5 Minute Crypto ⏳ - Bank stocks 📉, Balaji's $1M 🌽 bet, Saylor keeps sailing, Consensus notes, NFT takes, ENS, and more

Two Degens (resources, interviews, on all things crypto and some AI)

Howdy all — this is the 5 minute crypto update for Thursday May 4th. Yesterday we had a great Two Degens interview with Back the Bunny, which will be out next week.
Since it’s been 2 days, we’ve got a lot to cover in today’s update
In the words of Adam Carolla, let’s get it on!
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As of this recording, prices have risen a few percent due to continued US bank failures
Bitcoin sitting at $29,060
ETH at $1900
Top risers in last 24 hours include Curve which just launched a stablecoin, Fantom, and Rocket Pool
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What’s going on in crypto land…
https://twitter.com/vandelaybtc/status/1653408241206939650?s=46
US bank stocks are cratering after First Republic’s failure
https://twitter.com/CryptoHayes/status/1653175131123126272?s=20
The 8 TBTF banks are effectively nationalised bc they have a govt gtee on their entire deposit base. They will not be allowed to fail regardless of decisions they make. Socialised losses, privatised gains, it's a great deal but...
Balaji ends bitcoin bet more than one month early
https://twitter.com/crypto/status/1653691321637302274?s=46
“I just burned a million to tell you they’re printing trillions”
Bitcoin transactions set new records
https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/05/01/bitcoin-set-new-record-of-daily-transactions-the-same-day-the-us-government-quietly-engineered-a-bank-buyout/
https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-transactions-record-ordinals
Last Sunday, the bitcoin network set a new record for daily transactions. This is 78K more than previous 2017 peak
https://www.theblock.co/post/229008/bitcoin-microstrategy
Microstrategy buys even more bitcoin
Added 7.5K corn in first quarter this year
Now holds 140K, with an average cost basis of $29,800, so at current prices, he’s about $100M in the red
Prolific tweeter Ram Ahluwalia went to Consensus in Austin, shares some alphas
https://twitter.com/ramahluwalia/status/1652592768672227329?s=46
He asked a bunch of people for their non-consensus views
-China, contrary to public perception, is seeing major NFT adoption
-ZK proof market will be larger than Proof of Work by 2030
-Startups are moving offshore to Japan and Singapore - more hospitable climates. Hong Kong opening up as well.
https://twitter.com/rektmando/status/1651189897963913217
This according to NFT builder and influencer Mando
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And some related charts from Punk 9059:
OpenSea trading volume levels at a 20-month low, Blur volumes at pre-token launch levels
https://twitter.com/punk9059/status/1651927597910196225
New NFT market leader Blur launches NFT lending protocol
https://blockworks.co/news/blur-nft-lending
https://twitter.com/blur_io/status/1653051809240604674
In partnership with the big brains at crypto VC Paradigm
The protocol is called Blend
a16z crypto provides a checklist for token design
https://a16zcrypto.com/content/article/designing-tokens-sanity-checks-principles-guidance/
Ethereum’s official name service, ENS, has released a new app for registering and managing domain names
https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=242181&post_id=117744551
William Peaster has a great deep dive on it in his Metaversal newsletter
Backthebunny spitting more fire over at the RabbitX blog
https://blog.rabbitx.io/crypto-dollars-gold-and-layer-4-money/
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That’s it for today! That was 7.5 minutes long. All the links are in the show notes. You can follow @twodegenspod on Twitter and subscribe for more!