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Trump’s back.
This is bullish for Crypto. Expect Gary Gensler to be fired asap (the head of the SEC), and Trump has promised to launch a Bitcoin strategic reserve. He’s even pardoning the founder of Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, on day 1!
Bitcoin has hit an all-time high in anticipation of the Crypto Golden Bullrun.
Besides Trump, there are also more Pro crypto officials elected than anti-crypto ones. Next week, we’ll explore some more of the possible 2nd order consequences of a Trump 2nd term.
On a personal note, this account and newsletter was launched January 2022. So, I’ve pretty much been grinding it out in the bear market the past few years. From FTX collapse, to Luna collapse, to Hamster races, we saw it all.
It’s been an honor to have you guys reading this newsletter while the industry was down.
Will do my best to keep you up to date in the bull! To Valhalla we go!
Here’s what we got today:
- Polymarket vs Legacy media. Who is better at forecasting?
- Intro to Kamino Finance. And how to earn high yields using it.
- Around the web. OpenSea will upgrade in December, Morpho DAO has decided to enable token transferability and more.
Today’s email is brought to you by Maple — the future of institutional lending.
Here’s your Edge 🗡️!
A DeFi Comeback?
Interesting. After A.I., DeFi has the highest mindshare. With Gary Gensler gone, this means a much friendly jurisdiction for DeFi protocols.
News
Polymarket: The New Source of Truth
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I love it when crypto proves mainstream wrong.
Polymarket is a prediction market on the Polygon PoS. It allows people to place bets on any event happening in the world. Using crypto, users can bet on sports, politics, pop culture, and more.
On election day, Polymarket assigned Trump a 62.3% chance of winning the US election.
This went against the mainstream narrative.
Legacy media said that was going to be a very tight race. Nate Silver ran 80,000 stimulations and gave the slight edge to Harris (lol). They chalked Polymarket’s prediction up to a bubble created by crypto bros.
The table below lists 17 traditional pollsters and their forecasts for the election.
Only four of the 17 gave Trump a slight edge.
But surprise surprise…
Trump won by a landslide. He won the House, Senate, and Popular vote. Kamala got much fewer votes than Biden got last time. Mainstream media wasn’t expecting this.
In contrast, betting platforms were forecasting a Trump victory. The chart below averages odds from Polymarket, BetOnline, Betfair, Bovada, and Smarkets, which pointed to a clear Trump advantage.
Polymarket was the leader among betting markets. It posted some serious numbers on election-related markets:
- It facilitated ~12.8M election-related bets/trades.
- Open interest across election markets was ~$398M.
- >$3.2B in lifetime betting volume on election markets.
- The number of election-related traders (wallets) was more than 282.8k.
But if Polymarket had these numbers, why was it dismissed by “experts”? A number of reasons were given: “It is unregulated, so it’s not trustworthy. It is being manipulated by Trump-loving whales”. And so on.
But if they had understood how markets work, they would have known that these “criticisms” don’t make sense.
Markets excel at aggregating information from a wide variety of sources and participants. As long as the markets have high liquidity and aren’t artificially constrained, they’ll generally do a better job of synthesizing information.
Let’s just say people using prediction markets have skin in the game.
It doesn’t matter if it is used by foreigners and Trump lovers, millions of $$$ are riding on getting the right answer. Since anyone can participate in Polymarket, everyone is incentivized to find the correct probabilities for the forecast.
Polymarket also called election results much faster than legacy media. It swung heavily for Trump way before the results of a single swing state were called by traditional media.
Word has it that even Trump’s campaign team used Polymarket for tracking elections in real time.
Crypto is slowly taking over the world, one dapp at a time.
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Protocol
Kamino Finance: SOL’s Leading DeFi Protocol
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Everyone thinks Solana is a shitcoin factory because of Pump.fun’s success. But Solana’s crushing it on the DeFi space too.
What is Kamino Finance? It is a DeFi protocol on Solana where users can do a bunch of cool stuff, including:
- Providing liquidity.
- Borrow and lend tokens.
- Lever up on LST yield with one-click looping.
- Take leverage with directional exposure with a single click.
This cycle, Solana has become the new center of crypto activity. And Kamino Finance has grown massively alongside Solana. The numbers don’t lie:
- In total, over $1.01B has been borrowed from Kamino.
