The Defiant

Samuel Haig
February 19, 2024

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The crypto market rally is showing no signs of slowing down, with Ether leading a renewed push into local highs. The combined crypto market cap now sits above $2T for the time since April 2022.

Top gaining assets include Filecoin after announcing its Solana integration and Worldcoin following OpenAI unveiling its new Sora AI engine. However, a flood of BTC may soon be entering the markets, with a U.S. court permitting Gemini to offload $1.6B worth of GBTC shares provided by its insolvent debtor, Genesis, as loan collateral.

Plus, Aave wants to incentivize adoption with wETH and GHO, Yuga Labs acquired Proof Collective, Circle is petitioning for a regulatory clampdown on Tether, and an art gallery dedicated to Bitcoin Ordinals is open for business.

✍️ In today’s newsletter:

Cryptocurrencies keep soaring
Gemini allowed to offload $1.6B in GBTC
Filecoin flies on Solana integration
WLD outperforms
Aave proposes rewards program
Yuga acquires Proof Collective
Circle wants regulatory pressure on USDT
Bitcoin Ordinals art gallery opens

📈 Markets in the last 24 hrs:

	Ticker	Value	24h

Ticker	Value	24h
Bitcoin	$52,1800.96	%
Ethereum	$2,879 3.23	%
Gold	1st Future$2,012 0.47	%
S&P 500	$5,006	-0.48 %
Web	3 Token2.36 1.75	%
Learn more about Arch Indices ,[object Object]		%

🎬 WATCH

Check out our video exploring which projects could be next to announce airdrops within the Solana ecosystem. Also watch our interview with Jupiter Exchange founder, Meow, to get his response to the controversy and criticism surrounding the project’s recent airdrop and token sales on the LFG Launchpad.

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MARKETS

Crypto Markets Show Signs Of Froth After Torrid Rally

TLDR The crypto markets continue to post new local highs, with ETH leading a rally that pushed the combined capitalization and digital assets past $2T for the first time since April 2022

SO WHAT Cryptocurrencies have started 2024 with a bang, kicked off by the long-awaited launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs. While inflows to the new flows have ramped up in recent weeks, with pundits also tipping that the first spot Ether ETFs could begin trading in May.

BUSINESS

U.S. Court Allows Gemini To Sell $1.6B In GBTC Shares

TLDR A U.S. bankruptcy court has approved a plan allowing the monetization of assets owned by Genesis, the insolvent CeFi brokerage. The move permits Gemini, the Winklevoss-owned crypto exchange, to begin offloading $1.6B worth of GBTC shares held as collateral backing $900M in loans Genesis took out from Gemini Earn depositors.

SO WHAT Gemini celebrated the news, stating that its Earn customers may soon receive in-kind distributions of crypto assets rather than an equivalent value of fiat currency. Digital Currency Group, Genesis’s parent company, opposed the ruling, arguing U.S. law mandates refunds should be processed based on the fiat value of assets as of Genesis filing for bankruptcy.

MARKETS

FIL Rockets After Filecoin Integrates With Solana

TLDR FIL is among best-performing cryptocurrencies after Filecoin announced an integration with Solana. Filecoin will now host Solana’s block history moving forward, providing a decentralized data storage solution for Solana-based infrastructure providers, block explorers, and indexers moving forward.

SO WHAT FIL is up 11% in 24 hours and 28% in seven days, positioning it as the seventh and 11th strongest-gaining top 100 cryptocurrency over the respective time-frames.

DEFI

Aave Moves To Launch $5M Quarterly Incentives Program

TLDR A new proposal from Aave to provide $5M in quarterly wETH and GHO incentives to users is progressing through governance. The program aims to reward activity aligned with its strategic objectives, including LST deposits, GHO mints, and users migrating from rival lending protocols.

SO WHAT Aave enjoyed meteoric growth in 2021 after offering AAVE tokens to reward users for adopting its then-newly-launched v2 iteration. While Aave ranks as the top DeFi lending protocol by a sizable margin, the team hopes to fend off rising competition from upstart rivals with the proposed incentives campaign.

Sam Altman-Backed Worldcoin Token Soars on Sora Launch

TLDR Worldcoin’s WLD token is up 180% over the past week following the launch of Sora, the new text-to-video diffusion model from OpenAI, the artificial intelligence firm headed by Worldcoin’s co-founder, Sam Altman.

SO WHAT WLD’s meteoric price gains come after Worldcoin attracted unwanted scrutiny from international regulators, with the controversial digital identity project’s retina-scanning system running afoul of national privacy laws.

BUSINESS

Yuga Labs Acquires Proof Collective

TLDR Yuga Labs, the company behind several leading NFT collections including Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks, has acquired the rival NFT studio, Proof Collective.

SO WHAT Yuga is set to acquire the assets and intellectual property for Moonbirds, Oddities, Mythics, and Grails, further expanding its dominance portfolio of NFT projects. The floor prices for Proof passes and Moonbirds surged by 80% and 30% in response to the news.

READ MORE: Yuga Labs Acquires Proof Collective

REGULATION

Stablecoin Wars Heat Up As Circle Asks Congress To Rein In Tether

TLDR Circle and Coinbase called for U.S. lawmakers to empower the Treasury Department to crack down on Tether and its domestic banking partner, Cantor Fitzgerald, during testimony in front the Congress last week. The firms’ representatives argued that Tether fails to maintain appropriate compliance processes, creating a popular monetary vehicle for criminal enterprise.

SO WHAT The testimony follows factions within the U.S. government increasingly sounding the alarm on the use of cryptocurrency for illicit transactions. However, a U.S. Treasury Department report published earlier this month acknowledged cash remains the preferred instrument for criminal organizations worldwide.

NFT

San Francisco Art Gallery Opens Location Exclusively For Bitcoin Ordinals

TLDR Superchief, an NFT-focused art gallery, launched the first gallery dedicated to Bitcoin Ordinals on Friday. The launch marks the opening of Superchief’s fourth gallery, which is intended to comprise a permanent fixture showcasing works from across the Ordinals sector.

SO WHAT Ordinals enjoyed explosive growth last year, initially emerging as an inscription method for creating NFT-like assets on Bitcoin before proliferating across smart contract networks eager to get in on the action. Despite their success, Ordinals have also attracted criticism for driving network congestion and failing to offer smart functionality.

🔎 OUR REPORTERS ARE WATCHING

🌍 ELSEWHERE

Futures open interest hits two-year peak with Bitcoin above $50k (CryptoSlate)
Airdrop farmers are now spamming GitHub in light of Starknet, Celestia distributions (The Block)
Japan Moves Closer to Allowing Venture Capital Firms to Hold Crypto Assets (CoinDesk)