Plus: What do SBF and Al Capone have in frequent?
GM. The one factor getting squeezed tougher than this lemon is that poor altcoin down 40%.
📰 Updates on the OM crash scenario.
🍋 Information drops: SBF will get transferred, Coinbase addresses memecoin points + extra
🍍 Market taste at present
Fed Chair Jerome Powell spoke yesterday – and when he does, markets often concentrate.
Crypto ain’t no totally different – Bitcoin began trying prefer it may make a run at $86K… till Powell opened his mouth.
What did he say? Nothing a lot. And that is the issue.
He mentioned that the brand new tariffs introduced by Trump had been approach bigger than anticipated, and warned that the uncertainty surrounding them might trigger long-term hurt to the financial system.
That is as a result of they’re setting us up for a tricky combo:
Slower development,
Rising unemployment,
And quicker inflation.
All occurring on the identical time. That’s a mixture the Fed hasn’t needed to take care of in about fifty years.
This issues as a result of the Fed has two major objectives: protecting inflation low and serving to the job market keep sturdy. Tariffs are actually threatening each.
And whereas the US financial system appears to be like fairly okay for the second, Powell mentioned they’re gonna wait to see how issues play out earlier than doing something.
Translation: rates of interest are more likely to keep excessive for now
This implies crypto gained’t be getting a lot assist from financial coverage until inflation actually begins to fall – and that prolly gained’t occur earlier than summer time.
On a separate word, we additionally received new information on US retail gross sales – in March, they rose greater than they’ve in over two years.
That sort of information must be good for crypto. When persons are spending, it often means they’ve received additional money and really feel assured = bullish.
However this time, it wasn’t about confidence – it was about panic. Folks had been shopping for stuff like vehicles and electronics earlier than tariffs ship costs via the roof.
And as Comerica Financial institution’s chief economist Invoice Adams mentioned, “It is onerous to be ok with People panic shopping for vehicles as client confidence craters” – as a result of as soon as the panic fades, demand will in all probability drop.
So yeah, the financial system’s in a bizarre place – shoppers are panic buying, tariffs are creating uncertainty, Powell’s on standby, and the crypto market is…
Confused.
🥝 Memecoin harvest
Shitposting their strategy to the highest:
Knowledge as of 05:00 AM EST.
Try these memecoins and lots extra right here.
On Monday, we lined the wild story of Mantra DAO’s OM token crashing by 90%.
(In the event you didn’t learn that version 🤨 or weren’t subscribed to us but 🤨 – go catch up right here.)
Now for the sequel: the Mantra crew issued a press release yesterday.
TL;DR: “We’re nonetheless right here, we’re nonetheless constructing, and no, we didn’t do it.”
Additionally they mentioned they didn’t promote a single OM throughout the entire thing and blamed the collapse on a wave of pressured liquidations. The speculation: some large OM holders on centralized exchanges received worn out when the worth dropped too low for his or her borrowed positions to remain open.
The crew additionally introduced their plans transferring ahead:
Ask exchanges to assist clarify wtf occurred;
Launch a public dashboard exhibiting real-time balances of all the key token allocations (mainly to show they’re not secretly promoting);
Purchase again and burn some OM tokens (and FYI: token burns = provide goes down = worth goes up perhaps).
Now, this assertion got here after Mullin had a chat with YouTuber and crypto investigator Coffeezilla.
And, this submit just about sums it up:
Mullin doubled down: the crew didn’t promote through the crash, and so they weren’t liquidated both.
However.
He did admit that they had beforehand bought $25M – $30M price of OM tokens – simply not on the open market.
As a substitute, they did what’s known as an OTC (over-the-counter) sale – that’s whenever you promote tokens on to traders or establishments. Often, there’s a “lock-up” interval, that means these patrons can’t promote the tokens straight away.
If these patrons had dumped their tokens, that might’ve crashed the worth. However Mullin insists the tokens are nonetheless locked, in order that could not have been the trigger.
Oh, and Mullin additionally mentioned they used about $10M from that OTC cash to purchase OM tokens again from the market.
Coffeezilla was then like… “umm, so that you had been pumping the worth?” However Mullin denied that.
In any case, the issue now could be that these OTC tokens will unlock finally. And after they do, we’d see extra promoting stress.
Mullin was requested what occurs then – like, what if these traders determine to dump every little thing?
His reply: “We’ll proceed to construct out the ecosystem and assist as a lot as we are able to so that folks have a cause to stake, maintain it, and proceed to see it as an asset.”
General, there are nonetheless a ton of open questions – together with the largest one: what really brought on the crash within the first place?
However a minimum of now, we’ve received a number of extra items on the desk.
Now you are within the know. However take into consideration your mates – they in all probability don’t know. I ponder who might repair that… 😃🫵
Unfold the phrase and be the hero you recognize you’re!
🍋 Information drops
🚚 Sam Bankman-Fried received a brand new jail handle – he’s now at Terminal Island in LA. Enjoyable reality: this is identical place the place Al Capone and Charles Manson did time.
😬 Coinbase says it had nothing to do with the “Base is for everybody memecoin” that blew as much as $17M after which crashed 90% in 20 minutes. They clarified that Base solely posted on Zora – a platform that turns posts into tokens – however the coin wasn’t official, and so they didn’t create or promote it.
💰 DWF Labs invested $25M in World Liberty Monetary (WLFI), a DeFi undertaking backed by Donald Trump and his sons. The Dubai-based market maker says it plans to affix WLFI’s governance.
⏸ A US decide paused a lawsuit from 18 state attorneys normal and the DeFi Training Fund in opposition to the SEC. That’s as a result of the case may grow to be pointless when the SEC will get new management, for the reason that authentic beef was about them going approach overboard with lawsuits in opposition to crypto corporations.
🚀 Bitwise dropped 4 new crypto ETPs on the London Inventory Trade, masking Bitcoin and Ethereum. One even allows you to earn rewards by staking ETH.