All Been Crypto — Week 20 Dec 2024
As we are closing the year a good time to review and put your longer time frame googles on. This will be a bit of a longer but also the the last weekly as I’m off for holidays too. We’ve come a long way from 40k in Jan to crossing the psychological 100k mark. I’ve been asked about the most significant events this year and of course the halfening, and Trump clearly come to mind but why don’t you scroll through the weeklies and find the ones you felt were the most interesting pieces.
The past week had us drop below 100k again on broader macro weakness with BTC at 93k and ETH currently trading at 3300. In the news we had major token drops MOVE, ME, PENGU as every trying to catch the bull market window. In a similar vain Avalanch did a 250mm raise, MSTR of course bought more BTC as it got included into NASDAQ 100 index opening the gates to passive money allocations. NFT collection CyberKongz received a Wells Notice, we had some DeFi drama around AAVE and Polygon, Mo from Aptos stepping down, and XRP got green lite for their stablecoin RLUSD while USDT got accepted as virtual asset in ADGM. If you need something to read over the ‘quiet’ period can recommend Messari 2025 thesis to prepare you for the next year. Happy Holidays and enjoy reading!
Bat Tai Chi — btc21@mail.com
HEADLINES:
AAVE Poloygon Drama
This one has been great popcorn to watch, and gives us some good insights into the competitive nature of DeFi escalating with two very well respected figures in the industry Stani and Sandeep accusing each others projects of malicious behaviour. But let me give you context first, it likely all started with this Pre-PIP (Polygon Improvement Proposal) where the authors Allez Labs, Morpho Association, Yearn suggested to utilized the stables locked in the POS bridge to AMMs. Something that gives you quite bull market vibes as you’d be in essence double counting the stables (not that we hadn’t done this ever before). Now this is where the opinions diverge, Sandeep is saying AAVE was cool with this earlier and had suggested something similar before but now that their competitors proposal is gaining more traction using their monopoly power to kill it. Well Marc Zeller who’s in all fairness quite a character and certainly known for his more aggressive communication style on twitter started a proposal to defacto shut down AAVE on polygon due to the heightened risk involved with the Pre-PIP. His and Stani’s arguments are about user safety and the inherent risk of bridge hacks which would inevitably be a concern for the chain. It’s topical because it deals with on chain governance, DeFi yield and risks and of course politics. For me it felt like the proposal was a bit on the risky side, got a lot of attention because of Marc and now fingers are pointed who to blame for. The whole thing got shut down obviously but was it for righouts reasons of fending off risk or more to dampen competitors? Well maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle, incumbents need less risk while challengers are more open to riks to grow and POL certainly needs growth.
El Salvadore changes Bitcoin law for IMF loan
The FT reported that Bukele is close to a deal with the IMF to gain access to a 1.3bn loan program. In return they have do dial back a bit on the BTC friendliness and make the acceptance of BTC for merchants voluntary and not compulsory anymore. This seems like a good deal as IMF has been renown very sceptical and outspoken about El Salvadore’s BTC program yet this feels like a relatively minor concession with regards to Bitcoin however as usual IMF is asking for spending concessions and tax hikes which could be a lot more painful. This marks probably the end of something that 3 years ago when started was still in many’s eyes a variable path for Bitcoins future, being used as legal tender. Now the entire argument seems to be purely based on it’s characteristics as store of value and number go up with easier spot access via IBIT et al. I guess one reason why the experiment on the payment side wasn’t that successful is the Chivo wallet which I’ve heard from multiple sources was not very well welcomed. The BTC treasury bet and bonds however have planned our very well and so El Salvador still claiming the crown of Bitcoin capital — lets see what Trump will do next year.
wBTC saga continues — Bit Global suing Coinbase for delisting
Last month Coinbase announced that with 30 day notice it will delist wBTC from the exchange. Now that day has come and wBTC no longer available on the exchange. So BitGlobal the Justin Sun entity acts as the custodian for the wBTC Business of Bitgo (see ABC 16 Aug 2024) decided to file a lawsuit against Coinbase for anticompetitive behavior. Why? As I wrote about in ABC 13 Sep 2024 Coinbase launched their own cbBTC and gaining much traction on Base. wBTC has bled ~15k BTC since the partnership announcement with Justin Sun and is now down from 150k BTC to 135k. Same time cbBTC picked up ~20k BTC. And soon we’ll have kBTC live too with Kraken going live on their INK L2.
QUOTES:
Today I am stepping away from Aptos Labs to start a new chapter. One of my true passions lies in building companies from the ground up and we have done that at Aptos Labs by building a world-class team. I leave Aptos Labs with the utmost confidence in the team, and strongly believe the talent and drive of Aptos Labs will bring our collective vision to life in the near future. Avery will be stepping in as the Aptos Lab’s CEO to drive the company into its next phase of growth.
Mo Shaikh — Aptos Co-founder
Framing Aave DAO’s proposal as anti-competitive behavior is inaccurate and diverts attention from the real issue: user security. Inheriting the risk of a third party protocol without the consent of the DAO is not something the Aave DAO is interested in and ACI took the steps required to define what’s next for the Polygon market. In my 8 years of building DeFi, this has been top-tier entertainment. When it comes to Aave’s leadership: we prioritize user safety above all else. Just use Aave.
Stani Kulechov — AAVE Founder
The Polygon community should not be intimidated by monopolistic tactics or aggression and should continue to explore innovative mechanisms to achieve more success.
Sandeep Nailwal — Polygon Founder
All Been Crypto — Week 20 Dec 2024 was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.