGE and SHIB–from the last cycle.
And that suggests that retail buyers are coming (I mean, we’re all retail if we’re not institutional buyers, but here just meaning people who aren’t following crypto all the time), and this impression is further reinforced by, besides classic memecoins pumping, older Layer1s–including Cardano, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin–making gains.
But what’s your approach to memecoins, is it worth rolling the dice? And if so, which bags have you packed, dogs, frogs, cats or something else? Reply to this email and let us know what you think!
Vanguard CEO Steps Down
There was a big shock last week over at Vanguard, which is the second largest asset manager in the world, when it was announced that Chairman and CEO Tim Buckley is to step down from his position at the firm.
Buckley has been the CEO for six years, a period during which oversaw the company’s AUM growing by an amazing $4 trillion, but he’s now set to retire by the end of 2024.
If you’re reading that and wondering what it has to do with crypto, it’s because Vanguard attracted criticism recently for its decision not to jump into spot Bitcoin ETFs when its main competitor, BlackRock (along with the other firms that have launched BTC ETFs) was busy pushing the merits of BTC.
To be fair, Vanguard’s decision wasn’t out of character for the firm, as it’s carved out a conservative approach that’s served it well up to now. However, the performance of the new Bitcoin ETFs so far has massively exceeded mainstream expectations, and must now be forcing critics to rethink their positions.
And so the news of Buckley’s departure inevitably set off speculation as to whether his retirement might clear the way for a new period in which Vanguard breaks from the past, and could plausibly decide that it can find room for Bitcoin after all, although of course, we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
FTX Asset Claims Priced at 2022 Levels
It’s good news for FTX users hoping to get their investments back, as the defunct exchange’s liquidators have opened a Digital Claim Portal, meaning out-of-pocket customers can register to try and recover lost assets. However, it’s also bad news for FTX users hoping to get their investments back, as assets have been prices at their levels in 2022, when FTX imploded.
And as crypto prices have been steadily climbing, and then recently soaring, since the beginning of 2023, that means there are big differences between current market rates, and what’s being offered according to FTX provisional liquidator PricewaterhouseCoopers, with BTC for claims priced at $16,871, ETH at $1,258, SOL at $16.24, and BNB at $286.
VCs Come Back to Crypto
After crypto crashed so spectacularly in 2022 (well done for getting through that year everyone, it was quite the ride), VC funding plummeted, dropping from around $33.3 billion in 2022, to below $10.7 billion in 2023, a fall of 68%.
However, nothing prompts large bundles of cash being catapulted at new enterprises quite as efficiently as prices going up, and so with crypto back in the habit of printing green candles, VCs may be starting to return.
This appears to be the case after February saw investments including:
- $100 million at EigenLayer
- $15 million at Taiko
- $27 million at Avail
- $14.4 million at AltLayer
- $2.2 million at Singularity
- $4 million at Ouinex
What’s more, although 2023 saw relatively low levels of funding overall, a report this month from PitchBook showed that Q4 2023 saw the beginning of an uptick, with a 2.5% increase compared to Q3 that year, and the recovery appears to be continuing now into 2024.
Also, to put the situation into a longer-term context, 2023 still actually had the third highest amount of annual funding, after the sky-high levels of the previous two years.
US U-Turns on BTC Mining
We mentioned here last week how the Energy Information Administration in the US backed down over plans to make bitcoin miners submit data for an official survey, suspending the requirement for a month.
And now, in a further development, the Department of Energy has suspended the survey altogether, stating also that it will destroy any data already collected.
The pro-BTC side outside the courthouse in Texas
This comes after the Department of Energy was sued by the Texas Blockchain Council and mining company Riot Platforms, from which an agreement between all parties was subsequently reached. The president of the Texas Blockchain Council, Lee Bratcher, said of the victory,
“The government demanding, and promising to publish, sensitive business information, in the face of criminal penalties, is a threat to free enterprise everywhere. We are glad to now have an enforceable order that prevents them from doing so.”
Overall then, the case looks like another example of overreaching authorities–whether it’s the SEC or the Department of Energy–trying to take down crypto, but finding that their arguments fall apart in a legal setting.
