How Could The SVB Collapse Affect BTC?
SVB Situation | Trader Joe's expansion to BNB Chain | TrueUSD Stablecoin | US Government Bitcoin seizure | Avalanche Core Wallet | Silvergate Liquidates
GM Intels, this is your Daily Bolt briefing.
In light of SVB’s failure, Revelo Intel founder Nick Drakon and Souvlaki jumped on a discord call with our members to discuss the latest news and implications on macro, crypto, and more. For members who missed this live briefing, we have provided the full recording here.
And since it’s Monday: we have released another breakdown. We’ve released our breakdown on Alluo, a DAO and DeFi project aiming to bridge traditional fintech and DeFi to give financial services access to more people around the world.
This breakdown is available for ALL Revelo Intel members; paid or free. To gain access, simply sign up to view the full project breakdown and timeline.
Over and out.
Key Discussions Happening Today
1/ What’s on my Mind - Discord Edition - Discussing SVB Situation
Preview: In this emergency Discord call, Nick Drakon and souvlaki discuss the impending situation around SVB. Click here to listen to the full episode.
Length: 105 mins
Here are some of the topics discussed:
Circle's announcement and possible scenarios for what happens next.
Why book value is a useless metric when assessing distressed banks.
What FDIC is, how it operates, and what will it do with the SVB.
Why the price of BTC isn't going up despite the failures of banks.
2/ Trader Joe Co-Founders AMA - Expansion to BNB Chain
Preview: Trader Joe Marketing & Community Lead Blue is joined by Murloc, Fish, Mergedone and DavideFi to discuss Trader Joe's expansion to BNB Chain, liquidity book, cross chain and more. Click here to listen to the full episode.
Length: 52 mins | OUR NOTE: 2 mins
Here are some key takeaways:
The BNB Chain team is super supportive and very open.
They want to capture the Asian market.
In the very short term, they will begin $sJOE staking on BNB Chain.
3/ TrueUSD Twitter space - with Max Melcher of Chainlink
Preview: TrueUSD host is joined by Truly and Max Melcher to discuss updates, recap, proof of reserves, transparency and more. Click here to listen to the full episode.
Length: 55 mins | OUR NOTE: 4 mins
Here are some key takeaways:
TrueUSD is the first stablecoin to programmably control the minting of the stablecoin and real-time verification of off-chain reserves.
They integrated with Chainlink’s proof of reserve.
Their integration will help them collaborate more with DeFi projects.
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4/ blocmates - BTC Seizure, OPNX, & more
Preview: Dan, jedi, and Grant from blocmates team discuss the US government Bitcoin seizure, DeFillama, Perpy Finance's Launch and Stargate. Click here to listen to the full episode.
Length: 46 mins | OUR NOTE: 3 mins
Here are some key takeaways:
The transfer of 49,000 Bitcoin worth around one billion dollars from US government law enforcement seizures to Coinbase is an important topic.
OPNX is planning to allow customers to unlock the value of their claims by trading into crypto or using collateral on OPNX.
The DefiLlama team has created a Chrome extension that is free and allows users to have a layer on top of Etherscan with more clarity about what's going on.
5/ Avalanche - Introduction of Core Mobile
Preview: The Ava Labs team celebrates Core’s release on iOS and discussed the features, developments and future roadmap of Core. Click here to listen to the full episode.
Length: 47 mins | OUR NOTE: 5 mins
Here are some key takeaways:
The release of Core Mobile for iOS brings Core to the fingertips of over a billion users, making it easier for them to access Core's features and enriching the launch ecosystem.
Core wants to be a trailblazer in providing a seamless, integrated experience for users, something that very few other players in the market are doing.
Core's BTC.b, which is a Bitcoin bridge, has grown over 20% in 2023, surpassing the number of the kind of the life in network.
On the Revelo Intel platform, we’ve summarized these 5 episodes and in total, would have saved you: 6 hours and 27 minutes!
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Note of the Day
Empire Roundup - Silvergate Liquidates, Coinbase Wallet
In this episode of Empire, Jason and Santi discuss Jason's big takeaways from ETH Denver, Silvergate's unwind, Coinbase's wallet announcement (bullish), Amazon NFT rumors, MakerDAO's 1.25B treasury proposal, and more!
Read our notes below to learn more.
ETH Denver Takeaways
ETH Denver was a large event with around 30,000 registrants and 11,000-13,000 people in attendance.
There was a lot of talk about privacy and ZK rollups at the event.
There was also a discussion of Layer 2 solutions, particularly around Base and Coinbase, as well as rollup-as-a-service projects and Eigenlayer and Celestia.
There was a surprising amount of interest in gaming at the event, with playable demos of high-quality games.
Cosmos was well-represented at the event, with a lot of excitement around the ecosystem.
There was no focus on consumer use cases or NFTs at the event.
