ARP’s Crypto Digest

General Digital Asset Market View:

This week marked the beginning of a recalibration phase in the ETF flows. GBTC continues to see significant outflows, while Blackrock’s IBIT experiences its first day with no new flows after a 71-day streak of inflows. What a spectacular journey it has been for IBIT, marking the most successful ETF launch in history with an astounding $15.5B amassed in just over two months. On a similar note, Fidelity encountered its first outflow of -$23M after consistently attracting positive flows. The week concluded with a series of net negative flows, indicating that after a period of intense growth and inflows, the ETF’s are now transitioning towards a phase of recalibration. This adjustment is normal and crucial to maintain sustainable future growth.

More Crypto:

Run it Back Up Turbo -> The SPDR Gold ETF, launched in November 2004, took over 800 days to achieve the same level of assets under management (AUM) that the iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) accomplished in just over 70 days following its launch.

Restakers Race -> Lido experienced the largest outflow among staking platforms in the past month, totaling nearly 456k ETH, reducing its market share to 28.7%. During the same period, other liquid restaking protocols attracted more than 600k ETH to their platforms. Lido dominance is down to 28.7% from 32.3% in 6 months.

The Great Relief - > From November 2023, Bitcoin miners have been selling their holdings to support their mining operations with sales reaching more than 6,000 BTC in a single month in December 2023. The weak and unproductive miners are flushed out of the network post the halving, leaving the strongest miners to remain and the network consolidates. Such a change has reduced the sale of Bitcoins by miners after the halving, thus relieving the market of the selling pressure.

What Happened This Week:

• Ankr has launched AI-focused Layer 1 blockchain Neura on public testnet.

• Shiba Inu has raised $12 million via the “treatsforShib” to develop its new privacy-focused Layer 3 blockchain.

• World-coin announced that will be increasing the circulating supply of $WLD by as much as 19% in the next six months.

• Stargate has started voting on the Stargate V2 proposal, which was open until the 28th.

• US regulator seeks $5bn penalty against Do Kwon and Terraform Labs.

• Franklin Templeton has enabled peer-to-peer transfers of tokenized shares (BENJI) in its U.S. Government Money Fund on polygon.

What to look out for:

• Stacks has begun the second phase of its Nakamoto upgrade rollout process. Mainnet Activation is expected between May 15-29.

• Jupiter has teased that the Mobile app beta will be released in May.

• World-coin announced that will be increasing the circulating supply of $WLD by as much as 19% in the next six months.

• Stargate has started voting on the Stargate V2 proposal, which will be open until the 28th.

• Shib has announced the Shibarium hard fork is set for May 2.

• Rumor of $ETH spot ETF rejection in May.

What we enjoyed reading and listening to:

• Mark Zuckerberg - Llama 3, $10B Models, Caesar Augustus, & 1 GW Datacenters - Link

• Researchers found stuck funds in bridges, claimable by wallet owners - Link

• Consensys Sues the SEC: Will It End Gensler's ‘Unlawful Power Grab’? - Link

• The US vs. Crypto: Jake Chervinsky on Crypto's Current Legal Fights - Link

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