Apyx is the first dividend-backed stablecoin protocol. Check it out here!

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

🔎What we know about the rsETH exploit

📊 Crypto chart of the week

🗞️ The latest DeFi news

🔎 What we know about the rsETH exploit

Kelp DAO suffered one of the largest DeFi exploits in a long time last week.

116,500 rsETH (worth ~$290M) were minted out of thin air by a hacker who exploited KelpDAO’s rsETH bridge powered by LayerZero via a forged cross-chain message.

While this alone is a terrible event, the fact that rsETH was deeply integrated into DeFi made things much worse.

For example, it was supported as collateral on Aave.

Once the hacker minted the rsETH tokens, he immediately used them to borrow ETH against them on Aave, leaving Aave with over one hundred million dollars in bad debt.

And Aave is not the only protocol affected by this exploit.

Compound, Lido’s EarnETH vault, some Morpho lenders, Hyperithm's mHyperETH product, Superform's SuperWETH vault, and many other protocols were also impacted as they had some exposure to rsETH in one way or another.

Whose fault is it here?

This situation is a bit more nuanced than in other exploits like Drift.

Because the hacker exploited Kelp DAO’s rsETH bridge, which was powered by LayerZero, rather than Kelp DAO’s own smart contracts.

And no one seems to want to take responsibility. LayerZero is blaming Kelp DAO, and Kelp DAO says that it is the fault of LayerZero.

Now, if we look at this situation objectively, here are some facts:

• For this attack, the hacker compromised two of the RPC providers that LayerZero DVN was using in order to be able to mint rsETH

• Kelp DAO was running only a 1/1 DVN (multisig) setup for its rsETH bridge (meaning that there was a single verifier that had to approve a fake transaction as real for the exploit to succeed)

• LayerZero blames Kelp DAO for using a 1/1 DVN configuration, but at the same time, LayerZero is the one who allowed dApps to use a 1/1 DVN in the first place

• 47% of the dApps leveraging LayerZero’s bridge infrastructure used a 1/1 DVN before the hack, so Kelp DAO was not the only one

So, without getting into too many technical details, to me it seems obvious that LayerZero deserves most of the blame and should recognize their mistakes.

Indeed, the fault of Kelp was that it used a single verifier ( 1/1 DVN) for its rsETH bridge. Using multiple verifiers could have prevented this exploit.

But this hack wouldn’t have been possible if the RPC nodes hosted by LayerZero hadn’t been compromised in the first place.

What’s next?

Fortunately, almost a third of the funds stolen by the hacker had already been recovered by Arbitrum, which announced it had frozen the hacker's funds.

This doesn’t look great from a decentralization perspective.

But I think it is better to do this and protect users, given that it is possible, than pretend that L2s are fully decentralized when in reality they aren’t.

Meanwhile, Aave is considering multiple solutions to cover the bad debt it incurred.

LlamaRisk, Aave’s risk manager, outlined two potential scenarios:

• Uniform socialization of losses across all chains where Aave is deployed, with ETH lenders on Ethereum mainnet being left with a 1.54% loss

• Isolate losses to the L2s where rsETH was used as collateral by the hacker to borrow WTH, with ETH lenders on Mantle being left with a 71% loss

These numbers were mentioned before Arbitrum froze 30,766 ETH held by the hacker, so the loss will likely be smaller.

There’s a chance that Aave uses its treasury to cover a part of the bad debt. Mantle also confirmed it’s working on a recovery plan.

My hope is that the final resolution will include no losses or very small losses for Aave users. Aave has long been perceived as the best DeFi app for low-risk yield, and this incident, unfortunately, significantly damaged its reputation.

Lastly, I’ve seen many people say that DeFi is dead because of this exploit that affected so many tier-1 protocols.

I don’t agree with this, as this industry has faced many setbacks over the past years and has always managed to make a comeback in one way or another.

DeFi will be fine, but there’s a lot of work to be done to make it secure first.

Together with Apyx

The first dividend-backed stablecoin protocol

Most stablecoins and DeFi yields today work against your crypto portfolio.

Apyx flips that model entirely.

Instead of relying on opaque trading strategies, Apyx sources yield from Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) preferred equity, such as Strategy’s STRC and Strive’s SATA.

In this way, it is directly contributing to creating additional buy pressure for BTC, while also generating a high yield.

Here’s how it works:

• Apyx allocates its stablecoin backing collateral to three things: DAT-issued preferred equity (STRC & SATA), cash, and T-bills

• Via STRC, Strategy is raising money in order to buy BTC → so the more money that Apyx allocates to STRC, the more BTC Saylor’s Strategy accumulates

• By buying STRC, Apyx gets a high dividend yield of 11.5% annualized at the time of writing, which goes to its apyUSD yield-bearing asset holders

apyUSD currently has an APY of 11.83%, and it is targeting a 13% APY. It can also be used on various DeFi apps, such as Pendle and Morpho, to earn a double-digit yield.

Apyx has two core assets: apxUSD, a non-yield-bearing stable dollar, and apyUSD, a yield-bearing asset. The yield generated by the underlying collateral accrues entirely to apyUSD holders.

Both earn points toward a future APYX airdrop, the protocol’s governance and value-accrual token tied to reserve growth from preferred equity dividends and onchain digital credit activity.

And the more that Apyx grows, the more buying pressure it puts on BTC.

Its S1 points program ends in 4 weeks, with 5% of Apyx’s future token supply allocated to it. Season 2 will happen right after that.

Check out Apyx here!

Chart of the week

Crypto cards are gaining massive traction

Crypto meme of the week😂

The latest developments in DeFi

Polymarket announced the launch of its own perps DEX

Jupiter Lend enabled borrowing against tokenized stocks

Pendle airdropped ~$7.5M in CHIP tokens to sPENDLE holders

Alchemix launched Alchemix V3 - a new DeFi lending primitive

Base announced Base Azul - a network upgrade that will enable it to process up to 5,000 TPS and increase decentralization

Drift announced a hack recovery pool with up to $147.5M from Tether and other partners. The package includes a revenue-linked credit facility

Catalysis, a DeFi insurance vault protocol powered by EigenCloud, went live

USDai, a GPU-backed stablecoin protocol, launched its token CHIP

Kelp DAO’s rsETH was unfortunately exploited for $290M

Arbitrum froze 30,766 ETH held by the rsETH exploiter

Optimism announced stake-based transaction ordering - a feature that enables users to get their transactions processed faster by staking OP

Hit One, a gamified dApp offering 1000x leverage, went live on MegaETH

Brix is launching wiTRY, the first Turkish Lira stablecoin with 37% APY, today

Extended implemented daily withdrawal caps to protect itself against exploits

Avici released Avici Grow and Smart Credit, enabling users of its on-chain neobank to take loans and earn yield via Fluid

Drift hack victims sued Circle for refusing to freeze stolen USDC funds

That’s all for this week!

Until next time,

The DeFi Investor

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Rayls is a blockchain that connects real-world financial activity with onchain markets. Start exploring it here.

GM friends.

I hope you guys weren’t affected much by the rsETH exploit.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

• 9 crypto events to watch this week

• A risk analytics dashboard

• Some great crypto reads

Let’s dive in👇

Crypto catalysts to watch this week

1. Polymarket V2 launch - Polymarket V2 upgrade goes live on April 22. It will bring a new collateral token called Polymarket USD and a new architecture designed to reduce the number of failed trades

2. Macro events - Kevin Warsh’s confirmation hearing for FED Chair is set for April 21 + Iran-US ceasefire expires on April 22

3. 1inch’s lending protocol release - 1inch announced plans to launch a lending app with fixed rates and P2P matching, designed to prevent widespread DeFi contagion from one exploit

4. MegaETH’s upcoming announcement - A MegaETH team member said they are working on things internally that will be revealed “really soon”

5. Brix’s launch - Brix, a MegaETH-based project, will launch a Turkish Lira stablecoin offering 45% APY on April 23

6. Solstice’s airdrop registration - Solstice’s airdrop registration window ends on April 24

7. ZKsync’s big announcement - ZKsync will make a big announcement this week

8. USDai’s TGE - USDai will launch its token called CHIP on April 21

9. Paradex’s DIME token upgrade - Paradex will release staking and fee tiers for DIME holders this week

Brought to you by Rayls

The Infrastructure Layer of RWAs

Real-world assets are one of the fastest-growing crypto sectors right now.

But for it to reach its full potential, there needs to be proper infrastructure that supports RWA issuance, movement, and access.

This is where Rayls comes in.

Its public chain launch is scheduled for April 30.

Here’s what makes it interesting:

• Rayls is a chain that connects real-world financial activity to on-chain markets

• Rayls has relationships with the Central Bank of Brazil, the Bank of England, and JP Morgan

• Its primary focus is receivables, and Rayls already tokenizes 40,000 receivables a month with Núclea, Brazil’s largest financial technology infrastructure provider

• AmFi, a private credit tokenization platform, committed to issuing $1 billion in tokenized real-world assets on Rayls

These numbers show that the project is already driving serious RWA growth.

If you were to map the RWA ecosystem, Rayls should be part of that conversation, as it is building the infrastructure that institutions need to tokenize their assets.

If you’re keeping an eye on the RWA sector, Rayls is a project worth watching.

Check out Rayls here!

🛠️Crypto tool of the week

A risk analytics dashboard

The rsETH hack has unfortunately shown that one exploit can affect dozens of dApps.

A tool that you might find useful to analyze correlations between protocols and see where a certain yield-bearing asset is deposited is called DiaData.

For example, if you search for rsETH, you’ll see that rsETH collateral is accepted on Aave, Compound, and Silo, all of which may suffer bad debt due to its exploit.

Besides rsETH, there are hundreds of other yield-bearing assets for which you can see their DeFi exposure on DiaData.

You can check out DiaData here.

6 Alpha Articles

Kelp DAO’s rsETH exploit: What actually happened

How market makers manipulate crime coins

Why the Hyperliquid HIP-4 upgrade is a big deal

The bull case for Pendle

Some valuable thoughts on getting rich vs staying rich

Why Iran’s demand for BTC is a pivotal moment

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Altura is a multi-strategy yield protocol offering a 19.8% base APY in addition to future airdrop rewards. Explore its yield opportunities here!

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

🔎Best ways to use RWAs on-chain

📊 Crypto chart of the week

🗞️ The latest DeFi news

🔎 Best ways to use RWAs on-chain

Tokenization has undoubtedly been one of the fastest-growing crypto sectors.

Just to put things into perspective, two years ago, the total market cap of real-world assets (RWAs) was $2.2 billion. Today, it is over $29 billion.

And I don’t think that tokenization growth will slow down anytime soon.

Despite being a nascent sector, RWAs are already unlocking a lot of possibilities that the average person doesn’t have access to in the traditional financial system.

Here are the most interesting things you can do with RWAs on-chain today👇

Borrow stablecoins against your stocks/ETFs

Let’s say you wanna buy a car and don’t have cash, but you have a stock portfolio.

If you’re an EU citizen, you generally can’t borrow money against your stocks because of the current regulations, unless you’re a high net worth individual.

So, unless you choose to take a personal loan at a high interest rate, you’re basically forced to sell your stocks to buy that car.

DeFi solves this.

You can buy tokenized stocks and borrow against them on-chain.

There are two popular money markets where you can unlock instant liquidity against your tokenized stock/ETF holdings (only a few collaterals are supported for now):

• Borrow AUSD against SPYx (a tokenized S&P 500 asset issued by xStocks that can be bought on DEXs and CEXs) on Morpho

What’s really interesting is that you’re currently GETTING PAID to borrow AUSD against SPY on Morpho, as the borrowing rate in this market is negative (-6.09%).

This is because of a e current incentive program, and it won’t last forever, but it’s an extremely attractive opportunity for those who hold tokenized S&P 500 shares.

You could, for example, borrow stablecoins against SPYx, get paid to borrow, and deploy these stablecoins in DeFi to earn an even higher yield.

• Borrow stablecoins against SPYx, TSLA, QQQx, NVDAx, MSTRx, AAPLx, and many other tokenized stocks/ETFs issued by xStocks on Kamino (Solana)

xStocks is a tokenization platform acquired by Kraken and is currently the fastest-growing issuer of tokenized stocks. It also has a points program, so the holders of its tokenized assets will probably be rewarded in the future.

Trade traditional financial assets 24/7

If you’ve been active on CT, you already know that Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 markets for trading RWAs 24/7 have become extremely successful.

The reason why is simple:

A lot of big announcements (especially from the Trump administration) tend to drop on weekends or after market hours, when traditional financial markets are closed.

For example, the Iran war started on a Saturday. When this happened, traders wanted to long oil and short stocks, but the stock market was closed until Monday.

So they went to Hyperliquid, where they could trade these assets 24/7.

And this is how Hyperliquid became the premier venue for 24/7 price discovery on oil, metals, and indices when traditional markets are closed.

I expect 24/7 RWA perps to become increasingly popular over the next few months and even flip crypto assets in volume at some point.

Access institutional-grade yield strategies

This is probably the most exciting thing that tokenization enables.

For the first time, sophisticated strategies, previously reserved mainly for hedge funds and very wealthy people, are being made available to everyone with a wallet.

Basis trading, RWA looping, institutional lending, and GPU financing are just a few of the RWA strategies that retail investors couldn’t use before DeFi appeared:

• Ethena’s sUSDe - generates yield via basis trading / T-bills exposure

• Sky’s sUSDs - generates yield via dozens of off-chain and on-chain strategies

• Theo’s thUSD - generates yield via a delta-neutral gold strategy

• Altura’s AVLT - generates yield via funding rate arbitrage, market making, and a gold arbitrage strategy

• RAAC’s iREET - generates yield by buying and renting real estate properties

• Maple’s syrupUSDC - generates yield via overcollateralized loans to institutions

Now you can simply buy a yield-bearing asset to get exposure to all these strategies.

For those of us who have been in crypto for at least a few years, yield-bearing assets may seem like nothing new. But yield-bearing assets actually enable a level of capital efficiency that you can’t get in traditional finance.

There’s a reason why US banks are trying to ban stablecoin yield: they realize that yield-bearing stables offer returns that bank deposits can’t compete with.

Price-wise, the past months have been difficult, but if you look at how many use cases RWAs enable, it’s hard to believe that more money won’t eventually flow on-chain.

I remain confident that DeFi will make a comeback.

Together with Altura

The stablecoin yield vault built for all market conditions

Most TVL deposited in DeFi today gets less than 5% APY.

This is because, as we entered a bear market, most crypto-native yield sources and token incentive programs have dried up.

This is where Altura comes in.

Altura is a multi-strategy stablecoin yield vault that uses real-world assets, funding-rate arbitrage, and market-making strategies to generate competitive returns.

Here is what makes it stand out:

• Altura’s base APY is currently 19.8% for holding AVLT, its yield-bearing asset

• The protocol has an Accountable transparency dashboard where you can see where its reserves are deployed and AVLT collateralization ratio

• Altura has recently surpassed $14M in TVL in 3 months after its launch

Where is the 19.8% APY coming from?

Most of it comes from Altura’s physical gold arbitrage strategy.

Via an asset manager called Inessa Holdings, Altura buys gold from institutional sellers, which is then verified and documented to be tokenized, transported to a refinery buyer via logistics providers, and sold to generate an arbitrage profit.

In addition to the base 19.8% APY yield that AVLT holders receive, they are also eligible for ALTU airdrop rewards that will become claimable at TGE.

Start exploring Altura’s yield opportunities today!

Chart of the week

Odds of MegaETH releasing a token in April skyrocketed

Crypto meme of the week😂

The latest developments in DeFi

Morpho announced Morpho Midnight - a new fixed rate lending protocol

Aave‘s ‘Aave Will Win’ proposal to distribute all its revenue to Aave DAO passed

GMX rolled its first-ever 24/7 RWA perps for Gold and Silver

Hyperliquid launched priority fees for faster trade execution

Monad distributed a new airdrop to its most active users

Polygon launched sPOL - its liquid staking POL token with yield from priority fees

BRIX, a project on MegaETH, announced it will launch a Turkish Lira stablecoin offering ~45% APY backed by money market funds

Tether, the USDT issuer, launched its own self-custodial consumer wallet

EtherFi migrated from Scroll to OP Mainnet

Lido DAO approved launching a $20M LDO buyback program

xStocks went live on Mantle enabling 24/7 tokenized equity trading

WorldLibertyFi proposed locking the WLFI tokens of its public sale investors for another 4 years💀

Kevin Warsh, the next FED Chair, disclosed that he invested in over 30 crypto projects, including Solana, Polymarket, and Lighter

Polymarket token preview page was created on Coingecko

SEC clarified that DeFi front-ends can operate without broker-dealer registration

Aerodrome announced plans to launch Aero, a new cross-chain DEX, in July

That’s all for this week!

Until next time,

The DeFi Investor

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Rayls launched $RLS Transparency Portal, offering full visibility into its fundamentals and on-chain metrics. Check it out here.

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

• 9 crypto events to watch this week

• An on-chain analytics platform for stablecoins

• Some great crypto reads

Let’s dive in👇

Crypto catalysts to watch this week

1. Hyperliquid’s priority fees - Hyperliquid just launched priority fees for high-frequency traders, adding a new revenue stream. Users can pay them in HYPE

2. Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade - The devnet for Ethereum’s next big upgrade, called Glamsterdam, is expected to launch to this week

3. Polygon’s big announcement - Polygon teased a big announcement for the near future

4. Kinetiq’s investor call - Kinetiq’s first investor call is scheduled for April 15. Q1 and Q2 updates will be covered there

5. MegaETH’s incentives for Aave users - MegaETH teased the launch of an incentive program for the Aave users on its L2

6. Macro events - Iran and Lebanon will hold peace talks on Feb. 14 + the US blocked the Strait of Hormuz for ships entering or departing Iranian ​ports

7. Polymarket’s upgrade - Polymarket will launch its own stablecoin and a rebuilt trading engine over the next few weeks

8. Solana Summit - Solana Summit, an event bringing together institutional investors, policymakers, regulators, and devs to learn about Solana, happens today

9. Solstice’s airdrop snapshot - Solstice, a popular stablecoin protocol on Solana, announced it has taken the snapshot for its S1 airdrop and will enable claiming soon

Together with Rayls

Rayls just became way more transparent

There’s a huge need for more transparency in DeFi.

A project that is taking this seriously is Rayls - a blockchain for banks that connects private institutional blockchain assets with public DeFi markets.

It is already tokenizing 40,000 receivables per month and has established relationships with the Central Bank of Brazil, the Bank of England, JPMorgan, and Tether.

Just a few days ago, Rayls released its RLS Transparency Portal.

The transparency portal offers full visibility into the RLS token supply, distribution, revenue, and network usage.

Here is some of the key info you can find there:

• RLS has a fixed 10B maximum token supply with 1.4B currently in circulation

• In January and February, Rayls generated $211,000, respectively $175,000 in monthly revenue

• 50% of RLS is allocated to the community, and the rest is reserved for initial investors, contributors, and the technology provider

Public chain revenue, transaction count, USDr ecosystem details, and vesting diagrams for its token allocation schedules will also be added in the near future.

Rayls is helping institutions bring their financial assets on-chain while ensuring privacy, compliance, and public verifiability.

And now, thanks to the RLS Transparency Portal, you can see exactly how the ecosystem is structured, RLS tokenomics, and how Rayls’ revenue evolves over time.

I think that releasing a transparency portal is a great step in the right direction.

Check out the Transparency Portal here!

🛠️Crypto tool of the week

An on-chain analytics platform for stablecoins

Not all yield-bearing stablecoins have the same risk profile.

A tool I’ve recently found that offers a lot of useful data on 184 stablecoins, including the risks each one carries and which are the safest, is Pharos.

You can also find there their safety scores, upcoming stablecoin launches, depegs, and much more.

And what is great is that accessing all of its features is free.

You can check out Pharos here.

7 Alpha Articles

An underrated Polymarket strategy

How Strata enables higher yields + other interesting on-chain developments

How Trump's sons made billions off crypto

A new dashboard for stablecoin yields on Solana

The real reason why Chaos Labs left Aave

How Apyx and Saturn protocols compare

Who will win the neobank wars

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DeFi Saver now supports Aave V4, bringing its leverage management and automation tools to V4. Learn more about this here.

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

🔎Is DeFi lending still worth it?

📊 Crypto chart of the week

🗞️ The latest DeFi news

🔎Is DeFi lending still worth it?

There has been a debate on Crypto Twitter in the past days about DeFi lending.

Some people see it as a passive, low-risk way to earn some additional money.

Others argue that DeFi lending is currently not worth it, given the risks involved and the very low yield on most money markets.

I wanted to share my take on this and some data that I believe is useful.

Let’s dive in 👇

I’ll start by sharing some quick facts:

• The avg. APY for stablecoin lending is currently at ~4%

• 8 lending projects suffered losses due to exploits/technical errors in 2026 so far (with Drift’s $280M hack being the largest one), according to DefiLlama

• The U.S. T-Bills Yield, which is considered risk-free, is between 3.5% & 3.8%

• Most people on Euler, Silo, and Morpho who lent money to pools with exposure to Resolv’s wstUSR or Stream Finance’s xUSD still didn’t get their money back

The reason I shared this is to illustrate the following:

While overcollateralized crypto lending may seem low-risk to many people (since, theoretically, once the collateral value falls below the loan value, the collateral should be liquidated instantly and lenders should get their money back), the reality is that lending comes with many risks.

There are many things that can go wrong.

• Oracles can be misconfigured and trigger liquidations only when it is too late (happened many times)

• Risk curators on permissionless lending protocols like Morpho or Euler are incentivized to accept riskier collateral in order to collect higher fees, even though they are putting their vault users at risk by doing this

• Lending protocols (especially the new ones, not the OGs) are historically some of the most vulnerable dApps to hacks

Aave has historically done a great job at accepting only high-quality collateral and avoiding bad debt. That’s why so many people trust it, and it has $42 billion TVL.

But on Aave V3, its USDC supply APY is 2.6% at this moment.

Even with its fantastic track record, it’s hard to say the yield justifies the risk when the risk-free yield on US Treasury bills is above 3.5%.

So what’s my advice?

First of all, if you still choose to lend your capital in DeFi, make sure you fully understand what you are doing. Check what oracle is used for liquidations, who curated that market, and what collateral you’re exposed to.

All of this might sound a bit complex, but if you don’t fully understand the risks you are taking first, then I don’t think it is worth lending.

Secondly, I believe that most of the time it’s better to be a borrower than a lender when using a lending protocol.

Borrowing obviously also comes with higher risks, but in the post below, for instance, I shared a PT looping strategy on Aave that returns up to 15% APY.

15% APY is almost 6 times higher than the USDC lending yield on Aave V3.

You’re indeed taking several risks when looping, but at least the yield is high enough to justify taking risks from a risk/reward perspective.

A looping strategy obviously carries liquidation risk in the event of depegs, and you need to constantly monitor borrowing rates and your health factor, but to me, it makes more sense to be a borrower than a lender, given the significantly higher yield.

Especially considering that you can automate stop losses, repayments, and/or alerts for your borrowing positions on many protocols with tools like DeFi Saver.

To sum it up:

If you have idle stablecoins in your wallets, I don’t think it’s worth lending them out if the yield you’re getting is lower than the US Treasury bills yield (3.5%).

You risk losing your entire (or a good part) of your capital for a very low return.

If you want to use them in DeFi, make sure you first understand the risks associated with each opportunity and that the yield you get is high enough to justify them. Otherwise, it may be better to just keep the stablecoins in your wallet.

Your number one priority (especially in a bear market, when most exploits and rug pulls occur) should be to survive.

Take risks, but make sure that they are always calculated risks.

Together with DeFi Saver

DeFi Saver has integrated Aave V4 from day 1

Aave V4, one of the protocol’s biggest upgrades to date, has just gone live.

And from the start, DeFi Saver is bringing its suite of DeFi automation and management tools to Aave V4.

Here’s what you can do on Aave V4 via DeFi Saver:

• Use its 1-transaction leverage management tools to open a leveraged position or close one on AAVE V4 in just a few clicks

• Set stop loss, take profit, or other leverage management orders for your loans

• Migrate from Aave V3 to Aave V4 using DeFi Saver’s Loan Shifter tool

• Use Collateral and Debt switch options to swap out your collateral or debt asset for another asset

• Lend assets into V4 hubs

DeFi Saver is an asset management application that can save you time and enhance your user experience through its exclusive features built for Aave V4.

Over $1 billion of assets in Aave V3 positions are managed through DeFi Saver.

The user interface is designed to be intuitive, making DeFi Saver easier to use.

Later in April, DeFi Saver will also release its Notify features, allowing users to set up notifications for Aave v4 position health changes and market cap changes.

Learn more about the DeFi Saver’s Aave V4 integration here!

Chart of the week

ETH supply on exchanges is at all-time lows

Crypto meme of the week😂

The latest developments in DeFi

Hyperbeat launched Liquid Banking - the first on-chain neobank on Hyperliquid

Ethena announced plans to use institutional lending, RWAs, and equity basis trade to generate yield

INFINIT launched the Prompt-to-DeFi Strategist Challenge on BNB Chain - a competitive program rewarding users for creating innovative yield strategies

Lighter’s perps trading was integrated into Telegram

Polymarket announced Polymarket USD - its own stablecoin

OpenCover launched Covered Vaults - DeFi insurance for Morpho lenders

Solana Foundation announced STRIDE - a 24/7 threat monitoring program to protect Solana dApps from potential exploits

RAAC launched iREET - an index real estate exposure token

Polygon is in talks to raise $100M for a new stablecoin payments business

Saturn, a yield-bearing stablecoin protocol backed by STRC, went live

Kinetiq launched kHYPE V2 - a major upgrade to its liquid staking $HYPE token

Chaos Labs stepped down as Aave’s risk manager

Across’s proposal to replace its token with equity passed

SushiSwap launched its perps product powered by Hyperliquid

Based bought back 4% of its token circulating supply in its first buyback

That’s all for this week!

Until next time,

The DeFi Investor

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Metals.io released a first-of-its-kind platform that lets you invest in multiple critical metals. Check it out here!

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

• 10 crypto events to watch this week

• A tool you can use to get DeFi insurance

• Some great crypto reads

Let’s dive in👇

Crypto catalysts to watch this week

• Ethena’s USDe backing diversification - Ethena announced plans to diversify the backing of USDe and use RWAs, overcollateralized institutional loans, and equity & commodity basis trades, to generate yield

• US-Iran ceasefire talks - Iran FM spokesman said they have prepared their response to ceasefire proposals and will announce it soon

• Kinetiq’s kHYPE V2 - Kinetiq will launch kHYPE v2, a major upgrade to its HYPE liquid staking token, on April 6

• Polygon’s Guiliano Hardfork - Polygon’s Guiliano Hardfork upgrade, which will make the network faster, is expected to launch on April 8

• Hyperliquid’s HIP-4 prediction markets upgrade - Hyperliquid’s HIP-4 prediction markets upgrade is rumored to go live in the next 1-2 weeks

• Meteora’s product upgrade - Meteora will launch a new product upgrade, aiming to make liquidity provision easier, this week

• Pendle’s PT expansion - Pendle will soon expand its fixed yield product to Solana

• Macro events - US FOMC meeting is scheduled for April 8

• Aave’s GHO Savings Rate - Aave’s ARFC proposal to launch Aave Savings Rate, a 4.25% APR fixed yield product, just passed

• Across’s token-to-equity exchange proposal - Across’s proposal to exchange ACX tokens for company equity ends on April 7

Together with metals.io

Get direct on-chain exposure to metals

When uranium.io launched in 2024, it solved a fundamental investment access problem.

Uranium markets required licensing, futures margin accounts, or expensive ETFs with tracking errors.

Most investors who wanted direct exposure simply couldn’t get it.

Tokenization changed that: Physical U3O8 in regulated depositories, digital fractional ownership, 24/7 global trading, and no minimums.

Now the same team is expanding that access to 6 other key metals powering our future.

Metals.io just went live with 6 additional metals: gold, hafnium, rhenium, indium, neodymium oxide, and praseodymium oxide.

Why these metals? Because they’re critical to technologies defining our future. Neodymium powers every EV motor. Gallium enables 5G infrastructure. Hafnium goes into jet engines. Germanium runs fiber optic networks. Each has a constrained supply, concentrated production, and no viable substitutes.

Until now, accessing these markets meant navigating commodity brokers, vault storage arrangements, and institutional minimums. Most investors were locked out entirely.

Metals.io removes those barriers with fractional ownership, instant settlement, transparent verified reserves, and custody by licensed institutions.

Built for investors who want direct exposure to the metals powering the future.

The platform is live, so start exploring: metals.io

🛠️Crypto tool of the week

A tool you can use to get DeFi insurance

In light of the recent DeFi exploits, I wanted to cover an on-chain insurance tool.

The most popular crypto insurance platform right now is Nexus Mutual. You can access its products via opencover.com, which is essentially a user interface for it.

Here you can find protocol cover, depeg cover, and custody cover.

If a protocol you’re using gets exploited via a smart contract vulnerability and you bought insurance for it, then you’ll get your money back.

That said, the insurance on OpenCover doesn’t cover all types of exploits:

For instance, it doesn’t protect against private-key breaches, as was the case with Resolv and Drift recently. But it covers the losses caused by smart contract exploits.

OpenCover currently offers insurance coverage for a few dozen protocols.

You can check it out here.

6 Alpha Articles

How the Drift hack happened

The current state of crypto

Should you quit a 9-5 job to focus on crypto?

Why the Polymarket airdrop could be massive

The veTokenomics Exodus

Ethena’s USDe backing diversification

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Liquity is one of the only truly decentralized stablecoin protocols - fully onchain, immutable, and with no admin keys. Check it out here.

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

🔎 What is the Ethereum Economic Zone

📊 Crypto chart of the week

🗞️ The latest DeFi news

🔎What is the Ethereum Economic Zone?

It’s no secret that Ethereum’s Layer 2 scaling strategy has been a success.

7 out of the top 20 chains by TVL are Ethereum L2s, according to DeFiLlama. And their transaction fees are effectively negligible.

That said, L2s face a major problem:

Constantly moving assets between L2s to access certain dApps, ensuring you have ETH for gas across multiple networks, and liquidity fragmentation all contribute to a poor user experience.

Fortunately, a new proposal aims to fix these issues for good.

A few days ago, some Ethereum ecosystem builders proposed the Ethereum Economic Zone, which some people refer to as the “Ethereum 3.0 vision”.

