[Daily] Ether’s cosy with the bulls

Good morning! Welcome to The Daily Moon. Happy people, beautiful monasteries, and picturesque hikes. These aren't the only things that Bhutan’s known for. Over the past one year, the Himalayan country pumped millions of dollars into crypto. It also had exposure to bankrupt entities such as BlockFi and Celsius. Bhutan’s sovereign investment arm simply said that the “matter is settled”. 🤨

As of Monday, 7PM IST

The markets were jittery over potential action by the SEC on a few US crypto entities. Bitcoin saw sell-off from whales. Ethereum's post-Shanghai rally saw a minor pause. S&P 500 and Nasdaq witnessed active buying in technology stocks. Back home, Sensex and Nifty ended lower on exits by foreign investors. 

Ether’s On A High

In the months leading up to Shanghai, people made wild guesses about Ether’s reaction to the upgrade. Now, we have the answer. Ethereum touched an 11-month high. 

The upside has begunETH is up ~13% over the past week. The Shanghai upgrade that went live last week allowed staked Ether to be withdrawn. Data shows that over 992,000 Ether had been withdrawn since Wednesday. Another 897,000 Ether are due to be withdrawn. That makes it ~10% of the total staked Ether. 

What’s interesting is that instead of cashing out, stakers have withdrawn and re-staked the tokens on the Beacon Chain. That’s because they want to compound or multiply the amount of interest earned. 

The SEC effect?The securities regulator had banned Kraken’s staking services in the US. So, whatever Ether was unstaked from it seems to have been re-staked into the system. Additionally, DeFi staking platforms such as Lido Finance and Rocket Pool are other avenues to stake to escape the SEC’s glare. 

Whales undecidedWhales haven’t made up their mind yet. Some have sold tokens, others have bought, and a few others have held. No clear pattern has emerged so far, but at least the worst is over. 

SHIB’s Burn Is All Smoke No Fire

Over the weekend, about ~245 million Shiba Inu tokens were burnt. That’s just a week after 1.1 billion SHIB were destroyed. Great burn rate but its price was unmoved. 

FYI Burn is where a token is sent to an unretrievable dead address. Higher burn rate increases token scarcity.

What’s up with SHIB?SHIB took the 13th spot among crypto tokens but is priced at less than $0.0001. The memecoin community is evidently frustrated. But SHIB’s Shytoshi Kusama has said that interest will “swing” from BTC and ETH to altcoins. Kusama hasn’t offered any explanations though. 🙄

Meanwhile, Kusama also teased the release of ShibaSwap 2.0. But again, no timelines or use-cases. 

Aren’t the burns helping?The headline numbers look huge but it’s practically nothing in USD terms. For example, the 6.78 billion SHIB burned in March was just worth $76,200. That is ~0.001% of all SHIB in circulation. We need real use cases. 

The Race To Show Crypto Love

The US isn’t winning any love from crypto companies. But they do keep moving things around. The lack of clear regulation is just one thing. So there are others stepping in to provide an “enabling environment”.

Asia to the rescueHong Kong seems to be the front runner for the most coveted crypto market. It has maintained it wants to become the crypto hub and it seems to be working. Chinese banks, for instance, aren’t allowed crypto-related activities in the mainland. But their Hong Kong-based arms are showing an interest in working with crypto companies. Crypto companies aren’t giving up yet on Singapore and Japan either. Institutional interest remains high too. 

US wants to know stablecoinsMeanwhile, the Us wants to know more about stablecoins. A House Committee will discuss stablecoins tomorrow. Why, though? Well, they want to understand if the stablecoin ecosystem needs regulation and where it stands as a means of payment right now. Among those testifying at the hearing is Circle’s policy and global strategy head. Stay tuned. 

Shaq Got Dunked

Basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal has been served as part of a class action lawsuit.

Class action for what?For promoting FTX. But he dribbled away for three months before process servers could hand him the official notice. You’d think he was hiding. But here’s the thing. He was regularly on TV. And he has a podcast. But he managed to evade the people coming to hand over the notice. 20 times.

Just made the deadlineLawyers were desperate to find the 7-foot basketball star. The deadline to serve Shaq was Monday. And with no sign of him, lawyers even requested the court (unsuccessfully) to allow them to serve O’Neal over Twitter, Instagram and email. The law firm even tweeted at him to receive the complaint. Well, they did make the deadline. He was served on Sunday outside his Atlanta house. 

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