In the Loop Issue 3
Macro, Friendtech, GambleFi gaining steam, and microcaps
The Farmers Club is now Sun Tzu Academy 🧮! This is our inaugural issue of In the Loop where we'll try our best to cover all things DeFi weekly - the news, fresh protocol launches, yield farming opportunities, the coins we're digging, and threads that are just too good not to share. I’m rektGEMS, and I’ve teamed up with my frens Winter and Crypto Andrew to bring you a variety of perspectives! Stay tuned for more content curated by the three of us. We appreciate your journeying with us in this new endeavor.
NEWS
Weekly News Recap by rektGEMS:
ICYMI we sent out the first issue of Talking Narratives with our fren @TheDiFinvestor, check it out if you haven’t yet.
Talking Narratives with @TheDeFInvestor
Welcome to Talking Narratives by Sun Tzu Academy. Every couple of weeks, we sit down with a crypto fren to chat about the latest narratives and what's on the horizon. For our debut, we are excited to have @TheDeFInvestor, one of our favourite CT figure and known for his brilliant weekly alpha threads!
One of the bigger news this week, PayPal announced $PYUSD stablecoin, built on Ethereum.
BlockRock is optimistic on Bitcoin ETF approval.
Ark 21Shares Bitcoin ETF application delayed as expected.
CZ BTFD.
LST project unshETH raised $3.3M. USH price surged over 100%, since has retraced.
Competitor of Friendtech? DeBank launching DeBank Chain building with OP stack.
Derivatives exchange Aevo allows users to trade perpetual contracts of an asset prior to its CEX listing.
Gains Network announced Lookbacks feature which will guarantee order executions at the exact price users set.
Derivatives DEX Hyperliquid(also my fav perp DEX rn, use my reflink kek) has been on the top of Perp DEXs trading volume leaderboard lately. I found this to be impressive especially considering Hyperliquid currently not running any incentives program.
Liquid staking protocol Stader reached $20M ETH staked.
They also announced Liquid Restake Token.
THE as collateral.
Another ATH in total users showing that Unibot DAU is sticky, and no sign of on-chain degens slowing down.
Unibot introduced more safety/privacy feature.
Was Lucky teasing a RLB x Unibot partnership? Peep the unicorn emoji at the end.
Twitter signal tool AlphaScan announced Unibot partnership, price jumped 225% in one single 5m candle.
You can now bet on the Zuck vs Elon fight on 0xcocobets.com
COCO holders earning over $102K last week, COCO price went up 170% after news.
I also did some math on the current valuation of COCO based on current earning numbers.
Angle v2 went live. Another stablecoin protocol adding RWA into its reserve.
PlutusDAO adding and incentivizing the long awaited plsARB/ARB LP on Camelot. plsARB still sitting at more than 50% discount.
Airdrop farming service LootBot announced xLOOT.
Mori Finance mainnet went live today. Currently has $190K TVL.
Mori raised 324 ETH in two rounds.
Weekly News Recap by Winter:
Friend tech: for Alpha dealer, Simp or Narcissist?
- Though friend.tech started as a chaos in terms of UX but getting better as time passed
- A chad even built a trading terminal for scalpers to dump on each other faster
Rollbit embraces transparency and teases partnership?
- Rollbit team’s plan to buyback and burn $RLB shows promising outcome as team tested burn txn.
- Lucky, cofounder of Rollbit teases a partnership next week with a “Unicorn”, which I personally presume it’s UNIBOT
Ouroboros Capital announces Lifetime Access Pass to crowdfund content offering
- Ouro has been foresightful on narratives especially in the DeFi sector and his recent thesis on MKR and FXS is spot-on.
- Key benefit from this NFT would be future venture deals that smaller retails (like you and me could not reach)
- Though, 0.5E mint price is definitely heavy especially in this liquidity draught
- Personally, I will mint 1-3 depending on my degen performance in coming weeks
Weekly News Recap by Crypto Andrew:
EigenLayer increases the capacity of its vaults on Aug 22nd at 7am PT, details ⬇️
Overview of the unlocks that will happen next week ⬇️
IT AIN’T MUCH BUT HONEST WORK
What rektGEMS Has Been Farming:
Not much new farming opportunities this week, I’m looking to enter some farms on BASE. CJ recently covered some options in his newsletter.
DEXSCREENER WATCHLIST
Chart rektGEMS Has Been Watching:
Smart Money Net Swaps by ChainEDGE
Sorted by 7D net change
We have seen some strong accumulation in PEPE. LOOT is also very interesting with preslae vesting done, and new features rolling out.