What is the Ethereum Economic Zone?

In short, it is an ambitious attempt to unify Ethereum L2s.

Ethereum Economic Zone is an L1<>L2 framework.

Technically, L2s that adopt it will become synchronously composable with the L1. This will allow a smart contract on an L2 to call a smart contract on another L2 or on the Ethereum mainnet and receive a response within a single transaction.

In practice, this would make using multiple L2s feel like using a single blockchain.

To give you an example, let’s say you have USDC on Arbitrum and want to provide it as liquidity to a liquidity pool on Aerodrome, the main DEX built on Base.

Today, you'd need to manually bridge your USDC from Ethereum to Base first.

With the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ), you could deposit directly into Aerodrome in a single transaction. With no manual bridging required.

Who is building this?

Surprisingly, this initiative is not coming from the Ethereum Foundation.

The Ethereum Economic Zone framework has been proposed by Gnosis, an OG team building on Ethereum since 2015.

Gnosis built the constant product AMM model, CoW protocol, Safe, Gnosis Chain, and several other highly successful products and infrastructure projects.

While the Ethereum Foundation isn’t directly involved in building the Ethereum Economic Zone, it is funding the team behind it, which gives credibility to the project and makes me think it actually has a good shot at succeeding.

What to expect next?

Over the next few weeks, the EEF team will publish a clear roadmap for existing Ethereum apps to leverage the Ethereum Economic Zone framework (EEZ).

Based on what's been shared, it looks like it will be an opt-in solution for DeFi protocols that want to expand to multiple L2s without fragmenting liquidity, rather than something that automatically applies to all Ethereum-based protocols.

It is unclear, though, when exactly this framework will fully go live.

But overall, I have to say I am very excited about this.

For years, the Ethereum community has been rightfully complaining that the current fragmented experience offered by Ethereum L2s is far from ideal.

Ethereum Economic Zone might finally unify L2s and abstract away bridging.

Together with Liquity

The sovereign dollar

Let’s be real:

Many projects claim to care about decentralization but aren’t decentralized at all.

Liquity, an OG stablecoin protocol with $219M TVL, is an exception to the rule.

In short, this is what makes it different:

• Immutable smart contracts - Liquity V2 cannot be changed or upgraded

• Fully backed by ETH - Liquity’s BOLD stablecoin is overcollateralized and backed only by ETH and ETH liquid staking token holdings

• No admin keys - The team can’t access user funds even if they want to

• On-chain privacy via Privacy Pools - BOLD holders can use Privacy Pools to anonymously transact on Ethereum in a compliant way

When you use Liquity, you have the guarantee that no humans can freeze your funds, and you can’t get rugpulled as the protocol is immutable and fully on-chain.

On top of this, its stablecoin BOLD is offering some very interesting yields.

If you deposit BOLD in sBOLD or yBOLD, you’ll earn an avg. APY of 8% generated in a sustainable way from interest rates and liquidation fees.

Opaque yield generation strategies and compromised admin keys have, unfortunately, led to billions in losses from other projects over the past few years.

Liquity is one of the few fully transparent and decentralized projects.

Discover what makes BOLD stand out here!

Chart of the week

Over 80% of crypto revenue is now generated by apps instead of infrastructure projects

Crypto meme of the week😂

The latest developments in DeFi

Aave V4 went live on Ethereum

Hyperliquid launched Hyperliquid mobile app in a public testing phase

Pendle launched Pendle Skills and MCP, enabling AI agents to access Pendle

Lido DAO proposed a $20 million LDO token buyback

Gnosis announced the Ethereum Economic Zone - a project aiming to solve Ethereum’s liquidity fragmentation

iExec introduced the iExec Confidential Token - a mechanism that turns any token into a confidential, auditable asset

edgeX and Based released their tokens

Ondo introduced Ondo Perps - its own 24/7 equity perps futures product

Aerodrome and Velodrome will merge into a single DEX project called Aero

Sky launched a revamped website to access its 3.75% APY Sky savings rate

USDai released its airdrop claim portal (the token is not transferable yet)

Base revealed its 2026 roadmap, which includes bringing all major asset classes on-chain and supporting stablecoin gas fee payments

Chainlink SVR was adopted by AAVE on two L2s to capture MEV revenue

Midas, an on-chain investment products app, raised $50M in funding

Aster reduced its monthly token emissions by 97%

Drift Protocol has been exploited for $280 million

Google gave a 2029 transition deadline for making Bitcoin quantum-resistant

That’s all for this week!

Until next time,

The DeFi Investor

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Pareto is a private credit marketplace. Check out how you can earn a double-digit APY using a levered RWA Strategy built on top of it!

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

• 10 crypto events to watch this week

• A new tool for finding stablecoin loop opportunities

• Some great crypto reads

Let’s dive in👇

Crypto catalysts to watch this week

1. Polymarket’s trading fees - Polymarket will start charging trading fees for all markets today. Some of the fees will be used for its Maker Rebates program

2. Lido’s $20M buyback program - Lido DAO submitted a proposal to use up to ~$20M from its treasury for a LDO buyback

3. EthCC conference - Ethereum’s largest European conference starts today. Expect some big announcements from ecosystem projects

4. Jupiter Offerbook - Jupiter will soon launch Jupiter Offerbook, a new lending protocol for fixed-term loans

5. Midas’s mRE product launch - Midas will soon launch mRE, a tokenized Liquid Reinsurance Fund targeting 8-9.5% APY from reinsurance markets

6. Macro events - Trump reportedly considers launching ground operations in Iran + FED Chair Powell will hold a speech today

7. edgeX TGE - The edgeX TGE and airdrop are scheduled for March 31

8. FTX’s distribution - FTX will distribute $2.2 billion to its creditors on March 31

9. Sushi’s perps launch - Sushiswap will launch a perps product on April 2nd

10. Synthetix’s upgrade - Synthetix will launch multi-collateral trading and a new incentive program in April

Together with Pareto

Private credit that actually works in DeFi

Private credit is one of the fastest-growing asset classes in TradFi.

And it’s already making its way on-chain, driven by increasing institutional adoption and demand for RWA yield.

Pareto sits at the forefront of this, operating a private credit marketplace that connects institutional lenders and borrowers.

Bringing private credit to DeFi opens up many new possibilities.

A good example is FalconX Credit Vault - one of the first RWA credit facilities built on Pareto.

Here’s what makes it interesting:

• FalconX earns yield by lending funds to end-counterparties such as trading firms, hedge funds, etc.

• In less than a year, FalconX vault attracted over $128 million in TVL

• FalconX vault deposits can be used as collateral on Morpho directly, or deposited into Gauntlet for an automated looping strategy - showing how onchain private credit can be reused more efficiently

Gauntlet Levered FalconX Strategy has been generating a 13.77% APY in real yield by borrowing USDC against them in order to create a looped position. That’s the true power of composability.

By combining TradFi assets with DeFi composability and bringing private credit on-chain, protocols can unlock a lot of new yield strategies.

Learn more about composable private credit here!

🛠️Crypto tool of the week

A tool you can use to find stablecoin loop opportunities

It’s no secret that DeFi yields have drastically decreased lately.

But it is still possible to get a double-digit APY on your stablecoins via several looping strategies on Morpho. A new platform that makes it easier to identify these opportunities is Yieldz.

Yieldz’s Leverage dashboard shows the looping opportunities on Morpho that currently have the highest APY, and even lets you open the loop position in a few clicks from its UI if you don’t want to do it manually.

There are plenty of opportunities there with 10%+ 30-day APY.

You can check it out here.

6 Alpha Articles

How to know if a chart is a good buy or not

A new solution to unify Ethereum L2s

Best yield opportunities on Solana

How Pendle became one of DeFi’s most successful apps

The Great Perpification

The three types of DeFi yield

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Have a fantastic day!

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Reya is an innovative perps DEX backed by Coinbase. Explore its ongoing trading competition here!

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

🔎All you need to know about AAVE V4

📊 Crypto chart of the week

🗞️ The latest DeFi news

🔎All you need to know about AAVE V4

It’s been a pretty rough week for DeFi.

If you’ve been active on CT, you probably heard of the Resolv exploit.

The stablecoin protocol was exploited by a hacker who minted 80M unbacked USR and dumped it on DEXs.

What’s worse is that this hack affected not only Resolv but also many other dApps, as a lot of money markets supported Resolv’s assets as collateral and incurred bad debt. Fluid, for instance, incurred $23M bad debt.

Fortunately for its users, Fluid announced it will cover this loss.

On the bright side, Aave is gearing up to launch Aave V4, a new iteration of its lending protocol, which is bringing some major improvements to DeFi. In today’s issue, I’ll cover it as I think it’s a pretty interesting upgrade.

What changes will Aave V4 introduce?

V4 is its biggest upgrade to date and has been under development for a long time.

As a fun fact, Aave V4 has 345 days of cumulative security review. So its team is taking security seriously.

Among the new features that it brings, the ones I find most interesting are:

• A Hub and Spoke architecture - On V4, all assets deposited in the protocol on a network will be stored in a Liquidity Hub. The Hub will allocate the assets to multiple lending markets called Spokes, each with its own risk parameters.

  This will enable the permissionless creation of lending markets for riskier assets, such as RWAs or Uniswap v3 positions, which wasn’t possible on Aave before, as risk will now be better isolated thanks to the Hub and Spoke architecture.

• Risk Premiums - Borrowing rates will no longer be the same for all assets, and will instead depend on the quality of the collateral.

  Borrowers with high-quality collateral, such as ETH, will receive lower borrowing rates, while borrowers with riskier collateral, such as RWAs, will pay higher rates.

• Aave Pro - The Aave V4 launch will include the release of an upgraded interface specifically designed for advanced users (which you can see below)

• Reinvestment Module - The Reinvestment Module will ensure that unused liquidity on Aave is put to work by deploying it into low-risk strategies, such as short-term US Treasury Bills

There are also a few other marginal improvements, but I think I've covered all the main changes Aave V4 brings.

How will it benefit users?

Well, first of all, V4 should significantly increase the yield that lenders get on Aave.

Right now, USDC lenders get 2.18% APY on AAVE.

This seems insanely low to me, and it doesn’t justify the risk given how many smart contract exploits are happening, even though AAVE can be considered battle-tested.

But thanks to the Reinvestment Module and the Risk Premiums mechanism, I expect stablecoin lenders’ yield to increase significantly.

