Crypto Alpha Trades You Might Have Missed

On January 5, 2023, we pointed out that the crypto market structure was improving and that “Ethereum could rally by +27% into the March Shanghai upgrade”. Our previous “Alpha Trades You Might Have Missed” report pointed out that several protocol specific positive catalysts and there is no surprise that the crypto market has rallied during the last 10 days.

🚩 In 10 bullet points:

👇 1) Aptos rallied +107.6% last 1w as PancakeSwap, Aptos’ most popular DEX by TVL, voted in favor of continuing their development on the Aptos network. The price only continued its rise after US CPI data was published on Jan 12th, which showed a slowing in inflation from 7.1% in November to 6.5% in December, signaling that inflation has peaked with more favorable market conditions on the horizon. Mkt cap $1.3bn;

👇 2) Decentraland rallied +74.2% last 1w as the platform introduced new updates including new profile features and avatar functions. Like other metaverse and NFT cryptocurrencies, Decentraland rallied following the release of promising December CPI data. Mkt cap $1.3bn;

👇 3) Solana +135% year-to-date, a token we wrote could double in our 2023 outlook, rallied +62.5% last 1w as Shiba Inu-themed token, Bonk Inu, resparked community interest in Solana with news that they will have an airdrop amounting to 50% of its token supply. 20% of the airdrop supply will be allocated to Solana NFT collections, comprising 297,000 NFTs, and 10% to Solana based artists and collectors. Mkt cap $8.7bn; Solana +135% year-to-date, a token we wrote could double in our 2023 outlook, rallied +62.5% last 1w as Shiba Inu-themed token, Bonk Inu, resparked community interest in Solana with news that they will have an airdrop amounting to 50% of its token supply. 20% of the airdrop supply will be allocated to Solana NFT collections, comprising 297,000 NFTs, and 10% to Solana based artists and collectors. Mkt cap $8.7bn;

👇 4) Flow rallied +49.5% last 1w as investors positioned themselves for the network’s upcoming mainnet upgrade, the ‘Flow mainnet spork’. The upgrade will allow the network to scale by handling petabytes of data, which has yet to be achieved by any other blockchain. Scaling will also improve through boosted transaction speed, making the network more attractive for mass adoption. Mkt cap $1.1bn;

👇 5) Optimism rallied +46.5% last 1w as the layer 2 Ethereum-based network recently set an all-time high in daily transactions, recording 690,700 transactions. The renewed network activity resulted in a 43% increase in fees collected and a 70% rise in protocol revenue. Optimism and Arbitrum combined also flipped Ethereum in transaction volume with more than 1.1 million transactions combined on Jan 10. Mkt cap $401m;

👇 6) Avalanche rallied +39.3% last 1w as Ava Labs announced plans to host a new stablecoin called USP, created by Platypus DeFi. USP will be listed in Avalanche’s main pool and will use other stablecoins in its collateralization mechanism. Ava Labs also recently signed a collaboration deal with Amazon which will allow Avalanche developers to have access to a range of Amazon Web Services assets and features. Mkt cap $5.3bn;

👇 7) Lido Staked Ether rallied +24.4% last 1w as Metamask announced the beta launch of Ethereum staking features which will be available via Lido’s liquid staking services. Lido already has over $6.9 billion worth of ETH staked through its service, offering users a yield of about 4.9%. With the MetaMask partnership and the Shanghai upgrade around the corner which will allow users to withdraw their staked ETH, Lido will likely benefit from a surge in activity given that liquid staking protocols account for 33% of the total staked ETH. Mkt cap $7.5bn;

👇 8) Bitcoin rallied +22.1% last 1w following an encouraging jobs report and CPI data release which spurs hopes of cooling inflation and easing of aggressive rate hikes by the FED. Bitcoin broke the $21k price level and erased post-FTX losses as it rallied to its high since early November. Mkt cap $402bn;

👇 9) Bitcoin Cash rallied +21.2% last 1w as the Bitcoin Cash hard fork approaches in May 2023 with promises to bring added security and privacy to the network. Developers also plan to introduce CashTokens which would allow DApps to run on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain, as well as increase transaction speed by implementing smaller transaction sizes. Mkt cap $2.4bn;

👇 10) Cardano rallied +18.6% last 1w upon the announcement that the Cardano powered stablecoin, Djed, will be launched by the end of Jan - Djed will be the first over-collateralized consensus stablecoin on Cardano. Developers also recently demonstrated the platform’s first smart contract written in Eopspin, a ‘simple pythonic programming language’. While the project is still in its infancy, the innovation of writing smart contracts in python code will help lower the barrier to entry for new developers and thus attract more development activity on Caradno in the future. Mkt cap $13.3bn;