[Daily] Shiba’s burn fizzles

Good morning! Welcome to The Daily Moon. You know the slowdown is here when people find ways to spend less at weddings. One such couple got married in Decentraland, which was sponsored by Taco Bell. Couples only spend $300 per person’s avatar. Way cheaper than spending $30,000 at a real wedding. And they insist, the emotions are real. Well, we’re crying too.

As of Thursday, 8PM IST

The crypto markets were spooked by another banking crisis. Bitcoin slipped below $25,000 despite Swiss National Bank's lifeline to Credit Suisse. Ethereum was bearish due to a sell-off following the Shapella upgrade. S&P 500 and Nasdaq slid on recovery woes at SVB and Signature Bank. Back home, Sensex and Nifty snapped the five-day losing streak on a rally in FMCG and bank stocks.

Whales Don’t Rule BTC

The whale dominance over Bitcoin has reduced. Smaller HODLers have absorbed a large volume of coins recently and that’s a sign that the network has spread its risks far and wide.

How do you know?Data from Glassnode shows that the Bitcoin supply has been distributed across investors. This means that whales don’t call the shots on its price. It’s a welcome departure from the norm because sudden sell decisions by whales cause price volatility. We saw this in July 2022 when a whale sold 46,000 BTC worth $1 billion in just two days and spooked the market.

But the situation is different right now. Glassnode analysis shows:

1. Shrimps and crabs hold a larger supply of BTC than whales. Shrimps are investors with <1 BTC and crabs are those with <10 BTC.

2. Shrimps and crabs HODL 2.25X more tokens than the amount of BTC mined in 2022.

3. There is a demand for self-custody because investors want to stay in control.

TL;DR There are other sea creatures such as fishes, crabs, shrimps, and octopuses. 🙄

Source: Glassnode analysis

Miners take a hitWhile the HODLers grew, miners shrunk. From 100% BTC ownership in 2009-10, miners own 9.5% at present. Exclude Patoshi, the 1.1 million BTC initially mined (perhaps by Satoshi Nakamoto?), and the figure drops to 3.77%.

At least for now, the small fishes have made a big splash.

SHIB Hits Record Burns

Shiba Inu was on a massive burn drive since its testnet launch. About 455 million SHIB were burned between Wednesday and Thursday alone. That’s a burn rate of over 1310%. But that made no difference to its price, which was down ~8%.

FYI Burning crypto means removing a fixed number of tokens from circulation. These tokens go to a dead wallet where they stay locked forever.

Something’s burningThe memecoin is about to upgrade to an L2 version called Shibarium that’ll let users build dApps on it. SHIB co-founder Shytoshi Kusama announced the beta tests, which he calls PuppyNet, on Saturday. Soon after, burns began and ~602 million tokens were removed.

ICYMI You can read more about the Shibarium upgrade here.

Did it work?No, it didn’t. SHIB has tried the burn trick multiple times to trigger a bull run. But without the specifics about a future roadmap, there’s nothing much to fall back on. Even Shytoshi says DYOR on PuppyNet projects. Not very encouraging.

While we are on the meme crypto, people have apparently queued up to enter the SHIB metaverse booth at the SXSW festival. Its VR land Wagmi Temple was also on display, though we don’t have a launch date yet.

Stop The Contagion

A US banking industry regulator is asking for fresh bids for Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. Interested buyers can submit bids by Friday.

Second attemptThis isn’t the first time this regulator is inviting bids for failed banks. It did so over the weekend too. But turned down the bids submitted by financial institutions. Now the regulator is also reportedly bringing investment bank Piper Sandler on board to auction SVB. It is trying to sell both banks in their entirety. But if that doesn’t work out, it may consider selling them for parts too.

Why it mattersBecause this is one way to protect customer interest. The US government and the regulator are trying multiple ways to ensure this happens. At the end of the day, the idea is to avoid financial panic and another collapse.

GPT-4 Has A Winner

If you’re still getting on the ChatGPT hype train, it’s time to feel outdated. The creator of the chatbot has released the newest version of ChatGPT. It understands not just text, but also image inputs. And one large company is winning big.

What’s the big deal?Well, for starters, it is closer to human intelligence than any other form of AI available to consumers.

Source: OpenAI

The new update is now behind a paywall and there’s a waitlist for developers.

Microsoft advantageBut as it turns out, Microsoft is having the last laugh. Bing, its scarcely used search engine, is running on GPT-4. Which means anyone can use it. Without paying or having to be on a waitlist. So, will you now Bing it?

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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.