Just for context, US T-bill rates are currently hovering around 3.7%–3.8%.

By deploying idle liquidity into Treasury Bills (which are considered risk-free, as you would lose money only if the US Government defaulted), via the Reinvestment Module, the lending APYs on AAVE could increase substantially.

The other thing I like about V4 is that it will be able to support a wide range of riskier collateral for borrowing (RWAs, volatile altcoins, Uniswap v3 LP positions, maybe tokenized stocks, etc.) thanks to its new architecture.

This should enable some very interesting yield opportunities.

Overall, I have to say I am pretty excited about AAVE V4.

Aave’s ARFC proposal to deploy Aave V4 on Ethereum has just passed.

If everything goes well, then V4 should be live on mainnet within the next few weeks.

Together with Reya

Reya and Ethena join forces

Reya, a fast-growing perps DEX backed by Coinbase, just announced a major collaboration with Ethena and a new trading competition.

As part of this partnership, Reya’s LP Pool, called RLP, is now fully backed by Ethena’s USDe and sUSDe.

This enables Reya RLP LPs to earn a significantly higher yield as their rewards now come from four sources: Ethena’s yield, market-making returns, trading, and liquidation fees.

The best part is that RLP can also be used as collateral for trading.

Its team is currently running a trading competition ending this week, with 16M REYA in Rewards.

Here’s what you should know about it:

• The scoring metric is absolute realized PNL, with most rewards being distributed across the top 20 Reya users by absolute realized PnL

• To qualify, you just need to hold more than 100 RLP in your margin account, trade at least $10,000 in volume, and compete for top absolute realized PnL

• 0.20% of the REYA token supply will be given in total to the winners at TGE

By participating, not only can you earn some nice rewards from the competition, but you’re also farming Reya points at the same time.

Learn more about the trading competition here!

Chart of the week

ETH and BTC are outperforming all major TradFi assets since the US attacked Iran

Crypto meme of the week😂

The latest developments in DeFi

Jupiter launched pre-IPO trading on Solana

Strategy announced plans to raise $42 billion to buy more BTC

AAVE was integrated by Whop to generate yield for Whop’s 21 million users

Sky announced that a new treasury company accumulated ~8.78% of SKY’s total supply

Polymarket introduced trading fees for all markets and teased an airdrop

Silo V3 went live, introducing a dual liquidation system and risk reporting across every market

Grayscale filed for a new Hyperliquid ETF

Kelp DAO introduced KUSD - a yield-bearing stablecoin backed by trade receivables and payment activity

Tori Finance, a new protocol generating up to 15% APY from TradFi market-neutral strategies, was introduced

Chainlink was integrated by Coinbase to bring its exchange data on-chain for the first time

Sui introduced Hashi - a primitive that enables using native BTC as collateral on Sui

Aevo launched Aevo PERPS+, a DeFi primitive that bundles perpetual futures with options into a single product that is easy to use

Resolv was exploited by a hacker who minted 80M of uncollateralized USR

Balancer Labs is shutting down following its exploit last year

Variational sunsetted loss refunds for traders

Backpack launched its token BP and airdrop claiming portal

That’s all for this week!

Until next time,

The DeFi Investor

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RAAC is building a DeFi lending and borrowing ecosystem powered by real-world assets. Check it out here!

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

• 10 crypto events to watch this week

• A tool you can use to see when global markets open

• Some great crypto reads

Let’s dive in👇

Crypto catalysts to watch this week

1. Polymarket - Polymarket will make a big announcement on March 23. Rumors are also spreading that Polymarket is in talks to raise funds at a $20b valuation

2. Token launches - Backpack TGE is scheduled for March 23 + USDai TGE is scheduled to happen this month + Based TGE will happen on March 30

3. Morpho’s new product - Morpho will launch a new DeFi primitive for fixed-rate lending markets soon. The goal is to onboard institutions that are looking for fixed-rate lending and borrowing terms

4. edgeX airdrop - Registration for edgeX airdrop is open until March 30. edgeX TGE will happen on March 31 and 30% of its token supply will be airdropped

5. FTX’s $2 billion distribution - FTX will give $2.2b to its creditors on Mar. 31

6. Starknet’s STRK20 testnet launch - Starknet will launch the testnet for STRK20, a new token standard that will make any ERC20 token private, this week

7. DeFi App’s trading competition - DeFi App’s new trading competition for its Hyperliquid-powered perps product starts on March 26. Up to $5 million in vested HOME tokens will be airdropped to participants

8. Hey Anon’s upgrade - Hey Anon, Daniele Sesta’s project will release a new launchpad for AI agents and a major token upgrade this week

9. AAVE x Tempo - AAVE teased the upcoming release of a set of innovative credit products on Tempo

10. US x Iran war - Trump said he will stop military strikes against Iran’ power plants and energy infrastructure for 5 days, citing “very good” talks with Iran. But Iran denied having peace talks with the US

Together with RAAC

RAAC’s yield isn’t going anywhere

pmUSD has been one of the fastest-growing stablecoins of 2026.

In under 3 months, RAAC’s gold-backed stablecoin crossed $35M in TVL on Curve Finance, making it one of the top stablecoin yields in the space.

But the number getting attention right now:

RAAC accumulated $CVX and now controls 4.1% of all Curve voting power. This brings answers regarding the sustainability and predictability of pmUSD yields.

When a protocol owns that much gauge influence, it doesn’t depend only on bribes. It directs emissions. That’s a structural advantage.

On the horizon, there is also iREET, RAAC’s new product, a tokenized index of real-world properties.

iREET tokens will represent exposure to real estate tokenized on RAAC, bringing real yield from the rental income those properties generate.

Once RAACLend launches, iREET can also be used as collateral to borrow crvUSD, making it a fully composable DeFi primitive backed by physical real estate.

Launch date to be announced soon.

Check out RAAC here!

🛠️Crypto tool of the week

A tool you can use to see when global markets open

Especially if you’re a daily trader, knowing when CME and other major global exchanges reopen matters as volatility often spikes at their opening time.

Loris Tools built a free tool that shows when the top 30 global TradFi exchanges open in your time zone.

It has filters for commodities, equities, fixed income, and so on.

I’d say that it’s pretty helpful for those who trade TradFi assets 24/7 on Hyperliquid, as it also has a notification system alerting you when a major exchange opens.

You can check it out here.

7 Alpha Articles

7 interesting things that happened in DeFi

Why Taiki Maeda is bullish on BTC

5 poker concepts that will make you a better trader

Why Morpho is building a fixed-rate lending product

What assets could be tokenized next

Things that everyone in crypto should have

The hidden math behind every decision you make

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Have a fantastic day!

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Please send me a DM on Twitter (X). I have a sponsorship deck that I can send you.

Liquity offers the lowest rates for borrowing against ETH and LSTs in DeFi. Borrow stablecoins with ETH or staked ETH using Liquity!

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

🔎Saylor’s new strategy to buy BTC

📊 Crypto chart of the week

🗞️ The latest DeFi news

🔎Saylor’s new strategy to buy BTC

BTC has performed pretty well over the past few weeks.

Yes, it has now retraced from $74,000 to $69,000. But overall, it has still performed better than stocks and gold on most days since the US–Iran war started.

I think one key reason for that is the massive recent buying pressure from Strategy.

In the last 19 days alone, Strategy, the largest Bitcoin Treasury company led by Michael Saylor, bought over $3 billion worth of BTC.

And March 2026 is now on track to be the month with the largest increase in the amount of BTC bought by Strategy through STRC since it launched.

STRC is Michael Saylor’s latest financial experiment, funding Strategy’s recent major BTC buying spree. I believe it played a big role in BTC’s relative outperformance.

I’ll explain how it works below👇

What exactly is STRC?

STRC is a perpetual preferred stock launched by Strategy that pays high monthly dividends while targeting to maintain a stable price of $100.

In some ways, it is like a yield-bearing stablecoin with an 11.5% APY.

That said, as I’ll explain, it definitely comes with risks.

When you buy STRC, it’s like you’re lending money to Saylor’s Strategy.

With the money raised via STRC, the company is buying more BTC. The recent surge in demand for STRC is why Strategy has been able to buy so much BTC lately.

How does it work under the hood?

As I said earlier, STRC targets a stable price of $100.

Everyone who holds it gets a monthly dividend.

When STRC trades above $100 due to high demand, Strategy can issue new STRC shares and sell them to raise more capital, which is then used to buy BTC.

When it trades below $100, Strategy can choose to increase its dividend to attract more buyers and restore its par price.

Initially, the monthly dividend for buying STRC was 9% annually. Now it is 11.5%.

So Strategy is basically paying people 11.5% to borrow their money and buy BTC. Where does all this money come from?

A big part of the answer is MSTR.

When MSTR stock trades at a premium to the value of its underlying Bitcoin holdings, Strategy can issue new MSTR shares and sell them for a profit.

That gives Strategy another source of capital, which supports the whole mechanism.

Initially, STRC was listed only on Nasdaq and on platforms like Robinhood.

But now there are also DeFi protocols like Apyx and Saturn that have brought a tokenized version of it on-chain, further increasing demand for it.

Is STRC actually sustainable?

Strategy has ~$2 billion in cash reserves that it can use to cover all the STRC dividend payments over the next 1-2 years.

So it’s very unlikely that Strategy will suddenly no longer be able to pay dividends to STRC holders at any point in the near future.

But a crucial thing to remember is that the STRC price isn’t fixed at $100.

If you buy it at $100, you’re not guaranteed that you’ll be able to sell it at $100 later, even though, so far, it has always returned to this price after short-term dips.

Yet if BTC stays in a prolonged bear market for several years, demand for STRC could decline, leading to a depeg.

Strategy’s financial model relies primarily on MSTR stock trading at a premium.

If the MSTR premium also disappears, Strategy loses one of its main ways to raise capital and may be unable to pay STRC dividends without selling BTC.

That could lead to some very bad situations for Strategy. So there are definitely risks.

But for now, STRC is clearly generating significant buy pressure for BTC.

If you hold BTC and were wondering why it has performed better than most asset classes lately, Michael Saylor is probably the guy you should thank:)

Together with Liquity

Borrow against ETH and LSTs at the lowest rates in DeFi

If you used DeFi for borrowing, you know this problem:

Borrowing rates are very unpredictable, and sudden rate spikes can end up costing you a lot of money.

