Despite regulatory drama, market sentiment stays bullish with anticipation around FOMC's stance on rate hikes. While the broader outlook seems cautiously optimistic, traders are eyeing long-term bullish trends. With unfolding events and new projects emerging the crypto space remains a hub of dynamic action.

The key focus for us of late has been the Arbitrum grant proposal for Camelot. We see the potential for Camelot, a key native player, to receive such a grant. But, it must be well-framed, focused on long-term growth, and align with the ecosystem's wider vision.

Key takeaways:

• Uncertainty looms due to a lack of a formal grant application framework and clear long-term strategy from Arbitrum.

• The proposal is overly skewed towards short-term goals. We seek a longer, well-rounded strategy from Camelot.

• High ARB centralization with top delegates can present challenges. We encourage cautious delegation to community thought leaders.

Check out our full thread!

Now, let’s get stuck in 👇️ 

 👀 What’s to Come in Volume 26

🔑 Key News: Headlines, Exploits, Continued Adoption, DeFi Updates, New Projects & more from CJ

📈 Macro Outlook: Simplified Round-up and Implications from Hansolar

📉 HTF Price Action Scenarios from Vlad

⛓ On-Chain Sleuthing: UNIBOT Capital Watching and ben.eth movements feature along with Smart Money Moves from Cl & Amir Ormu

⚔️ A Call to Arms

Think you have what it takes to enter the Castle and contribute to funding and advising projects across the space?

Fill out an application form!

🔑 Key News

• Celsius Founder Alex Mashinsky Arrested and Sued by SEC, DOJ, CFTC, and FTC

• Ripple Sales of XRP Do Not Constitute Offer of Investment Contracts

• Telegram Merchants Gain Access to In-App Crypto Payments for First Time

• Celsius sent $24M to FalconX and OKX

• Binance enables users to obtain multiple deposit addresses for a single network

• Drama between Adam Cochran and CZ

Security Updates

• Klever announcement regarding affected wallets on recent suspicious activity

• Multichain Org updates on their situation while Fantom gives a PSA and Geist shuts down due to this

• BNO exploited for $500k

Weekly DeFi Updates

• GMX proposal on v2 fee split discussed

• Polygon Labs announces POL token for Polygon 2.0

• BNB Chain "ZhangHeng" upgrade scheduled on July 19th

• Eigenlayer restaking cap increased

• Aaveaave launches GHO on mainnet

• Plutus DAO PLS v2 live

• CeloOrg receives proposal from cLabs to transition to an ETH L2

• Liquity Protocol, Lens coming out with a v2

• Polkadot to abandon parachain auction system

• Kaiynne introduces Synthetix part 4 called Infinex

• Mantle and NeonEVM goes live while Linea and Base opens initial mainnet stages for builders

• zksync introduces Boojum: high-performance proof system for decentralization

• Arkham token and airdrop goes live while they release Arkham Oracle

• Uniswap introduces UniswapX

• Hector Network liquidating treasury

• Chainlink launches CCIP

• Unibot announces Unibot X on the 20th of July

New Projects Worth a Look

• Giza Tech: Infrastructure for crypto and AI, raised $3M recently

• Geodnet: Global Earth Observation Decentralized Network

• Restake Fi: Modular liquid restaking protocol, powered by EigenLayer.

• Powdr Labs: A modular stack for zkVMs

• GMBL Computer: Casino with tokenomics

Courtesy of CJ - check out his telegram channel for daily news, projects updates and new releases

💹 Macro Outlook

Upcoming Events

• 7/26 : FED Interest Rate Decision

• 7/27 : Durable Goods MoM, GDP Growth Rate adv.

• 7/28 : Core PCE, Personal Income/Spending MoM

BTC, ETH and Macro

• In the previous week, inflation numbers came in cooler than expected causing bond rates and DXY to fall. Despite the bullish backdrop, BTC couldn’t push through the 32k high and retreated back to its lower support levels around 30k.

• Seems like the 9.8k Silkroad BTC VWAP has been weighing down prices for the past week. However this could be ending soon, considering the last batch in March also took roughly 1 week.

• All eyes are now on the tone of Powell’s speech during the FOMC next Wed. Previously the base case was two hikes for the second half of the year and there may be further guidance on if there have been any changes.

• The markets on the other hand seem fairly confident that this will be the last hike. If Powell strongly suggests another hike after July’s hike, bond yields will adjust upward and may cause markets to adjust expectations.

• All eyes are now on the tone of Powell’s speech during the FOMC next Wed. Previously the base case was two hikes for the second half of the year and there may be further guidance on if there have been any changes.

• The markets on the other hand seem fairly confident that this will be the last hike. If Powell strongly suggests another hike after July’s hike, bond yields will adjust upward and may cause markets to adjust expectations.

Crypto Options Markets

The volatility regime is similar to last week despite the attempt at 32k. For both BTC and ETH, there was a brief spike in IV which was quickly reversed back down to the low 40s(implies a 1-month price range of +or-12.9%). The options markets are currently still seeing very low levels of volatility for this month.

Courtesy of Hansolar - check out his telegram chat for all things options, crypto and DeFi

📈 HTF Price Action Scenarios

Gm frens!

Last week was good for following LTF bullishness as the HTF has set up very nicely. Nothing has changed since then and it makes sense to continue looking for longs.

• Re-accumulation playing out

• First daily demand zone tapped

• New LTF higher highs

• Looking for long opportunities

• Bullish

The market is showing bullishness, but keep in mind that deeper pullbacks can still occur. At any point in this given context, it makes sense to follow momentum to the topside.

Trade responsibly and I’ll see y’all next week.

Courtesy of Vlad - trend-based trader and MentFX student

⛓ On-Chain Sleuthing

Froyo Fren taking gud profit on $UNIBOT

Ben.eth bidding hard on YAYO

This address (0x75f78eb0540b7ad7d1567e258d0a34b3fa071403) was connected to ben.eth via this tx.

Has bought more than 35 yayo in the last weeks

The meme coin millionaire seems to like the YAYOs.

DegenPandaBera Holding Heavy UNIBOT Bag

As noticed in last week’s Chronicle, a lot of big $UNIBOT holders are $DMT holders as well, like this ser Degen Panda

Watching TG Bot Narrative Capital Movements

We have noticed that a lot of early addy to Unibot & the TG bot narrative have been buying an NFT for Memecoins Monitoring, Pepe Analytics.

Each NFT coupon will give an allocation for their coming token distribution and a WL for the PintSwap0x launch.

An interesting project IMO, I like the wallet bidding

Smart Money Moves

• Smart farmers have been bridging into Optimism recently.

• Metronome has recently gained the attention of smart farmers.

• Tarot on Optimism has been widely favored by smart farmers.

• Velodrome V2 has become increasingly popular among smart farmers as well.

• Raft and Aura Finance are still highly favored by smart farmers.

• Extra Finance continues to be a favored protocol on Optimism.

• FVM on Fantom has also gained significant popularity among smart farmers.

Amir Exposes

Research and analysis by Cl & Amir Ormu

Thanks for reading, please give us a follow at Castle Capital and subscribe to The Castle Chronicle for an update each week!

Virtually yours,

The Castle