👀 What’s to Come in Volume XX

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

⛓ On-Chain Sleuthing: GCR Correction & Huge Amber Group Update feature along with Smart Money Moves from Cl

🔥 Hot Narratives SUI and Stacks are Hot Chains, GetGrass & Ekubo Airdrop Updates from unexployed

📉 HTF Price Action Scenarios “Range Shenanigans” from Vlad

⚔️ A Call to Arms

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🔑 Key News

Major Headlines

• New crypto tax reporting obligations in the US

• Vitalik Buterin talks about ENS

• Visa pilots Web3 customer loyalty platform

• Celsius Network started unstaking and rebalancing assets

• Coinbase is planning a pivotal acquisition that will allow it to launch crypto derivatives in the EU

• VanEck pledges 5% of potential spot BTC ETF profits to Bitcoin core developers

• Everyone updated their S-1 filings with the SEC

• Companies updated their fees on BTC ETFs to be competitive

Project Updates

• Radiant Capital exploited for $4.5M

• Gamma Strategies & Chronos Fi exploited for $3.4M

• Mango Farm on Solana rugged

• Coins Paid hacked for over $7.5M

• Friendtech treasury moved 50% of revenue to Coinbase

• Wassies announcing token drop for NFT holders while Azuki and Animoca Brands/Mocaverse drops potential hints

• MakerDAO redenominating 1:24,000 and rebranding

• Dymension announces their airdrop while Saga announces their airdrop criteria

• Manta Network announces airdrop for testnet participants and deadline to bridge

• Curve Finance launching on ZetaChain for native BTC support

• GetGrass made some changes to their points program

• Synthetix Andromeda Release details about buyback-and-burn

• Unibot launches on Arbitrum

Interesting Projects

• Mirage: Private dark pools on Solana

• Dabba Network: Enables internet connectivity through hardware and the Dabba network

• NuBit: Bitcoin-Native Data Availability Layer

• Layerless: Omnichain Liquid Restaking Protocol

• Chirp: Telecommunications network harnessing the power of blockchain

• Spectral Fi: Machine Intelligence Network to consume zkML-verified inferences directly through smart contracts

• Ebisu Finance: CDP backed by EigenLayer deposits

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

⛓ On-Chain Sleuthing

Correction on GCR Meme Wallet from Last Week

In the previous Chronicle we mentioned the following address: 0x76b…2dea.

We claimed that this wallet was owned by the famous GCR and that he was building positions in various meme coins.

There had been a communication error between our writers and this wallet was mistakenly labelled as GCR owned while it is not associated with GCR.

🫡 

still interesting wallet.. teehee

Amber Group Holding $BEAM

Exposing 4 Amber Group addresses. Alfa on $BEAM and $GMX

Investment firm Amber Group holds a $3.95 million USD position in $BEAM on one of their addresses.

They have received these assets from:

And in turn, this wallet is connected to a well known Amber Group address holding >$3 million $GMX:

This address has been unstaking $GMX over the last couple of days and sending them to the following address:

This address has send $GMX to Binance. We assume to be sold.

Research and analysis by Cl

🔥 Hot Narratives

Hottest Chains: SUI & Stacks

SUI has been trending nicely over the past few weeks. The token price has surged over 100% since the end of October and the TVL has increased past $200 mln. Take into account that a lot of this surge is due to the price increase of SUI.

Yet, with many other trending L1 token, its underlying ecosystem tends to offer interesting opportunities. For example, one of the DEXes on SUI has a 4 figure APR farm. Be cautious that this is a pool2 and very degen.

Another hot chain currently is Stacks, the Bitcoin L2. This one is even more interesting as it is built around the Bitcoin ecosystem and has been trending well with the ETF buzz.

Currently, the friction to onboard to this chain is high and the user experience is not up to EVM standards. Because it is a Bitcoin L2, Stacks has similar blocktimes as the Bitcoin chain namely 10 to 30 minutes. However, this is set to change with the Nakomoto upgrade that is scheduled Q1 this year (more here). This upgrade is going to speed up the block times significantly and put it around 5 seconds.

This would put Stacks’ performance on par with many other EVM-chains and make it an interesting place to look for DeFi opportunities.

Due to the current onboarding friction, it wouldn’t hurt to park some capital in some of its ecosystem projects.

More specifically, StackingDAO (Liquid staking) and Bitflow (DEX), two critical DeFi building blocks have points programs and are thus 100% confirmed to have a token.

To onboard, you need to have a Stacks-compatible wallet. We recommend Leather Wallet. You can fund it either by bridging using Alex or, much easier, funding through a CEX with $STX (native token on Stacks).

Good luck exploring.

StarkNet: Ekubo

I mentioned Ekubo in the past and am still farming this one. They updated the points system and are rewarding now heavy on fees generated.

Personally, I funded some degen wallets with ~$500 and these positions are yielding a couple thousand points. You just have to be picky about the underlying tokens and price ranges.

I picked two highly volatile tokens: LORDS/WETH (game token) and AKU/WETH (meme token) and set the price ranges relatively tight. I tend to check in every day in the morning and evening to see if the prices are still within my ranges.

If not, I pull the liquidity and swap 25%-50% on Avnu (also no token) for ETH and LP back into a new LP position.

With only ~500$ I managed to accumulate over ~50k tokens in one week. The point system has been live since November and the top 1000 begins at 400k points.

To me this signals that it is largely underfarmed and is a huge opportunity. Especially, considering a StarkNet token has yet to be launched.

It only makes sense for Ekubo to launch after $STARK, so you still have time, but it is best to start asap (as with any airdrop opportunity).

GetGrass Updated Points System

I have covered GetGrass in the past. They provide bandwidth infrastructure through their browser extension. Essentially, it is a marketplace where users are able to sell their unused bandwidth to others, most notably entities in need of more computation like AI/ML trainers.

The team updated their point system (more info here) and have now moved out of their alpha stage. I assume points accumulated in this period will act as a small bonus, but the points accumulated in the current phases will translate to the gross share of the tokens!

It is one of the most brain dead airdrops to farm and if you have a spare machine I highly recommend farming this one.

Courtesy of unexployed

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💹 Macro Outlook

Unfortunately, no macro outlook this week. Come back next week!

📈 HTF Price Action Scenarios

Gm frens!

Last week I was ready to follow some longs even though I was not too fond of the fact that the push out of the consolidation wasn’t really strong. That indeed turned out to be a problem and price has since failed to follow through to the upside and dropped back into the consolidation range.

• Consolidation

• Both extremes of the range are being liquidated

• Best time to stay out

I call this price action “range shenanigans” - it’s a seek & destroy kind of price action where price liquidates both sides of the range until enough liquidity has been either accumulated or distributed (we won’t know until price breaks out decisively to either side).

I’m sure you have heard the quote “Trend is your friend”. The lesson of this quote is that a trending market tends to continue trending. The same applies to consolidating markets. Whatever the market is doing right now, we should expect it to continue doing that until proven otherwise.

Therefore until proven otherwise, I will consider this a ranging market and I will simply not trade it. Remember, you can outperform the majority of the market by simply sitting on the sideline and waiting for your setup.

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

Courtesy of Vlad - trend-based trader and MentFX student

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In our newsletter, we may discuss projects or tokens in which we hold positions. While we aim to provide informative content, our views are not financial advice. Please conduct your research and consult professionals before making investment decisions. Crypto markets are volatile, and past performance doesn't guarantee future results. Invest responsibly, and be aware of the risks. Your capital is at risk, and we do not accept liability for any losses.