Liquity V2 solves this with fixed borrowing rates:

• Users can set their own rates and fix the cost of borrowing.

• Compared to other protocols, Liquity’s rates don’t spike during major market moves

Further, you enjoy one of the highest LTV ratios, which will help to spare you from liquidations.

Liquity offers some of the lowest and most predictable rates for ETH and LST holders.

Average rates for the past 3 months have been ~3.1% for wstETH and ~2.99% for ETH.

Currently the lowest rates are 3.1% for ETH, 0.5% for wstETH and 2.86% for rETH.

If you’re a yield farmer and hold ETH, you can use Liquity to borrow stablecoins at a cheap cost and deploy them in DeFi to earn yield.

The Liquity team has a track record of 4+ years and billions in TVL. V2 has been audited by 5 auditors such as ChainSecurity, Dedaub, Cantina, etc.

Borrow against ETH and LSTs at the best rates with Liquity.

Chart of the week

RWAs’ on-chain market cap has skyrocketed in 2026

Crypto meme of the week😂

The latest developments in DeFi

BlackRock launched its staked Ethereum ETF

Fluid released the Fluid Lite USD Vault automating stablecoin yield strategies

Pendle launched limit order incentives offering up to 100% APR

S&P Dow Jones launched the first official S&P 500 perps market on Hyperliquid in partnership with trade[XYZ]

Tempo, the Stripe-backed blockchain for payments, launched its mainnet

Tangent introduced USG - a stablecoin backed by Curve’s LP tokens and Pendle PTs

Pump Fun became Solana’s first dApp to generate $1 billion in revenue

Aave DAO is voting to cut its annual AAVE buyback budget from $50M to $30M

Pareto introduced Pareto Studio - an institutional platform for building and managing on-chain credit facilities

zkSync announced Cari Network - a zkSync-powered platform used by five U.S. banks to bring bank deposits onchain

Lido launched EarnETH & EarnUSD - two new vaults for stablecoin and ETH yield

Ethena reduced the sUSDe unstaking cooldown period to 1 day

Hinkal added support for private transactions on Solana

Opensea delayed its TGE and airdrop indefinitely

Katana launched its token KAT with a ve(3,3) tokenomics model

Aster launched its privacy-focused Layer 1 blockchain

Byreal introduced Byreal Perps powered by Hyperliquid

That’s all for this week!

Until next time,

The DeFi Investor

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Theo launched the first yield-bearing stablecoin backed by gold. Check it out here!

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

🔎How will the US-Iran war impact crypto?

📊 Crypto chart of the week

🗞️ The latest DeFi news

🔎How will the US-Iran war impact crypto?

As you all know, a new war between US + Israel and Iran has recently started.

While the Iran Supreme Leader Khamenei was already killed in a strike, it doesn’t seem like this is a conflict that could be ended in a few days like in Venezuela.

So I thought it would be helpful to share a few thoughts about what impact this could have on the crypto market over the next few weeks.

Because whether we like it or not, all markets are influenced by geopolitical events.

Here you can see how BTC has reacted in the past when a major conflict started:

• Russia attacks Ukraine in February, 24 2022 → BTC dips 8% on that day, but it quickly recovered and rallied for the next 30 days

• Hamas attacks Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 → BTC dips 5%, but then it resumes the uptrend later that month

• US attacks Iran on June 22, 2025 → BTC dips 4%, but it quickly recovers and starts going up the next day

Wars are a horrible thing, and my hope is that this new one in Iran ends quickly with as few victims as possible. But as you can observe, their impact on markets tends to be short-lived and limited.

This is something worth keeping in mind though:

Iran’s biggest strategic leverage is that it controls the Strait of Hormuz.

The Strait of Hormuz is one of the most important oil shipping routes in the world. Around 20% of the global oil supply passes through it via tankers.

Since the war in Iran began, it has become extremely dangerous for ships to pass through, as Iran has effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation.

This is why oil prices have been surging over the past few days.

How does this impact crypto?

Well, it indirectly affects it by creating a new geopolitical crisis and additional macro uncertainty, which is not great for risk-on assets.

If Strait of Hormuz remains closed for a longer period of time (several weeks), it will eventually lead to higher inflation and more panic. Several countries are already working though on a plan to escort tanker convoys through the strait.

That being said, historically, most geopolitical shocks created a pattern:

• Everyone initially panics, and BTC dips a few percent

• After a few days, markets start recovering

A new major crash could probably be caused by this war only if the US decides to send boots on the ground in Iran. (which seems unlikely)

If that doesn’t happen, from a market perspective, I doubt that this war will have a major negative impact on crypto prices going forward, and I wouldn’t be surprised if BTC performs relatively well in the next few days/weeks.

However, I still believe the BTC cycle bottom hasn’t been hit yet and that this bear market is unfortunately not over. (but not because of the war in Iran)

As you can see in the chart above (shared at the end of Feb. 2026), BTC tends to go up slightly in March during midterm years (2026, 2022, 2018).

However, this pump has historically lasted only a few weeks.

If this bear market continues to resemble the previous ones, I believe that BTC will hit its final bottom sometime in late Q3 / early Q4 2026.

Obviously, I don’t have a crystal ball. So take this with a grain of salt.

But so far, this cycle has been extremely similar to the last two cycles, and I don’t see any big catalyst that could trigger a new bull run in the short term.

So my plan is to buy major BTC dips in the meantime with a relatively small portion of my capital, while keeping most of it ready to DCA heavily starting in Q3.

History doesn't necessarily repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

Together with Theo

The gold-backed yield-bearing stablecoin is live

Tokenized gold has been one of the fastest-growing RWAs of this cycle.

For the first time, Theo Network is now turning gold into a sustainable yield source via a delta-neutral gold strategy that hedges price exposure.

Its pre-deposit vault just went live this week with a $100M TVL cap.

In short, this is how Theo’s gold-backed stablecoin called thUSD generates yield:

• A part of its collateral is used to buy thGOLD, a gold-backed asset, and then the physical gold backing it is lent to retailers who pay interest

• The 2nd portion of its collateral is used to short gold futures via CME to capture yield from the spread between spot gold and gold futures (futures roll yield)

In this way, thUSD is backed by a delta-neutral gold strategy.

Throughout 2025, Theo’s strategy delivered 8.3% APR, outperforming the yields currently offered by most yield-bearing stablecoins.

And the best part is that it is very scalable, as gold has a huge open interest.

The thUSD Vault was filled in under 24 hours, which showcases exceptional demand for gold-derived yield in the current market conditions.

Learn more about thUSD here!

Chart of the week

Hyperliquid's HIP-3 markets hit a new ATH in daily open interest

Crypto meme of the week😂

The latest developments in DeFi

Hyperliquid’s HIP-4 upgrade, which will add support for prediction markets, went live on testnet

Nasdaq partnered with Kraken to bring tokenized equity markets to Ethereum and Solana

Theo launched thUSD, the first stablecoin earning yield from gold futures instead of crypto perps or T-Bills. thUSD Genesis Vault was filled in less than 24h

Polymarket is reportedly trying to raise funds at a $20 billion valuation

Stargate announced that 100% of its revenue will be directed to ZRO buybacks starting next month

Across proposed converting ACX tokens to equity

Jupiter launched Jupiter Card - a crypto card integrated inside Jupiter Mobile

Virtuals introduced ERC-8183 - a mechanism designed to enable commercial transactions between AI Agents on Ethereum

xStocks launched a points program for the users of its tokenized stocks

Starknet introduced STRK20 - a new standard that makes all ERC-20 tokens private

Lido enabled permissionless stETH minting for all stVaults

Polygon launched Agent CLI, enabling AI agents to create wallets and manage funds on-chain

Sonic introduced USSD - Sonic’s native USD stablecoin built in partnership with Frax

Based launched its airdrop checker

That’s all for this week!

Until next time,

The DeFi Investor

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Liquity enables earning 8-10% APR on stablecoins generated in a sustainable way. Put your capital to work with Liquity!

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

🔎How to find high DeFi yields

📊 Crypto chart of the week

🗞️ The latest DeFi news

🔎How to find high DeFi yields

I’ve covered several stablecoin yield opportunities on X recently, but I thought it’d be helpful to also show you how you can find them yourself.

Even though the market conditions haven’t been great lately, there are still plenty of decent yield farms as long as you know where to look.

In this post, I will cover a lesser-known strategy I’ve been using to find emerging DeFi ecosystems with attractive incentive programs.

Let’s dive in:

As some of you may know, DeFiLlama has a Chains dashboard where you can easily see the fastest-growing blockchains by TVL.

How is this dashboard related to yield farming? Well, it isn’t directly related.

But in some cases, the blockchains seeing a rapid increase in TVL are gaining traction thanks to high ecosystem incentives you can take advantage of.

Here’s an actual example of how I use the DeFiLlama Chains dashboard for yield farming purposes:

• Sort the blockchains shown on the dashboard by “DeFi TVL”

• Start by looking for chains with the largest positive 1-month TVL change

• The first one that caught my attention was Provenance, which saw a 57% TVL growth. When I clicked on it, I only found a single CeDeFi app built on it that didn’t seem to offer any yield farming incentives, so I moved on and started looking for other chains with positive TVL changes

• The next one that stood out is Mantle, which had a 175% TVL growth in the past 30 days. Once you click on it, you realize that this is mostly thanks to AAVE’s growth on Mantle, where most of Mantle TVL is deposited

• If you go to the AAVE website and select the Mantle market, here you can get 4.28% APY on USDT and 6.89% APY on GHO stablecoin, due to Mantle’s new MNT incentive program, as you can see in the image below

4.28%-6.89% APY on stablecoins might not seem like a huge yield, but it is significantly higher than what you can get on AAVE on other blockchains.

I’d say that this is a good yield if you’re looking for a low-risk opportunity.

Yet you can also use DeFiLlama’s Chains dashboard to find higher yields if you’re open to taking more risks. I will give you a few examples next.

But before we continue, here’s an overview of Liquity:

Together with Liquity

Earn real yield on your stablecoins

There are lots of high-yield opportunities in DeFi.

But the problem is that most of them rely on opaque yield-generation strategies and are based solely on unsustainable token emissions.

That’s where Liquity comes in.

Liquity is one of the few truly decentralized stablecoin protocols that offers 8-10% APR generated in a fully sustainable way.

