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So HBO finally dropped their big Bitcoin documentary a few days ago. And guess who they think Satoshi is?
It’s not Hal Finney, Len Sassaman, or any of the usual suspects. They believe it’s Peter Todd!
He’s a Canadian developer who contributed to bitcoin core. The biggest “evidence” is that he replied to Satoshi in this thread.
Peter Todd denies it, and the entire community thinks the documentary’s a joke.
Here’s what we got today:
- Memecoin mania is on the rise. And how to capitalize on them.
- Sponsored Deep Dive. Use Contango to increase your yield.
- Around the web. Berachain airdrop strategy, EigenExplorer is live, New token launches, and more.
Today’s email is brought to you by Contango — the best way to loop onchain.
Here’s your Edge 🗡️!
Narratives
Memecoins Keep Climbing: What’s Happening?
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Riding trending narratives is a great strategy for crypto investment. Crypto Twitter (aka X) is once again hyping up the memecoins.
The current craze can be traced to this talk at Token2049 by Murad – a failed crypto fund manager turned memecoin bull.
What Was So Special About That Talk? It laid out a persuasive argument for why memecoins will continue to pump. And pumping prices is all about convincing others to buy your bags.
Token2049 is one of the top crypto conferences, so Murad’s message didn’t go unnoticed. It was an internet sensation as well, racking up over 1.7 million views on Twitter.
So, memecoins had two great weeks. $GIGA is up 79.4% on the weekly. And $SPX is up a whopping ~250% on the weekly.
Reasons to be Bullish Memecoins.
Tbh, I don’t agree with Murad’s perspective. He’s a “memecoin maximalist”. And his attitude of “there’s no need to create valuable products” is too pessimistic for my taste.
You can listen to his arguments here.
At the end of the day, we can’t fade Memecoins. They always perform well during bull cycles. Here’s why:
#1 The VCs have ruined altcoins for retail. Legit projects are privately raising money from VCs. By the time they launch the token, it’ll already be at a massive valuation. Then, VCs use retail as exit liquidity and it is all down-only price action.
Nobody wants to touch altcoins anymore. For more on why altcoins are in trouble, I’ve covered that in detail here.
#2 Memecoins provide financial returns. Since altcoins are dead, retail is flowing towards memecoins. Memecoins avoid most altcoin problems, such as massive FDV or VC unlocks.
They’ll invest in with memes they resonate. Below are some examples from the Murad memecoins.
- SPX6900 ($SPX). The mission behind this memecoin? To flip the stock market. Bold.
- GigaChad ($GIGA). Representing masculinity, with the iconic GigaChad front and center. Who wouldn’t buy in?
- Retardio ($RETARDIO). It is a popular phrase on crypto Twitter, symbolizing the clowns in the space.
#3 They’ll generate organic marketing. When memecoins give the 10x return, early investors will feel more attached to these projects. And they’ll start to advocate in pro of the memecoin.
Eventually, some of them will become blue-chip memes like $PEPE, $WIF, & $BONK.
#4 Memecoin communities offer belonging. Crypto nerds spend most of their time on the Internet, and memecoin communities provide excitement, identity, and belonging for them.
They’re almost mini-religions for many degens.
#5 Crypto’s outperformers have always been weird. You might be weirded out by the “lack of fundamentals” for memecoins. But crypto outperformers always have been like this.
None of the top token’s “fundamentals” support their valuations. In 2017, ICOs didn’t have any clear valuation framework. 2021 NFTs were also eerily similar to the current memecoin craze.
They lack “fundamentals” but exceed on the “pumpamentals”.
How to buy memecoins?
Don’t fool yourself. Buying new memecoins is riskier than buying other tokens. But if you’re after high returns, they’re the wild west where fortunes can be made.
Here are my basic rules of thumb when dabbling in memecoins:
- High liquidity and volume are key: Without these, you’re asking for trouble.
- Can the meme go viral? Think catchy slogans, funny images, or tickers that resonate. The more relatable, the better.
- CEX listings are a major catalyst for memecoins. Coinbase, Bybit and Binance are most important CEXes.
- Strong community activity: Avoid bots. Focus on real engagement on platforms like X, TikTok, or Telegram.
- Watch the token distribution. If most of the supply is held by a few insiders, steer clear. You want a growing base of holders.
- Older memecoins are safer: Coins that have survived multiple drawdowns are usually more resilient.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of memecoins. However, the market doesn’t care about my likes and dislikes. It’ll be a dominant narrative for this cycle.
Sponsored Deep Dive By Contango
Smart Looping: Increase Your Yield Without Hassles or Risks
There are countless DeFi strategies out there. How do you know which one to use?
Well, what I’m searching for is the sweet spot: it’s the intersection of juicy yields, lower risks, and ease of implementation.
I want to introduce to you an “advanced” DeFi strategy that is actually a lot easier to implement than you imagine. It involves borrowing against an asset, using the borrowed funds to buy more of the same asset, and repeating the process to amplify exposure.
This is called Looping.
Here’s a simple example:
- Step 1: You use ETH as collateral and borrow USDT
- Step 2: You swap USDT for ETH
- Step 3: You borrow USDT again using the ETH you just swapped
- Repeat
This sequence is called looping. The result? A significant boost in potential returns — without needing more initial capital.
So, if this is so awesome, why isn’t everyone looping all the time? Because there are several risks associated with it.
The Risks of Traditional Looping Strategies
While looping can supercharge returns, it has some hassles:
- Volatility can lead to liquidation
- You need to constantly monitor collateral and the proper timing
- Gas fees can eat all your profits when looping across multiple transactions
This has scared most people away from even trying. So, for the past few years, only the most diehard DeFi nerds have been able to use these strategies.
Contango makes Looping easily accessible to everyone.
Enter Contango–Smart Looping.
