Saylor’s $615M Christmas Shopping

Metis $390M Grant | $1.8B Exploited in 2023

Marco Manoppo & Karon Pangestu
December 29, 2023

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Good Morning. The market dumps briefly but dip buyers came in strong even during this holiday season. That said, we need the funding rates to go down to a healthier level — otherwise, the potential dump post the Bitcoin ETF news might be severe.

In Today's Email:

What Matters: MSTR bought $615M BTC 🛒
Founders Highlight: Henrik of ChromaWay 🌐
Deal Flows: Metis’s $390M grant💰

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Narratives: The alt L1 and L2 rotation trade continues, but proceed with caution as funding rates stay high.

WHAT MATTERS

MicroStrategy Bought $615M in BTC

MicroStrategy’s Form 8-K

State of play: MicroStrategy purchased approximately 14,620 bitcoins worth around $615.7M between November 30 and December 26, according to its Form 8-K.

The average price of the purchase was $42,110 per BTC.
MSTR now owns 189,150 bitcoins bought for about $5.9B.
As of December 26, MSTR has sold 1M shares, earning $610M, as part of a plan to raise $750M.

Why it matters: MicroStrategy is a key player in BTC market liquidity dynamics. Via financial engineering, MSTR arguably has an unlimited amount of leverage if price continues to go up.

“Wait saylor is just buying btc and then the price goes up and he can mark his books up and then sell more mstr to buy more btc”
Uhhh yes that’s the whole point lmwo
man literally exploited the US finance system at the one thing it’s best at
— loomdart - (FTX 2.0 Advocate) (@loomdart)
4:08 AM • Dec 28, 2023

For builders and investors: The market often dumps after MSTR’s purchase was announced as traders realized that the strength of the rally was primarily dominated by one entity.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

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BUILDER-INVESTOR HIGHLIGHT

Henrik Hjelte of ChromaWay (Chromia)

Henrik Hjelte

Henrik Hjelte is the co-founder and CEO of ChromaWay, a Swedish blockchain startup founded in 2014 that is developing a blockchain network with its proprietary programming language through a project called Chromia.

Previous backgrounds: Henrik is a seasoned IT consultant, he started his career in 1988 as an IT consultant in several companies in Europe. In 2014 he founded ChromaWay.

Henrik holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration and Economics from Uppsala University.

The big idea: Henrik is building Chromia to help builders easily build dApps. Chromia is developing the first-ever relational feeless (no transaction fees for end users) modular blockchain.

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INSIGHTS

$1.8B Lost in 2023 Crypto Hacks

Immunefi - 2023 Annual Report

Credits to Immunefi for the original research.

Immunefi reported that In 2023, $1.8B was lost in the web3 ecosystem, with $1.7B from 247 hacks and $103M from 110 fraud incidents, mostly involving Mixin Network and Euler Finance.

Here are the key takeaways from the report:

This number represents a 54.2% decrease compared to total losses in 2022 when hackers and fraudsters stole ~$4B.
Mixin Network and Euler Finance exploits totalled $397M in 2023, 22% of the year's total crypto losses.
Hacks caused 94.3% of crypto losses in 2023, compared to 5.7% from frauds, scams, and rug pulls.
The Lazarus Group stole $308.6M in 2023, 17% of the year's total losses, targeting Atomic Wallet, CoinEx, Alphapo, Stake, and CoinsPaid.
DeFi continued to be the main target of successful exploits at 77.3% as compared to CeFi at 22.7% of the total losses.
BNB Chain and Ethereum were the most targeted, with 133 and 95 incidents respectively, accounting for 41.6% and 29.8% of losses.

DEAL FLOWS

Metis’s $390M Ecosystem Development Fund

A 9-figure grant is coming to @MetisDAO for their decentralized sequencer launch in January.
Here's an overview of the $METIS ecosystem, and the projects positioned to capitalize:
@tethysfinance $TETHYS - Perp. DEX & Fork of $GMX tokenomics (You can currently yield >330% APR by… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
— Louis Cooper ( 💙, 🧡 ) (@LouisCooper_)
4:06 PM • Dec 25, 2023

Deal flows slowed as we enter the holiday season 📉 — we saw $11M+ in deals.

This month, MetisDAO launched a fund consisting of 4.6M $METIS (~$380M) to boost development and adoption in the Metis ecosystem.

The fund will go to “sequencer mining, retroactive funding, deployment of new projects and other endeavours.”
The distribution of funds is planned for Q1 2024.
Potential recipients include those looking to build NFTs, DeFi, smart contract development and blockchain security in the Metis ecosystem.

Deal flows in the past week:

Academy of Digital Industries, Undisclosed $ Series A Round
BRC20.com, $1.5M Private Round
Eclipse Fi, $1.9M Private Round
CESS, $8M Private Round
Sleepless AI, Undisclosed $ Strategic Round

QUICK BITES

Blast hits $1.1B in TVL.
Worldcoin launches in Singapore.
DeFiance Exec departs to join Chromia.
Monex Group acquires majority stake in 3iQ.
Swell sees over $125M of inflows in December.
$11B crypto options set to expired at the end of 2023.
India Regulatory Agency seeks to ban Binance and Kraken.
PancakeSwap proposes to reduce the CAKE token supply by 300M.
Canadian Exchange Catalyx ceases all trading following security breach.
HKMA Chief says stablecoins could become the interface between TradFi and crypto.

NOTEWORTHY READS

Paul Veradittakit’s read on 2024 predictions.
Kyle Downey’s read on privacy is not a crime.
Qiao Wang’s read on Ethereum as the only institution-friendly smart contract chain.

“No mom, the laptop stays at the table I’m sorry but I don’t think the Asians celebrate Christmas so I can’t step away from the orderbooks today and before you ask, no I also can’t sprinkle out a bunch of limit orders and relax, the charts don’t just stop moving for family time”
— Gwart (@GwartyGwart)
2:52 PM • Dec 25, 2023

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Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice.