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$81,800. Bitcoin has officially hit an all-time high.
I can’t stop refreshing my portfolio. Before things get too heated, I want to remind you something.
You make 80% of your gains in the last part of the cycle. But your greed will prevent you from keeping it. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. Guys who are millionaires, but end up with nothing because they “mistimed” the top. Or they think “just two more months“
If you’re able to make life-changing money, then actually go and change your life.
Here’s what we got today:
- Crypto under Trump. What’s ahead for the industry?
- The DeFi renaissance. Top projects I’m keeping an eye on.
- Around the web. Eclipse mainnet went live, Contango has enabled protocol fee sharing, ENS announced Namechain L2, and more.
Today’s email is brought to you by Kernel — restaking protocol on BNB Chain.
Here’s your Edge 🗡️!
Analysis
What’s Trump’s Impact on Crypto?
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Bitcoin has made an all-time high. Everyone is bullish on Crypto because Trump just got elected.
But some of you might be wondering how Trump as president could impact Crypto. So, we did some research and here are some of the reasons why.
#1. Politicians will pause before targeting crypto
Crypto made big waves this election. >90% of the candidates supported by major crypto lobbies won their elections.
Over $135M was spent on pro-crypto candidates from both parties. Even Sherrod Brown, a political heavyweight who was a major headache for crypto, was defeated.
Now, no politician will try to create another “anti-crypto army” in the foreseeable future. Nobody is going to vote for you just because you are against crypto. But, if you actively hinder crypto’s progress, a ton of money and voters will turn against you.
Crypto has already raised $78M for the upcoming mid-term elections in the USA.
#2. The regulators will stop the crypto witch-hunt
Under the previous administration, crypto was persecuted. The “Operation Chokepoint 2.0” tried to strangle the industry via methods like denying banking access to crypto companies.
The SEC regime of Gary Gensler was also terrorizing. He didn’t provide any reasonable guidelines or sandbox for crypto companies. Instead, he adopted a policy of “regulation by enforcement.”
Trump’s administration will take a friendlier approach. He’ll replace Gensler with a pro-crypto official. There’s even serious talk about establishing a “Bitcoin Strategic Reserve.”
Hopefully, he can pass a regulatory framework that supports crypto innovation as well.
#3. Institutions will make moves
With a supportive administration, institutional investors will feel more confident about crypto.
We can already see this in ETF Inflows. Since the election, both BTC and ETH have seen record daily inflows.
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Some are expecting new ETFs for SOL and other alts by the end of this administration.
Beyond ETFs, we’re likely to see more TradFi firms building on-chain products. BlackRock already has their $BUIDL fund. Visa had announced a tokenization platform on ETH.
We’ll see TradFi making moves in crypto.
#4. Crypto builders can experiment
So far, developers have been afraid to add real value to crypto tokens. Take Uniswap — they didn’t enable the fee switch, partly because they feared $UNI might be labeled a security.
With the regulatory environment easing up, devs will experiment more boldly. We’ll see fee switch flipping everywhere. This is especially bullish for utility/governance tokens.
Trump has also promised that there won’t be a Central Bank Digital Currency. This is good for citizen’s financial freedom and the growth of crypto stablecoins.
#5. Fed will print more $$$
Trump’s economic policy involves increased government spending. He’ll be trying to push the Fed into monetary policies that increase the money supply.
Some of this newly printed $$$ will enter the crypto and pump up the prices.
Trump won’t enter office until January 2025. So, there’s still some time before any drastic changes are going to happen.
But the market and sentiment have turned bullish. The easy money season is here!
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Hot Narratives
DeFi Renaissance: We’re Back Baby!
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DeFi — a narrative once dismissed as “dinosaur coins” — is back with a vengeance.
But why the sudden DeFi renaissance? DeFi is home to some of crypto’s most useful applications. Unlike other sectors, they create real utility and generate actual revenue.
However, DeFi tokens were “down only” because regulatory concerns prevented projects from sharing revenue with token holders. Devs feared the SEC classifying tokens as securities.
With Trump’s win, the regulatory pressure will ease. DeFi protocols can finally return value to their token holders. With alt season upon us, excitement is building around the DeFi narrative.
The numbers speak for themselves. Since the election, the DeFi Pulse Index ($DPI), which tracks top DeFi projects, is up ~32%.
Below are the top DeFi projects on my radar:
#1. FluidDEX. It is a fresh and innovative DEX from InstaDapp ($INST). It introduces a mechanism that boosts capital efficiency for both liquidity providers (LPs) and DEXes.
With their model, $1 of liquidity can be turned into $39 worth of trading power. Learn more about it here.
FluidDEX is also gaining traction on Twitter. So the “pumpamentals” are looking strong.