Here’s what makes Liquity stand out:

• Its stablecoin called BOLD is backed only by ETH and ETH LSTs collateral

• BOLD offers pure on-chain yield from liquidation fees and interest rates

• Its smart contracts are immutable to minimize the attack surface

• You can earn ~8% avg APY on sBOLD/yBOLD pool in the form of real yield + exposure to airdrops from 15+ Liquity forks

What’s more, BOLD received an A- rating from the rating agency Bluechip, placing it above USDC and DAI due to its decentralization and transparency.

With Liquity, you can earn a high yield in a trustless, decentralized way.

Explore various yield strategies with Liquity here.

How to find high DeFi yields (Part 2)

After Mantle, the next blockchains that have seen significant TVL growth over the past 30 days are Katana, Ink, and Monad.

All of those have a DeFi incentive program with rewards for yield farmers, which is why they have surged in TVL lately.

Now, as a general rule of thumb, this is something important to keep in mind first:

→ On tokenless blockchains (Katana, Ink), you can earn rewards primarily in the form of points or locked tokens, which you can’t sell until the TGE happens. Those are worth farming only if you believe their token will have a high FDV at launch

→ On the blockchains that already have a token (Monad), the farming rewards are generally a bit smaller, but they can be sold at any point, so the yield you are earning is much more predictable, although it is still dependent on the price action of the farming token, unless the yield is generated in a sustainable way

I’ll focus on the yield opportunities on Monad this time, as this one has liquid farming $MON rewards that you can claim and trade for other tokens at any point.

Since I saw Monad’s TVL was growing quickly according to DeFiLlama’s Chains dashboard, I decided to explore its ecosystem more closely.

The process is straightforward:

• Go to the Monad chain page on DeFiLlama

• Check out its top ecosystem protocols by TVL (Accountable, Morpho, Upshift, Curvance, etc.) there

• Visit their websites

• Look at the top yields they are offering and how they are generated

For example, in this way, I found these interesting stablecoin yields (most of which are subsidized with MON token incentives):

• 12.37% APY by depositing USDC into Hyperithm Delta Neutral Vault on Accountable, which deploys capital into several delta-neutral strategies like buying Pendle PTs, providing liquidity to lending apps, and funding rate arbitrage

• 11.33% APY by lending AUSD stablecoin to the earnAUSD market on Curvance, a money market on Monad

• Up to 25.77% APY by depositing USDC into Midas’s mEDGE leveraged farming pool on Gearbox (note: this is a high-risk strategy, though, as it requires using leverage to achieve this high yield)

This is the base APY without points rewards, which you also get from most of these yield opportunities, but the value of points is hard to determine in advance.

In the same way I showed you for Mantle or Monad, you can use DeFiLlama’s Chains dashboard to also find other DeFi ecosystems with attractive yield opportunities.

All you have to do is monitor which chains/dApps are surging in TVL and try to determine why this is happening.

Chances are you’ll find some interesting DeFi yields in this way.

I hope you found this guide helpful 🫡

Chart of the week

The value of tokenized assets on Ethereum surpassed $15 billion for the first time

Crypto meme of the week😂

The latest developments in DeFi

Solana announced the launch of on-chain IPO shares via Backpack

ACI, a major Aave DAO delegate, is leaving AAVE after disputes with AAVE Labs

Kraken became the first crypto company to gain access to FED’s payment system

INFINIT launched the Prompt-to-DeFi Strategist Challenge, a competitive program for creators to build verified DeFi strategies

Hyperliquid community members proposed HIP-6 - a permissionless token launch auction mechanism for Hyperliquid ecosystem tokens

Opinion and Paradex are launching their tokens today

Starknet introduced strkBTC - a wrapped Bitcoin with built-in privacy capabilities

Trump criticized banks for trying to ban stablecoin yield

Steakhouse launched a new set of curated stablecoin vaults for distinct risk profiles

MetaDAO launched Futardio - a new permissionless launchpad on Solana

Resolv’s Season 4 airdrop claim went live

Balancer V3 went live on Monad

Lighter launched the LIT Fee Credits program, enabling market makers to pay with LIT for fee discounts

AAVE’s proposal to expand to Monad and launch a $15M incentive program is live

USDai raised $19.4M during its ICO

That’s all for this week!

Until next time,

The DeFi Investor

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Theo is launching a new yield-bearing stablecoin backed by gold. Learn how it works here!

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

• 9 crypto events to watch this week

• A new tool to track the RWA sector

• Some great crypto reads

Let’s dive in👇

Crypto catalysts to watch this week

1. Starknet’s strkBTC launch - Starknet will soon release strkBTC - a wrapped BTC token with built-in privacy that can be used in DeFi

2. Theo Network’s pre-deposit vault - Theo will launch a pre-deposit vault for thUSD, its new yield-bearing stablecoin powered by delta-neutral gold strategies, this week

3. Opinion TGE - Opinion, the prediction market platform on BNB Chain, will launch its token called OPN on March 5. 3.5% of its supply will be airdropped

4. Macro events - Trump said this about Iran today: “We haven’t even started hitting them hard. The big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon” + US unemployment rate will be announced on March. 6

5. Fluid’s community ownership proposal - Fluid‘s proposal to move Fluid Protocol and its IP rights toward full community ownership will soon go live for voting

6. Avantis and Resolv airdrops - Avantis’s 2nd airdrop will become available for claiming on March 5 + Resolv’s S4 airdrop claims will open on March 5

7. Usual’s new product - Usual, a RWA stablecoin protocol, is expected to unveil a new product this week

8. Paradex TGE - Paradex founder said that the TGE will happen this week

9. Avalanche’s incentive program - Avalanche is launching a new $40M incentive program on March 2. The incentives are for “projects driving real on-chain activity” according to the foundation

Together with Theo

The yield-bearing stablecoin backed by gold

Theo Network, a dApp with $130M+ TVL, is bringing the gold standard back.

Its team just announced thUSD - a new innovative yield-bearing stablecoin backed by gold via a novel delta-neutral strategy.

In 2025, thUSD’s strategy generated an average APR of 8.27%.

This is significantly above the yields of most stablecoin protocols, and thUSD has a lot of room to scale, as it is built on the depth of the gold derivatives market.

thUSD yield essentially comes from two sources:

• thGOLD Lending - thGOLD, which is part of thUSD’s collateral, is a tokenized version of gold that is lent to established retailers to generate a yield

• Basis spread on gold futures - In the same way Ethena shorts ETH to achieve a delta-neutral strategy, Theo shorts Gold Futures on CME to capture the roll yield

~6.6% APR comes from gold futures roll yield and ~2.5% APR from thGOLD lending.

Gold also has 39x more average open interest than BTC and 58x more than ETH.

This makes Theo’s strategy infinitely more scalable than any delta-neutral yield strategy with native crypto collateral.

thUSD is launching this week with a $100M initial pre-deposit vault.

Explore how you can earn a high yield with thUSD here!

🛠️Crypto tool of the week

A new tool to track the RWA sector

DeFiLlama has just launched a new free RWA dashboard.

I think it’s obvious at this point that tokenization is one of the highest-potential sectors in crypto. But the thing about many RWAs today is that they can’t be used in DeFi and are accessible only to a small number of whitelisted users in many cases.

What’s cool about DeFiLlama’s RWA dashboard is that it allows seeing a lot of interesting details about every major tokenized asset:

• whether it is permissionless or not (can anyone access it?)

• what type of asset it is (tokenized gold, money market fund, etc.)

• Its DeFi active TVL (how much of its TVL is deployed into DeFi apps)

• Who issued it

It tracks hundreds of tokenized assets, and it’s probably the most comprehensive RWA dashboard right now.

You can check it out here.

6 Alpha Articles

The paths ahead for crypto

An overview of the most interesting RWAs

An in-depth post on the perp DEX wars

100 market lessons

6 suspected insiders made $1.2M betting on a US strike on Iran

Some great crypto tips

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Have a fantastic day!

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Please send me a DM on Twitter (X). I have a sponsorship deck that I can send you.

Vaultedge, a new DeFi app in private beta, enables borrowing against yield-bearing assets at zero interest. Check it out here!

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

🔎Wall Street starts buying altcoins

📊 Crypto chart of the week

🗞️ The latest DeFi news

🔎Wall Street starts buying altcoins

Price action aside, some very interesting things are happening in crypto right now.

Some of the world’s largest asset managers started buying DeFi tokens this month:

• BlackRock purchased an undisclosed amount of UNI tokens after Uniswap enabled trading BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized fund on its interface

• Apollo Global Management announced it will purchase up to 90 million MORPHO tokens (worth ~$170M) over the next 48 months

• Citadel Securities and Ark Invest invested in LayerZero’s ZRO token

It’s the first time that several big TradFi institutions added DeFi tokens to their portfolios.

On top of this, a few weeks ago, Jupiter secured a $35M $JUP investment from ParaFi Capital at the spot price.

This was unheard of a few years ago, as the reality is that most VCs have been buying tokens at huge OTC discounts and dumping their holdings right after unlocks began.

But the fact that some institutions/VCs are now willing to buy DeFi tokens at the open market price seems like a very bullish long-term signal.

Why does all of this matter?

The world’s largest institutions buying altcoins could create significant buying pressure on select altcoins, just like it happened with BTC over the past 2 years.

And on top of that, it legitimizes the industry and may also convince many retail investors who had been looking at altcoins skeptically to start investing.

This, coupled with the recent launch of buyback mechanisms by most major dApps, might be exactly what’s needed for altcoins to make a big comeback in the next cycle.

I am aware that most people fully lost trust in altcoins, and often for good reason.

Frankly, the tokens of most projects in this space will never hit new ATHs again.

But at the same time, I strongly believe that those with good fundamentals could see a massive rally in the next bull cycle and remind us what a real altseason looks like.

Thanks to institutional interest, BTC went from $16k to $124k this cycle.

For altcoins, the buy pressure needed to pump them is much lower.

What to expect next, and what’s my plan?

I think what we’ve seen so far is only the beginning.

BlackRock, which just bought UNI, is historically the institution that sets the tone. When it does something, the rest of the financial industry often follows.

I expect many institutions to announce altcoin purchases in the next few months.

That said, I believe there’s no rush to buy altcoins just yet, as until BTC hits the cycle bottom, altcoins are unlikely to do very well even if they see institutional inflows.