Week 3 Crypto Portfolio Updates
Overall the portfolio is not doing anything too crazy this week with Bitcoin stealing the show.
Dymension and Celestia are both down 20%. We need an airdrop to get some excitement there again.
EMC and Myria are both up about 40%.
Interestingly, my Ethereum is up about 40% as well which was not really anticipated.
Overall portfolio gains 15% so far. But we have some big airdrops coming soon that could change the game for us. Parcl and Milkyway in particular have been announced, and Marginfi, Zeroland, and Kamino we are building points on daily. In fact, Marginfi has pretty strongly teased that the airdrop could be coming soon.
Plus, the big layer twos Linea, Scroll, and Zksync could be launching their tokens in the coming months.
Parcl has announced that they will be launching their airdrop, coming in April. This could be the first big win for our portfolio. Curious to see what kind of airdrop we are going to get here.
Reminder if you want to farm this airdrop too then you need to:
- Step 1 – Go Here
- Step 2 – Manually turn on points
- Step 3 – Manually enter code lark
I did all of the required Nibiru social tasks this week. The social campaign has now ended though. Let’s see what the airdrop looks like. Expectations are pretty damn low on this one as it is just sharing and liking tweets. BUT, let’s see.
Grabbed a name at Beranames for a possible bonus on a future Berachain airdrop. Also continuing the usual stuff like doing swaps. Network is super buggy so hard to even do some tasks.
Orbiter Finance added some bonus points for moving funds in and out of Linea. My little ETH stack is slowly getting ground down paying all of these on chain fees to do swaps, move across bridges, etc. Fees are too high even on layer twos.
I am dropping Woofi from the regular farming list as it is too limited being just on Linea for the perpetual trading.
I did some voting on Dymension goverance, just in case it helps make me eligible for future airdrops.
This week we are adding the Aleo testnet into the mix.
- First I needed to download a new wallet here.
- Then I went to their Discord to request testnet tokens. It is a bit of a process, but the wallet gives clear steps.
- Then I went to Alpha Swap and tried to do a transaction. In typical testnet fashion, nothing works. LOL.
- I made an NFT on Aleo Store.
Bitcoin had a euphoric February, that much we know, but to appreciate just how strong the monthly performance was, consider that BTC just printed–in dollar terms–its biggest ever green monthly candle, with a giant increase of $19.8K, which added $390 billion to the market cap.
In percentage terms, that’s a 43.55% increase, which is the largest monthly gain since December 2020, when it went up by 46.92%. In case you were wondering, the biggest ever monthly percentage gain was in November 2013, when it went up by 449.35%.
The spot BTC ETFs put it another impressive week, and as for how much BTC is being purchased by the new funds, compared to how much new supply is being mined, last week saw the ETFs vacuum up a total of 30,029 coins, while only 6,160 new coins were produced.
Just thinking about supply and demand, and with new issuance set to be cut in half next month, that looks like a very significant gap between what’s being bought and what’s being issued.
And when it comes to which ETFs are leading the way among the pack, it’s BlackRock and Fidelity out in front, and as it happens, those two companies’ bitcoin products have been set up with low fees. However, BlackRock and Fidelity already have dominant presences in the investment field, which is likely another point adding to their strong performances.
Meanwhile, away from ETFs, the DeFi environment also looks strong as it continues to make its way back up very rapidly towards the all-time highs of around $200 billion that it reached in 2021. TVL across DeFi has now reached a total of $143 billion, with plenty of positive sentiment and forward momentum.
And focusing in on Solana, it was a great week for the Layer1, with the SOL price making gains while network TVL soared above the $2.5 billion mark, taking it to levels not seen since May 2022.
When it comes to cross-chain swaps, THORchain, with its token RUNE, is the leader, but Chainflip is another contender making moves in this useful niche. Chainflip’s market cap is still below $150 million, but volume traded and numbers of swaps on the protocol reached new all-time highs last week, and the project is gaining increased attention.
It’s said that a reliable indicator of being at or around the bull market top, is if Coinbase climbs to the top of the US App Store charts, something that happened towards the end of 2017 (that cycle’s blow-off top), and then in May and October 2021 (when there was a double top.) By this measure, we’ve still got a way to go before a potential peak, although activity is definitely picking up, with Coinbase climbing to number 156 among free downloads.
However, Daily Active User numbers are going up, and app downloads rose sharply in February, so we’re definitely heading towards mainstream attention switching on, as users who’d taken a break from crypto return, and new participants start taking an interest.
The NFT world has been busy, and comparing chains over the past week, Ethereum and Bitcoin have been neck and neck for market share, with Solana coming in third. However, when it comes to unique wallets and first time wallets, Solana is in the lead. Wallet numbers are an uncertain metric, as many users have multiple addresses, but it’s possible that Solana is an entry point for NFT newcomers.
Here are my key takeaways from the trends this week and the market is full of action and excitement as Bitcoin closes in on a new ATH against the US dollar.
- TokenFi is a real-world asset (RWA) tokenization platform from Floki that’s pushed live its QuickLaunch bot on the Blast mainnet. Binance CEO CZ has also liked a tweet that TokenFi was featured in.
- Magic Square is a Web3 app store that’s suffered a security incident on Discord. The team has announced that the scammers got away with less than 2,000 SQR and refunds have been processed for the majority of affected users.
- DexCheck is an AI-enhanced blockchain analytics tool that’s preparing to burn 10M DCK tokens from its circulating supply between March and April.
- Artyfact is a play-to-earn (P2E) gaming metaverse that’s seen over 2,000 new registrations in its first pre-beta play day.
- MAGA is a Donald Trump memecoin that’s reached 10,000 holders on Ethereum and is up 33% in 24 hours after Nikki Haley beat Donald Trump in Washington DC’s first primary victory.
- PaLM AI is an AI chatbot using Google AI tech that’s now burned one million PALM tokens to date. PALM has also unveiled its new project roadmap for Q1 and Q2.
- Botto is an AI art project that’s launched its fourth curation competition with 2,400 BOTTO tokens up for grabs. New pieces of black and white art are also available to bid on.
- MANTRA is an RWA blockchain that’s seen a proposal approved by the community to upgrade the utility of its OM token. MANTRA’s co-founder will also be speaking at the Digital Asset Summit in London on March 18-20.
- OpSec is a cloud security project that’s seen its Cloudverse Epoch 1 officially begin. The OpSec team will also be attending the Nvidia GTC conference on March 18-21.
- Biconomy is a protocol to seamlessly connect users to any dApps across multiple chains that’s announced a partnership with Acentrik, a strategic innovation platform of Mercedes Benz.
- Pepe is a memecoin on Ethereum that’s been nominated for memecoin of the year by CoinMarketCap. PEPE is up 96% in 24 hours.
- Dogwifhat is a Solana-based memecoin and NFT collection that’s seen BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes predict WIF will reach $2. The token has skyrocketed 140% to a new all-time high on February 28.
- Fantom is a Layer-1 DeFi blockchain that’s announced a series of new launches at ETHDenver including an ecosystem-wide airdrop and a stablecoin.
- Solana is a Layer-1 blockchain that’s kicked off its global online Renaissance Hackathon. Coca-Cola HBC has also announced it’s using Solana-based All Art Protocol’s verification system for staff qualifications. SOL is up 32% in a week.
- Verasity is an Ethereum-powered esports and video entertainment protocol that’s seen Alex Becker predict VRA will be one of 7 tokens that will 15X by mid-2024.
Thank you so much for your support, and I truly hope that today’s issue will give you insights needed to help you master your wealth.
If you are reading this it means you are on the free version of the Wealth Mastery Investor Report, which is great for news and tips on the crypto markets.
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Wealth Mastery (Lark Davis, and the Wealth Mastery writing team) are not providing you individually tailored investment advice. Nor is Wealth Mastery registered to provide investment advice, is not a financial adviser, and is not a broker-dealer. The material provided is for educational purposes only. Wealth Mastery is not responsible for any gains or losses that result from your cryptocurrency investments. Investing in cryptocurrency involves a high degree of risk and should be considered only by persons who can afford to sustain a loss of their entire investment. Investors should consult their financial adviser before investing in cryptocurrency.
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