I been focusing on the GambleFi narrative lately and mentioned $HAMS in the recent Talking Narratives issue. I believe $HAMS could easily pull a COCO type of move.
TL;DR: new dev is a beast, working on a hamster themed casino, gambling license already applied. Revenue share will resume this coming week. See the screenshots below.
PA wise, $HAMS has been trading in the same 40% range for almost 2 weeks now with $0.15-0.2 acting as strong support.
Chart Winter Has Been Watching:
This week’s focus will be on BASE chain, where apes are stubborn to bridge out after $BALD rug. Certainly the picks are more degen and are of higher risk.
Magnate Finance - MAG
- First fully functional lending protocol on BASE
- Ongoing liquidity farming on borrow & lending
- Undershilled on TL and likely to continue going up until everyone has bought
- Personally would wait for a significant dip before entering (- 30 to 40%)
Meridian Finance - MST
- Liquity fork on BASE
- Team is from Omnidex, from Telos EVM chain (doxxed)
- Perp dex (GMX fork) is in development and commited to be in 2 weeks time (last updated - Aug 8th)
- 30% of supply is airdropped to tokens holder on prev dex on Telos (expect volatile price action if attention picks up)
Friend.tech
- Shares price of major CT are down ~50% from peak and it seems to be another dead on arrival but actual market cap for total shares is holding at $1m support, contract below for mcap reference.
- Base case is if memecoins can run to billions, why could total mcap of Friendshares reach 10m.
- More user will enter as app UX improved and money will eventually trickle to major influencer or smaller “alpha-dealers” or even simps (def. absolutely not me)
Watchlists:
- Racer (founder of friend.tech)
- Su Zhu (left curve for his redemption arc with OPNX)
- Pool 2 Paulie (primo degen balanced for memecoin and onchain defi)
- Coinbase team, e.g. Rowan, HolieG, WilsonCusack etc
- R28 (memecoin degen and giveaway to holders, beta to xcurve)
- Irene Zhao (SIMP)
- Dasha (SIMP)
Chart Crypto Andrew Has Been Watching:
Can’t agree more with Winter regarding BASE as it’s got an attention of many apes and degens. However, my focus is on GambleFi/some bots/alternative PoW L1s ⬇️
0xCOCO - $COCO:
After the reveal of the 100k revenue share the chart went parabolic. More new updates, games, marketing, so I expect it to do really well.
Dream Machine - $DMT
Few whales exited and caused a serious crash of the price, however the thesis remains intact - own gamblefi chain, more games, more tournaments, cult-community
LootBot - $LOOT
Presale unlocks are over hence the major part of the selling pressure has gone. UNIBOT PA is super strong, so I expect bots szn #2, but this time only bots that have actual adoptions and users will run. LootBot is def a leader in its segment and has good team behind it, so worth keeping an eye.
I would love to add some alternative PoW L1s charts, but Dexscreener just don’t have them, so I will use Coingecko.
“The next $KAS with EVM composability”. Alternative PoW/DAG L1s narrative.
Also on my watchlist:
$TAO (alternative L1 with cult-like community)
$QU (another PoW L1)
$OLAS (AI stuff)
THREADS/PODCASTS/INTERVIEWS
Recommendations from rektGEMS:
Great long format thread by @LadyofCrypto1 on why crypto gaming sector will see resurgence in the future.
@ThinkingUSD did a fantastic comparison between Rollbit and Uniswap in terms of profitability. If you want to be pilled on RLB or GambleFi in general, read this thread.
Friendtech took CT by storm, @0xfoobar did a great thread on Friendtech smart contract designs.
Last thread of the week from @bobtheBuildooor, talking about narrative cycles. If you are currently trading the GambleFi narrative, make sure to give this a read.
Recommendations from Winter:
Beginner’s guide to Friend.tech by Taiki Maeda
Recap on Lido Finance & liquid staking by Arthur0x
CBS short thread on resetting one’s mind (mine at least)
Recommendations from Crypto Andrew:
Not a thread, more like an interesting thought: more and more projects prefer fair launches/public sales vs VCs funding ⬇️
Good thread about history of MEV ⬇️
More and more alternative PoW L1s are getting traction, so I advise you to start paying attention. Hence, here is a good thread about one of such L1s - Qubic (can only buy OTC or on some low-tier CEXs but liquidity there is smaller than tits of my ex) ⬇️
Great thread about LPDfi and overview of main players in this sector ⬇
️Even though this report is 2 weeks old, I advise you to keep up with Solana ecosystem and this report covers it pretty well ⬇️
Super helpful thread about TG tools to up your crypto game ⬇️
