A short one this week. But stay tuned for a new research piece!

Let’s get stuck in 👇️ 

 👀 What’s to Come in Volume 27

🔑 Key News: Kuwait Bans Crypto, Hamster Betting, Conic Exploited, MetaMask to Cosmos, DYAD Live & more from CJ

📈 Macro Outlook Simplified Round-up and Implications from Hansolar

📉 HTF Price Action Scenarios from Vlad

⛓ On-Chain Sleuthing: Camelot proposal NOT falling through, Pepe Analytics, and favored farms by Smart Money feature from Cl & Amir Ormu

⚔️ A Call to Arms

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🔑 Key News

Major Headlines

• Nasdaq Halts Plan for Crypto Custody Service Due to U.S. Regulatory Conditions

• Kuwait Bans Cryptocurrency

• Coinbase to Wind Down Lending Program Over Coming Months

• Hamsters race betting made waves while devs caught slow rugging

• Celsius Network reaches settlements that could clear path to return customer funds

• Ripple filed for crypto license in the United Kingdom

• Japan PM reaffirms Web3 plans as Binance announces imminent launch

• Putin Signs Digital Ruble Law Making a CBDC Possible in Russia

DeFi Exploits/Updates

• Conic Finance exploited for 1700ETH on their ETH omnipools and then again on cncCRVUSD pools

• Ramses Exchange dev whitehats Silo Finance

• Alphapo hot wallet drained and estimated at $60M

• Era Lend exploited on zkSync for $1.7M

• Palmswap exploited for $900k

Useful Weekly DeFi Updates

• Metamask coming to Cosmos

• Starknet introduces their appchains where Paradex becomes the first

• Traderjoe coming to Ethereum while Spookyswap is going to Horizon

• RWAs coming to Canto

• Daniele Sesta update on Multiposition Concentrator for Wagmi

• Polygon Labs announces new governance model comprising of ‘ecosystem council’

• Arbitrum introduces Phase 1 of the Arbitrum Foundation Grants while Camelot’s proposal faces rejection

• Binance Labs invests $10 million in Radiant

• y2kFinance introduces "GTrade" Gains PnL vault and their “repeg” vaults

• Gains Network updating their tokenomics in Q3

• Worldcoin completes migration to OP mainnet and goes live

• Unibot unveils Unibot X trading terminal

• Balancer introduces their ecosystem launchpad

Interesting projects to look out for

• DYAD: Just went live, permissionless bond exchange and credit registrar

• Adscendo: LSD protocol with leveraged ETH derivatives and yield derivatives

• Cosmic Wire: Just raised $30M, IP monetization

• Interface: Raised $1.4M, mobile interface for tracking wallets, dashboards etc

• Codex: Boosting Layer for Bunni

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

• Bitcoin rejected off 31.5k in a low volume, low volatility environment. With the SECs decision on Ark’s spot ETF on the 13th of August, there may be some chasing on upwards moves nearer to the date. Grayscale’s case should also come to a conclusion within 1-2 months which is also essentially a spot ETF play.

• Institutions also seem busy writing Bitcoin investment reports with the up-coming halving and potential spot ETF.

• Fidelity referred to the classic S2F model, charting BTC as the lowest inflation asset relative to market cap when compared to other commodities like gold, silver and palladium. According to this logic, if ETH is deflationary(as it has been in the past), it should be worth more than BTC.

• Blackrock published research on how the volatility and returns for Bitcoin historically suggests diversifying 3-9.5% of ones portfolio into Bitcoin. This is a massive shift in the attitude towards Bitcoin. They are literally telling people to diversify to Bitcoin.

• Almost no changes to last week’s update on rate hikes. The market seems much less affected by the FED as of late. Most of the focus will be on what Powell says afterwards, but considering previous meetings Powell will likely be repeating the same stance of relying on the data.

Crypto Options Markets

• Vols are at near all time lows and large volatility sellers continue to push the IV levels downwards. This can eventually lead to large squeeze led expansions. Looking at IV and spot correlations, dealers seem mostly positioned towards the downside at the moment. So if a squeeze were to occur, it seems more likely it would happen towards the upside.

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

📈 HTF Price Action Scenarios

Gm frens!

This week has been relatively uneventful. Instead of getting the follow-through on the bullish side, we ended up correcting the most recent impulse to the upside. That being said, nothing has really changed.

• Re-accumulation playing out

• Price in daily demand zone

• Looking to follow new momentum to the upside

I wouldn’t be surprised to see some lows liquidated before the continuation up via re-accumulation, but at no point would I be looking to short this market.

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

Courtesy of Vlad - trend-based trader and MentFX student

⛓ On-Chain Sleuthing

Camelot’s Arbitrum proposal DISMISSED

The Arbitrum community eventually voted against the proposal made by Camelot to allocate ~9 million tokens toward incentives for the ecosystem.

Froyo Fren, who was shilling the proposal, decided he did not like the $GRAIL token anymore, that he purchased prior to his tweets, now that the $ARB allocation was off the table.

Pepe Analytics gaining traction

In the last Chronicle, we mentioned the project Pepe Analytics, which intends to build an innovative, “smart”, (meme)coin dashboard. Since then, it has caught the attention of CT and saw an influx of smart money as well.

The price of the NFT coupon (that will be redeemable for tokens), has increased close to 90% in value over the last week.

Several 6 and 7 figure wallets have been scooping the floor. A good example is this $RLB whale. The address scooped over 10 coupons and the total collection comes down to 520 items.

The launch of the project and the token generation event are happening today, July 26th. Definitely, one of the projects out there to keep your eyes on as it is quite different from other trading bots.

Smart Money & Farms

• Smart Money has been interacting mostly with TG bots narrative.

• LineaBank is favored by the smart farmers on Linea network.(https://lineabank.finance/bank)

• EXACTLY has gained the attention of smart farmers on Optimism.(https://exact.ly/)

• Metronome is still popular on Optimism.(https://app.metronome.io/eth)

• DefiEdge on Optimism has gained the attention of smart farmers.(https://www.defiedge.io/)

• Beefy has been popular among smart farmers on Optimism as well.

• Tarot continues to be favored among OP farmers.

• Velodrome V2 continues to attract yield farmers to bridge into Optimism.

• Maverick has recently gained the attention of smart farmers.

• Raft and Aura Finance are still popular among smart farmers.

• SmarDex on BSC has caught the attention of smart farmers as well (https://www.smardex.io/).

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

Virtually yours,

Atomist & The Castle