Contango is a platform that lets you loop anything on-chain. You can:
- Create leveraged positions just like perps
- Boost yield of staked and liquid assets, such as stETH or eETH
- Create delta-neutral strategies
- Farm rewards, airdrops, and points with leverage
- and much more
Contango offers a solution to the inefficiencies of traditional looping strategies by introducing Smart Looping.
How does it work?
Remember all the steps I mentioned above on looping an asset and all the risks/labor involved?
Contango automates the entire process. You click a button, sit back, and reap the rewards.
The how is more for the nerds (for details, click here). Basically, they use flash loans to reduce costs and facilitate the process.
For example, your idle ETH could potentially see 30% more returns than manual looping strategies — with fewer gas fees and headaches.
They have even integrated risk management features to minimize the chances of liquidation, making it safer to capitalize if the market tanks.
Unique Advantages of Contango
- Frictionless Automation: Complicated strategies with few clicks.
- Lower Gas Fees: Efficiency in execution cuts down fees.
- Built-In Risk Management: Liquidation protection ensures you’re safer when looping.
- Liquidity: Contango positions are built on top of spot and money markets, meaning they can access deep TVL (over $40 billion) across DeFi.
- Audits: Contango has been audited by top-tier auditing firms such as ABDK. (You can view all their audits here)
Team / Investors
The Contango team is made up of DeFi veterans and experienced developers with deep expertise in crypto and traditional finance. They’re all doxxed.
The backers? They’re a who’s who of Crypto powerhouses.
Who’s already using Contango?
Contango is not a random product straight out of beta. They found Product-Market-Fit reaching a total volume traded of $3 Billion and an open interest of $300m with 20k unique users in less than a year.
Why all this success? It’s not set in stone, but we can attribute this success to a high demand for looping (read: lever up) on yield-bearing assets
Contango has several examples, such as ETH derivatives (stETH) and USD derivatives (sUSDe).
Final Thoughts
Look, there’s no perfect protocol. At the end of the day, it’s a business looking to make profits to pay their employees and survive the market.
There are always risks attached to crypto markets, and you should always access your risk management before diving in. Some you should consider:
- Underlying Liquidity. Since Contango pulls liquidity from different money markets, you are exposed to the liquidity of the market you chose.
- Multi-layered smart contract risk. You expose yourself to several layers of smart contracts risks, be mindful of that.
- Multisig risk. Contango is not yet fully decentralized. The core team can upgrade the smart contracts via 3 out of 5 multi.
How to capitalize on Contango
Ok, let’s discuss what you’re actually looking for. The juicy yields.
You may feel a bit lost inside the platform. Don’t worry; my team dug deep and found some of the best risk-reward pools you can leverage inside Contango.
2 Stand out from the rest, they are:
1- sUSDe<>USDT/USDC – 40% APY
Using both USDT and USDC on Contango with Fluid.
2- wsETH/ETH – 18% APY
This pool is also on Fluid.
You can find more pools here.
The ultimate goal is to make complex yield easier for normies, a key value to making Contango a forefront powerhouse in the next DeFi wave.
Don’t miss the opportunity to capitalize on Contango’s growing ecosystem — the future of DeFi automation starts here.
Additional Resources
- Tokenomics
- Team
- Dune stats
- Speculation/Hedge guide
Note: This an educational deep dive is sponsored by Contango. It’s meant to help educate and spread awareness on a Protocol that I think is awesome. This piece reflects my honest opinion and thoughts. – Edgy
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
Aave is discussing the expansion of $GHO stablecoin to Base and Avalanche. This will be new markets for $GHO for growth.
Kyber Network added Zap feature for PankcakeSwap. It allows users to add v3 liquidity with just one token.
1inch introduced Fusion➕. It gives users gasless transactions. This is great for user experience.
Layer3 launched on Solana. They describe themselves as the “consumer attention layer”.
Aave DAO launched the v3.2 upgrade. It introduced Liquid eMode for greater control and flexibility over borrowing and collateral.
EtherFi announced that restaking rewards will start on October 15. To receive the reward, users just have to hold weETH or eETH tokens.
Morpho Labs released the eligibility criteria and onboarding form for delegates. To be featured on the new delegate interface, complete it by tomorrow.
Penpie is discussing a compensation plan for those who are affected by the Penpie hack. It also introduces the SAFUPIE insurance mechanism.
🪂 Airdrop Alpha
Berachain airdrop can still be farmed. Here’s a strategy for farming $BERA on testnet for zero cost.
Puffer Finance will launch its token on October 14th. 7.5% of the total supply is allocated for the Season 1 airdrop.
Optimism revealed the airdrop #5 for superchain users. They’ve allocated 10M+ OP to 54k+ unique addresses.
Scroll announced the $SCR token launch. 7% of the token supply is allocated for airdrop #1, and 8% is allocated for future airdrops.
Swell Network has released the airdrop checker. They’ve allocated 8.5% of the total $SWELL supply for the airdrop.
🚀 New Launches
EigenExplorer shared the EigenExplorer dashboard. It gives the latest data related to EigenLayer such as the deployment ratio of EigenLayer TVL.
Midas launched its core product suite. $mTBILL will give exposure to U.S. T-Bills. And $mBASIS tracks a delta-neutral crypto basis trading strategy.
Hashflow introduced the ExchangeOS. It is a universal ZK settlement layer that allows you to prove offchain transactions onchain.
Solv Protocol introduced the Staking Abstraction Framework. It is designed to simplify and standardize Bitcoin staking across chains.
🐦⬛ X Hits
- List of projects in AI narrative.
- CultureFi: productive phase of memecoins.
- How long will the memecoin dominance continue?
- A massive list of 40 good YouTube channels.
- The EigenLayer AVS ecosystem.
😂 Meme