#2. Raydium. This is the leading pure DEX on Solana. Pump.fun has created a memecoin mania on Solana. Behind the scenes, Raydium is powering most of the liquidity and trading activity.
- It handles >60% of the Solana DEX volume.
- >70% of the Solana DEX Liquidity is in Raydium.
- It has collected >$65M in fees since October alone.
Solana will continue to grow. And $RAY is well positioned to benefit from that.
#3. Jupiter Exchange. This is the go-to app for Solana trading. It offers perps, market buying, limit orders, dollar-cost averaging, and more.
During the current bull run, its metrics have been rising as well. Their TVL is at an all-time high of $1.8B. And in November, it has already enabled $12.6B in aggregator trading volume.
Many are anticipating the additional “Japuary” airdrop in January 2025. It could potentially drive a lot of attention and activity to the protocol.
#4. mETH Protocol ($COOK). It offers liquid staking through two tokens: $mETH (staking) and $cmETH (restaking). Below is a comparison between the mETH Protocol and other top LST Protocols.
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In the sheet, we can clearly see that the price (MC) relative to the market share is much lower in the case of the mETH protocol.
Additionally, they are running an incentive program. Through $cmETH, you can now earn six yields for one token.
#5. Kelp DAO. This is a liquid restaking protocol branched out from Stader, a liquid staking protocol. It doesn’t have a token yet, but it is still noteworthy for several reasons:
- They’ve grown to ~$745M in TVL.
- You can farm six different airdrops by depositing to the $agETH vault.
- They’ve expanded to 11 chains, the most among similar protocols (tied with Renzo).
#6. Ethena. It is the issuer of the most scalable decentralized stablecoin, $USDe. It also gives high yield to users who stake their stablecoin, 12% APY at the time of writing. In it’s category, there’s no serious competitor for Ethena.
On the day Trump was elected, Wintermute proposed a fee switch. It asked the DAO to allocate part of the fees to $sENA holders.
Since then price of $ENA has pumped >65%.
#7. Swell Protocol. It is both a restaking platform and an L2. It also claims to use EigenLayer AVS to add features like zk-coprocessors that help developers create new applications.
Recently, they have also joined the Optimism Superchain, which is quickly becoming a massive ecosystem of top projects.
On November 7th, they had a great token launch. Most new launches, aka Low-float, and high-FDV tokens, have been really unpopular this cycle. In contrast, $SWELL has managed to attract interest by starting at a relatively low valuation.
#8. Drift. This is a perpetual futures platform on Solana. But it also offers other services, such as liquids staking, prediction market, lending, and more.
From November 8th, $DRIFT has pumped by ~350%. However, the pump wasn’t driven by some fundamental factor.
Upbit, a South Korean crypto exchange, listed DRIFT. Binance also added $DRIFT for futures trading with leverage up to 75x.
This has driven a lot attention to the token and therefore the price. Upbit guidelines, such as minimum sell prices, helped too.
Compared to other perpetual platforms like dYdX and GMX, the Drift valuation might look high. But in a bull market, you should be careful to short tokens with momentum.
We are in the ‘buy high, sell higher’ season now. This is your time to lock in.
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
Eclipse launched its mainnet. It is an Ethereum L2 that uses Solana VM for execution. It combines the best of both chains.
Morpho DAO has decided to make $MORPHO transferable. They’ve started steps to add liquidity to their token.
Contango has enabled the sharing of the protocol fees. The users need to provide liquidity to TANGO and stake the LP token to earn it.
Ethereum Name Service announced they’d launch an L2 named “namechain“. It’ll be a zk-rollup that’ll be live around the end of 2025.
Dojo released “Vesting Launch”. It is like any other fair launch but slowly releases tokens to buyers who purchase within 24 hours of the token creation.
🪂 Airdrop Alpha
FIP Crypto shared several airdrop opportunities here. You can airdrop farming-related resources as well.
Arkham Intel announced a points program, Arkham Exchange Points. It’ll be based on their trading volume on the Arkham Exchange.
Paradyze, a prediction market on Injective, is live. They are also running a points program that can earn you airdrop.
Sunrise claims to be a specialized DA layer for proof of liquidity. Here’s a guide to their incentivized testnet.
🚀 New Launches
Plena Finance, a crypto super-app that uses account abstraction, went live on Telegram. It’ll give them access to Telegram users.
Thunder is live on Fuel Network Mainnet as the first NFT marketplace. New collections are being dropped on the application.
Spark beta went live on Fuel Network. It is an order book application built by Compo Labs.
Rewards.fun is live for next week. It is a daily leaderboard competition for the most active users on the Base chain.
🐦⬛ X Hits
- Bullish market commentary.
- A list of Solana’s consumer applications.
- Strategies for finding gems before they pop.
- How can innovative protocols can benefit from forks?
- AI Agent created memecoin without human creator’s permission.