Silvergate Unwinds
Silvergate was a crypto-friendly bank that had a good reputation in the industry and was widely used by crypto companies and investors.
The bank had to shut down its operations due to a liquidity crunch caused by a massive run on the bank after the FDIC's crackdown on the BitMEX exchange.
The bank's reputation was hurt by its association with crypto and the FTX scandal, which exposed its lack of due diligence.
The bank's send network, which was used for instant fiat transfers, was also shut down, which will make it harder for crypto companies to access traditional banking services.
The closure of Silvergate could lead to more companies moving offshore or using riskier banks, which could cause a new set of problems.
There were coordinated short-selling attacks against Silvergate, and it is important to wait for all the facts to come out to understand what really went wrong.
Coinbase's WaaS Announcement
Coinbase is a cryptocurrency exchange platform.
They recently made several announcements, including the acquisition of One River Asset Management to form Coinbase Asset Management, and the launch of Wallet as a Service offering, which enables developers to integrate MPC wallets into new or existing apps.
The Wallet as a Service offering could help onboard and launch many new wallets, particularly for traditional e-commerce brands that want to launch their own wallets but have no interest in building their own.
Coinbase is making smart moves by leaning into developer tools and onboarding new wallets.
The bear case for Coinbase is that it may become challenging to do many things well simultaneously, as seen with Google's breakup.
Additionally, retaining top talent in the crypto space is difficult.
Amazon NFT Rumors
Amazon is rumored to be working on an NFT offering that could be tied to real-world assets and may be officially announced in late April.
Amazon has partnered with Avalanche on the AWS side of things.
Amazon Prime is the most prolific subscription platform, with 160 million annual subscribers in the US alone.
Amazon plans to email every single one of its subscribers with their digital collectibles initiative once it goes live.
Luxury brands such as LVMH are moving into NFTs to acquire a younger, affluent demographic and keep users engaged.
It would be interesting to see how Amazon sets up a wallet and what kind of NFTs they create, such as different tiers based on spending on the platform.
Amazon is good at building new business lines, such as AWS, and may become a marketplace for NFTs.
It is unclear whether the NFTs will be built on a private blockchain, but there are rumors that Amazon will build on Immutable X.
GBTC & Legal Wins for Crypto
Grayscale just wrapped up oral arguments in its lawsuit against the SEC for blocking the transition of GBTC into a spot ETF.
Grayscale wants to turn GBTC into a spot ETF to collapse the discount, but the SEC keeps blocking it.
The sentiment is that Grayscale won this round of the debate, and the next step is a final decision from the court.
The discount on GBTC has fallen from 45% to 30% over the last week, and an ETF approval would be a massive narrative tailwind in the middle of a bear market.
The court was critical of the SEC's decision, and this might be a more objective interpretation of where crypto regulation might shape up.
The pillars of markets are consumer protection, market integrity, fairness, and sensible regulation for crypto and token issuers should keep this in mind.
There have been wins for the legal system, including the SEC losing the Voyager case and suffering a setback in the GBTC case.
Insiders expect a result any month now in the long-running SEC case against XRP, which could be a big result for crypto.
MakerDAO Proposal to Buy $1.25B US Treasuries
There is a proposal in Maker to extend its US treasury bond investments from $500 million to $1.25 billion, increasing it by $750 million.
The strategy will deliver a net yield of 4.5% to Maker after custody and trading costs.
The $750 million will be deployed into the six-month US treasuries using a laddering strategy with bi-weekly maturities to minimize risk.
Recommends people read the proposal and plan to vote Yes on it.
The yields on treasury bonds are higher than DeFi yields, making it a better investment option.
Silvergate announced it will repay and honor all customer deposits.
Some hedge fund traders use unconventional signals like back pain or lunar cycles to make trading decisions.
Bitcoin Innovations
There is a lot of potential in the Bitcoin community for using its security chain and idle capital to build on top of it.
Building on top of Bitcoin enhances its proposition rather than subtracts from it.
The difficulty of buying crypto creates a huge asymmetry of opportunity that will eventually be eroded away.
Excited about a new project in the entertainment space that leverages short-form content with NFTs and no-loss lotteries to drive customer engagement.
Digital ownership uniquely enables certain instruments and strategies that enhance the value proposition of products and consumer engagement.
Microtransactions, stablecoins, and NFTs that represent loyalty or subscriptions are arguments for retaining users with churn, subscription failures, and payments.
Predictions: Hong Kong, Bitcoin stablecoins, Coinbase
Hong Kong is reopening as a crypto hub, with new opportunities for crypto teams and exchanges.
Japan has high penetration rates for Bitcoin and could be a market to watch.
There may be a Bitcoin stablecoin that takes off in the near future.
Coinbase may become the number-one wallet provider in the next two years.
Blockworks is hiring for various roles, including reporters, engineers, and sales positions.
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