- Users have supplied over $2.63B to Kamino in total.
- Kamino only made $419k in fees in January 2024. In contrast, they made $5.36M in October 2024.
- In January 2024, Kamino only had $225M in TVL. This is now at $1.75B, making it the second-largest protocol on Solana.
And now, Kamino’s latest power move? Partnering with Jito, the biggest dApp on Solana by TVL, to provide a juicy yield opportunity.
What is Jito? It’s a Liquid Staking Service. Deposit $SOL, and in return, you get $JitoSOL — a token that normally earns you a respectable ~8% APY. It controls 43% of the SOL LST market.
But here’s where things get spicy: Kamino’s new “Multiply Vault” lets you earn ~22.27% APY on $JitoSOL with a single click.
You can click here to access the “Multiply” feature. The reason for high APY is the implementation of a “looping” strategy in the backend.
What is looping? It’s a strategy to increase returns by repeatedly supplying and borrowing the same asset. In this case, we’re:
- Step 1: Depositing $JitoSOL to borrow $SOL.
- Step 2: The borrowed $SOL is converted to $JitoSOL.
- Step 3: The new $JitoSOL is deposited to borrow $SOL again.
- Step 4: Go back to step two.
- This process can be repeated as many times as needed.
In the case of “Kamino Multiply Vaults,” the protocol does the looping as many as 10 times with just a single click. And right now, you are able to gain up to ~22.27% APY.
But don’t get too comfy — this golden opportunity relies on the cost of borrowing staying below the $JitoSOL yield.
Right now, borrowing rates are ~6.5%, while $JitoSOL yields ~8%, so the math works in your favor. For now.
On the bright side, no one has ever been liquidated in Kamino LST Multiply yet.
Also, $SOL liquidity for looping is limited. And with yields like these, it’ll go fast. So, make use of it while it lasts!
A catalyst that I’m excited about is their upcoming v2 launch. They have promised novel primitives and powerful automations.
(At the time of publishing, the vault has exhausted $SOL liquidity. So, you might have to wait until someone else exits their position or for Kamino to increase the vault cap. Or you can monitor Kamino to find other similar opportunities)
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
Ethena is discussing switching on the fee switch. Wintermute proposed to allocate a portion of the protocol to $sENA. ENA is up 34% on the daily chart.
Arkham Intelligence introduced its own Arkham Perpetual Exchange. This is a new product for them.
Morpho DAO has decided to enable $MORPHO transferability. The took will start trading soon. It should drive more attention to protocol.
Euler Labs introduced Euler Prime. It is a multi-collateral lending market. And they’re incentivizing it with rEUL rewards.
F(x) Protocol has published the whitepaper for their v2. It introduces 10x fixed leverage, zero funding costs, no individual liquidation risk, and more.
Skate chain users can now place bets on Polymarket through the Skate Mini-app. It has integrated Ton Network and Polygon.
Pencil Protocol introduced Pencils Auction. It’ll use cutting-edge auction formats for token launches.
ParaSwap has released Delta v2. This update should mean more competitive pricing and better results for traders.
Shogun Beta has expanded to Ethereum Mainnet. It is a TG Bot that aims to support trading on most chains. They had already integrated EVM L2s and Solana.
Contango has made all $TANGO sold through Fjord Foundry claimable. You can earn protocol fees by providing liquidity in their balancer pool.
🪂 Airdrop Alpha
Dynamo DeFi has released a spreadsheet with 77 projects that you can farm for airdrops.
Sui Name Service is launching a token. 10% of the token supply will be airdropped to users who have engaged with SuiNS meaningfully.
OpenSea has opened a waitlist for a new version that’s coming in December. Many are speculating on an airdrop or points program.
🚀 New Launches
Superform, a place to earn yield, has released Universal Rewards Claiming. It’ll give you access to all your earned token rewards on any chain.
Valantis Labs has launched Validly. It claims to be a flexible AMM on top of which new fee mechanisms, liquidity primitives, or tokenomics designs can be built.
🐦⬛ X Hits
- Tools to check all of your Solana airdrops allocations.
- Year-to-date performances of various crypto sectors.
- Tools to check all of your Solana airdrops allocations.
- A wallet tracking strategy to find gems.
- Web3 AI Agent ecosystem map.
