[Daily] Cardano is getting whale love

Good morning! Welcome to The Daily Moon. An NFT that you can wear is coming soon. Gucci and Bored Apes’ creator Yuga Labs have launched Otherside Relics, an NFT collection based on the Otherside metaverse platform’s gaming character Koda. Buyers of the 3,333 limited edition NFTs will also get a physical Koda pendant. But only existing Koda and Vessel NFT holders are eligible. 😢

As of Tuesday, 7PM IST

The markets recovered. Bitcoin saw a surge in trading volumes. Ethereum was bullish on active buying ahead of the Shanghai upgrade. S&P 500 and Nasdaq rose on gains in technology stocks. Back home, Sensex and Nifty were closed for Mahavir Jayanti.

Whales Love ADA

Whales are into ADA. Cardano’s native token rose ~12% in a week. A feeding frenzy driven by whales, these large HODLers have bought ADA worth $60 million in the past four weeks.

Add ADA to cartCardano whales, who hold between 1 million and 10 million tokens, have bought another 150 million ADA coins. There is an eagerness to buy more ADA among HODLers with at least 1,000 ADA tokens, which has caused this bull run.

Upgrade buzz Two years after the Alonzo hard fork that enabled smart contracts on Cardano, it’s set for another upgrade: Voltaire. This update will make Cardano a little more decentralised and ADA will have a treasury system, which will allow users to vote on governance proposals.

Staking winsCharles Hoskinson claims that “Cardano is pretty special” because of its staking capabilities. The founder of Cardano says that Cardano focussed on staking years ago and found more takers. A soon-to-be-launched feature will permit all ADA users to access ETH dApps through their wallets. That’s also expected to increase user activity.

ETH Boost To LSDs

Not those LSDs. Liquid staking derivatives. And companies that use LSD are going to be hot. Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade lands on April 12, following which staked ETH can be withdrawn.

FYI Liquid staking is where depositors get an alternative token to use for other purposes. Staked Ether or stETH by Lido is one suck token.

The unstaked eraLSDs such as Lido Finance, Frax Finance, and Rocket Pool have already seen a surge in inflows. In fact, ~31% of all the staked ETH has been deposited using Lido. The DeFi platform’s total value locked has increased as well.

Liquid staking protocols hold the second-largest share of DeFi deposits, a sign that curious investors are pumping funds into them.

Any risks?While Shanghai euphoria exists, there’s also a fear that unstaked tokens may get mass dumped. A bearish turn will impact the LSD tokens too.

Crypto ETFs On The Table

The crypto market has had its ups and downs over the past year. But a new survey finds that institutional interest in cryptocurrency-based Exchange-Traded Funds (ETF) is still pretty high.

Lessons from volatilityInvestors are taking lessons from the volatile financial environment we’ve seen in the past year. And they’re more open to investing in innovative products. The survey found 25% of respondents were open to allocating more of their portfolios to ETFs with cryptocurrency-related exposure. It’s a drop from 33% in 2022, but still good enough to call it a good sign.

Key numbersSome key numbers from the survey:

• 89% of investors plan to increase or maintain their use of ETFs this year

• Global inflows into ETFs: $856 billion in 2022, the second-highest total ever.

Source: BBH 2023 Global ETF Investor Survey

Elon ♥️ DOGE 

He’s living up to being called Dogefather. Elon Musk is just never not entertaining. And Dogecoin is not complaining.

A DOGE for TwitterTwitter users woke up to this on Tuesday:

The Chief Twit has replaced the Twitter logo with that of a Shiba Inu, mostly associated with Dogecoin. The memecoin’s price jumped about 30%.

But why did Musk do it?Because he said so.

Nothing wrong, given how Musk is. But it’s not that simple. Musk is facing a $258 billion class action lawsuit alleging that he is running a pyramid scheme to support DOGE. Just last week, Musk’s lawyer asked the court to end the lawsuit because these are just silly tweets he makes. That makes this recent action, well, more Musk than usual.

And that’s it for today. If this email was forwarded to you, please consider subscribing. It’s free. We’ll never show you an ad or charge you for this. We swear.

To sweeten the deal, here's an offer you cannot refuse! You can refer this newsletter to your friends, family and any amazing community. The top referrer every month wins a guidebook to upcoming potential airdrops and exclusive premier content! Click below to share your unique referral link!

Who are we? This newsletter’s ambition is to educate (and to entertain). The world of money is changing everyday and we want to help you decode what’s happening in the world of crypto, public markets in the US and India.