Just shared a report on ICP, boasting some good growth numbers recently.

Here’s everything you need to know about their recent focus and developments.

Wednesday = Research time

General
➖ Crypto.com: Research Roundup Newsletter [August 2024]
➖ CoinGecko: US, Indonesia & Türkiye Lead With 33% of RWA Crypto Interest
➖ The Defiant: AI Meets Crypto: The Decentralized Revolution in Venture Capital and Finance
➖ Galaxy: Ethereum All Core Developers Execution Call #196 Writeup
➖ Galaxy: Weekly Top Stories - 9/13
➖ Galaxy: From Batch to Streaming: The Real-time Data Revolution

Market
➖ Coinbase: Monthly Outlook: What’s Eating Ethereum?
➖ Coinbase: Weekly: Surveying the Landscape
➖ Binance: RWAs: A Safe Haven for On-Chain Yields?

Blockchains & networks
➖ Galaxy: Protocol Overview: Avalanche 2024
➖ Footprint: August 2024 Chains Report: Insights on Layer 1, Bitcoin Layer 2, and Ethereum Layer 2 Trends

Tokens & currencies
➖ Glassnode: Glassnode Expands ERC-20 Token Support
➖ Galaxy: When Will Bitcoin Have Its Big Moment?

Only 42 projects have outperformed Bitcoin this year.

Among the 15 top-performing projects, 11 are meme coins.

Kudos to Arndxt for this research.

Key usage metrics on Tron are trending up:

– Monthly fees ~$220m.
– Monthly transactions ~225m.
– Monthly active users ~14.1m.

Top apps by now are Tether and SunPump.

ETH balance on exchanges is now close to the levels of 2016.

For comparison, for BTC 15% of all Bitcoins are now on exchange balances.

Based on the data from Glassnode, the Bitcoin market is currently stagnant, with both demand and supply showing signs of inactivity.

This is evidenced by minimal capital inflows and outflows, as indicated by the stagnant Realized Cap.

Base continues to break through: The daily USDC transfer volume reached $10B for the first time.

The end of summer is definitely the best season for Base.

Latest Bitcoin insights from CryptoQuant:

Institutionals have significantly reduced their aggressive shorting of BTC. CME futures net positions have declined by 75% over the past five months.

It seems sentiment is finally shifting towards a bullish direction.

In the first quarters of 2024, following a series of disappointing airdrops, the hype has diminished and competition for allocations has eased.

Here is my compilation of airdrop programs worth joining in Q4 2024, with FDV expectations ↓

Substack link

Since mid-2023, addresses with an ETH balance exceeding 10 ETH have been declining.

The only exception is addresses with over 1,000 ETH, which saw an increase following the recent August dump.

The BTC market has entered stagnation:

– The Realized Cap has peaked and plateaued at $662B, with most coins being transferred at prices close to their purchase value.

– Both profit and loss forces are largely equal, resulting in marginal net flow and oscillation around the zero bound.

– The absolute Realized Profit and Loss has declined significantly since the March ATH, indicating a reduction in overall buy-side pressure within the current price range.

Read the full Glassnode report on market stagnation here.

What do we know about Polkadot?
It’s something very controversial, for sure.

Here’s my overview of Polkadot’s latest performance (it’s not as bad as it might seem).

Bridges continue to maintain parity.

According to Artemis, none of the bridges account for more than 20% of the volume during regular weeks, except for Circle's CCTP. This week, Arbitrum also stood out.

You asked, I found ^^

Here’s a very good post from Ignas outlining the upcoming TGE of $EIGEN, expected for September 30th.

If you have some $EIGEN you want to sell on TGE, make sure to unstake them now as it takes 7 days.

Personal thoughts: I think the sell volume on day one will be quite heavy. EigenLayer was one of the most farmed airdrops in history, and many KOLs received extra $EIGEN allocations. They will likely sell. I plan to sell 70% of my allocation and buy back later.

EigenLayer has a first-mover advantage, but new projects like Karak and Symbiotic are entering the race. I believe it will remain the dominant LRT, similar to Lido’s position in the LST field, but weak hands need to be wiped out.

So, my plan is to buy at a lower price than TGE and then stake, ideally.

PS: These are just my thoughts, not a plan to follow. Always do your independent research.

Top countries by Bitcoin holdings according to Arkham:

1. United States – $12.16B
2. United Kingdom – $3.67B
3. Bhutan – $782.46M
4. El Salvador – $351.75M

Germany could have made the list, but its holdings dropped from $3.56B to $435 this year ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Comparing the performance of $BTC and $ETH against the largest TradFi assets, $BTC lags behind only $NVIDIA, while $ETH is the underdog.

This explains the poor inflows into ETH ETFs compared to BTC ETFs.