Historically, that happens 1 year after the cycle top, which coincides with October.

Given the current macro situation, I wouldn’t be surprised if history repeats itself and this BTC cycle bottom is hit around late Q3/early Q4 2026.

March 2026 could be a good month for crypto, based on what happened in the past cycles, but even if we see a rally, I think it won’t last more than a few weeks.

Considering all of this, my current plan is to start getting significant exposure to both altcoins and BTC in late Q3.

Until then, I intend to DCA only into BTC each time it hits a major support level.

What altcoins do I plan to buy? There is still plenty of time to decide until Q3, but this is what I am generally looking for:

• A low price to earnings ratio - price to earnings can be calculated as token FDV/annual revenue (if it’s below 15, that’s great)

• A high circulating token supply and low emissions

• A buyback program or other mechanisms that drive real value to the token

• A team that keeps shipping fast through the bear market

• True product-market fit, where the project’s product is used because it is a genuinely good product, and not only to farm token emissions

I am not gonna lie, there are not many projects that meet this criteria. But I think those are the ones most likely to grab institutional interest.

A few projects on my radar are Fluid, Jupiter, AAVE, Pendle, Hyperliquid, Lighter, EtherFi, and Sky. Yet I will probably share exactly what I plan to buy closer to Q3.

We’ve seen this cycle how institutions validated BTC as an investment. Now they’re starting to also validate altcoins by putting serious money behind them.

As crypto transitions to an institutional-led era, I believe that major institutions buying altcoins is likely to be a major catalyst for the next bull run.

The bear market is likely not over yet, but I have no doubt a new bull cycle will come.

Make sure you’ll be positioned for it.

Together with Vaultedge

Vaultedge: the credit layer for Defi’s Yield

A new DeFi protocol launched its private beta this week with a novel approach to liquidity for yield-generating assets.

I am talking about Vaultedge - a new dApp that lets users collateralize wstETH (Lido), weETH (Ether.fi), or Morpho Gauntlet vault receipts to mint USDVE stablecoin.

Using it, you can borrow against yield-generating collateral at zero interest!

What’s more, early users also get Pareto points for using it.

Traditional CDPs like MakerDAO charge 5-8% and leave collateral idle. Vaultedge eliminates borrowing costs while keeping collateral productive.

Users are already building real yield strategies using Vaultedge:

- Yield looping: wstETH/weETH exposure amplified 2-3x at zero interest – earns Pareto Points
- LP provision: USDVE/USDC on Hydrex for oHYDX Emissions + Pareto Points
- Stability pool staking – earns Pareto Points
- Delta-neutral farming: collateral yield + funding rates while staying delta-neutral

Pareto Points are Vaultedge’s Initiation campaign rewards for early participants. Every core protocol action accumulates them.

Private beta access is limited, expanding through quality-gated referrals.

Check out Vaultedge here!

Chart of the week

The active market cap of RWAs surpassed $15 billion

Crypto meme of the week😂

The latest developments in DeFi

Ethereum Foundation launched a DeFi coordination team to support DeFi builders

AAVE Labs’s proposal to give 100% of its revenue and IP rights to the DAO in exchange for 51M in funding is live

Pendle unveiled its roadmap, which includes integrating Pendle’s fixed yields into Earn programs on CEXs

Backpack announced it will give 20% of Backpack’s company equity to users who stake their airdrop for 1 year

Liquity's BOLD stablecoin went live on Privacy Pools for self-custodial privacy

Jupiter’s proposal to stop JUP token emissions passed

Fluid proposed creating the Fluid Foundation to become a fully DAO-owned protocol

Near Protocol announced NEAR SuperApp - a consumer app where you can swap, access yield, and go confidential across 35+ networks

Trump increased global tariffs right after the US Supreme Court called his tariffs illegal 💀

Canary Capital launched the first-ever Staked SUI ETF

Ondo Finance launched its tokenized stocks on Binance Alpha

US White House said Trump has no intention to pardon SBF

Sonic Labs CEO stepped down after only 5 months

HyperLend will launch its token called HPL today

Flying Tulip launched its token FT and its yield-bearing stablecoin

Huma Finance’s Season 3 airdrop is now available for claim

That’s all for this week!

Until next time,

The DeFi Investor

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Here’s what I’ll cover today:

🔎Why you should farm prediction markets

📊 Crypto chart of the week

🗞️ The latest DeFi news

🔎Why you should farm prediction markets

2025 was the year of perps DEX airdrops.

Those who farmed Lighter, Avantis, or Aster got some massive airdrops. And I still think that farming certain perps DEXs like Extended makes sense.

However, I expect the biggest airdrops this year to come from prediction markets.

In this issue, I’ll explain why, cover the prediction market platforms I am farming, and share a few strategies you can use to farm them effectively.

First of all, the answer to “why” is simple:

Prediction market platforms are more time-consuming and harder to farm with size by whales than almost all other airdrops.

This is a good thing if you are willing to spend some time farming, as it also means your competition is significantly smaller. And historically, the best airdrops came from dApps that required completing time-consuming tasks rather than passive liquidity provision.

Secondly, prediction market platforms are one of the very few crypto products that actually found PMF. Mainstream media is regularly covering them, and Polymarket raised $2 billion in one of the largest crypto funding rounds ever last year.

Hence, I think it’s likely that $POLY will have a lot of buyers at TGE, and a high token valuation is key for a protocol to be able to do a big airdrop in dollar terms.

Here is some actual data and math:

According to DeFiLlama, Polymarket has only $350M TVL.

Assuming it launches a token at a $10B FDV ($9B is the valuation of its last VC round) and it airdrops only 5% of its supply to users, that 5% airdrop would be worth $500M.

Obviously, its airdrop will likely be based more on trading volume and other metrics rather than TVL alone, but the fact that its airdrop could be worth more than the platform’s total TVL makes me think farming it is a very good idea.

While a Polymarket airdrop isn’t officially confirmed, there have been many signs over the past few months that indicate that its token is launching soon:

Now let’s dive into some tokenless prediction market protocols:

(after this, I’ll also cover a few farming strategies)

Tokenless prediction market platforms I am farming

My highest conviction airdrops in this category are Polymarket and Opinion.

~80-85% of my funds allocated to farming prediction markets are deposited on those, as I think it’s very likely those will do a big airdrop.

But I also use a few other lesser-known platforms.

Here’s an overview of the prediction market apps I am farming besides Polymarket:

1. Opinion

• It’s backed by YZi Labs (formerly known as Binance Labs)

• It’s the third-largest prediction market platform at this moment

• It has a points program live, and it launched on BNB Chain in Nov. 2025

• There’s a 96% chance that it will launch a token by June 30 and a 47% chance that its token will have an FDV above $500M according to Polymarket

• The majority of markets on Opinion are also available on Polymarket, enabling users to arbitrage the prediction markets that are available on both platforms

• It has $47M in annualized revenue

Here is my invite link for a fee discount ← (invite code NywzPc)

(Note: this isn’t sponsored. I am farming all of these protocols with my own money)

2. Predict

• It’s backed by YZi Labs as well

• Has a points program with 10,000,000 points distributed every week

• Predict deposits user funds into Venus, a popular money market on BNB Chain, in order to generate a yield, which is then given to users on a weekly basis

• Placing limit orders for a new market and maintaining a high open interest across a wide range of markets will earn you more points on the platform

You can use my link for a 10% fee discount ←

1. Probable

• It’s backed by YZi Labs (again) and Pancakeswap

• Its points program rewards users based on trading volume, referral activity, liquidity provisioning, and how long they keep a position

• Some of the prediction markets on Probable are unique and can’t be found elsewhere

Here is my link to Probable ←

Besides Polymarket and Kalshi (I didn’t include Kalshi as I think it’s unlikely to do an airdrop), those are the most popular prediction market apps right now.

Opinion, Predict, Probable are very similar, to be frank, and they are all built on BNB Chain, but Opinion has the first mover advantage as it is the first one that went live, so I am focusing primarily on this one.

It’s obvious that a big part of their trading volume isn’t organic and is driven by users farming points.

Still, I think it’s worth farming them for one key reason:

CZ and several well-known figures from the BNB ecosystem have been actively promoting these three platforms for a while.

The same thing happened with Aster DEX, which is also built on BNB Chain.

Because CZ heavily shilled $ASTER post-TGE, $ASTER hit $15 billion FDV at its peak, and the first ASTER airdrop became one of the best airdrops of 2026.

Farming prediction market apps on BNB Chain may also pay off in a similar way.

How to farm prediction markets

I will cover 3 different ways to do this.

The most straightforward way is to just place bets based on your conviction.

Let’s say that you spend a lot of time on CT and you know everything about what’s happening in crypto.

Then you might be able to use Polymarket organically and generate volume by placing calculated bets on crypto markets like “Will there be a Hyperliquid airdrop in 2026” or “What will be USDai FDV 1 day after launch?” based on your research when you spot a market that you believe is mispriced.

However, if I am being honest, I think that most people should avoid doing this.

It’s not very easy to be a profitable trader. Fortunately, there are also many other ways in which you can farm prediction markets without taking high risks.

Here are a few strategies:

1. Provide liquidity via limit orders

Polymarket has a section called Rewards, where you can see which markets are incentivized with USDC rewards for users who place limit orders near the mid-price.

The other prediction market platforms I mentioned earlier also reward liquidity providers with points rewards.

There are multiple methods to farm liquidity rewards, but this is what I am doing:

• Go to the Rewards section (this example is for Polymarket, but limit orders will earn you points on all prediction market platforms)

• Sort markets by “Reward” (click on this word) and filter them by the categories you are familiar with (e.g., you can select crypto and politics)

• Scroll down till you find a prediction market that you’re confident will resolve in a certain way, or you believe is unlikely to be volatile in the near future

• Place limit orders for buying YES or NO shares close to mid price, depending on what you believe will be the result of the market]

I’ll give you an example:

There’s a market called “Major CEX insolvent in 2026?”, which resolves to YES only if Binance, Coinbase, Bybit, OKX, or Kraken will be insolvent by the end of the year.

While no one outside their teams can know their exact financial situation, I think it is highly unlikely that any of them will file for bankruptcy anytime soon, especially given that most CEXs have seen positive inflows recently.

This market I mentioned offers 10 USDC in daily rewards to LPs, as shown in the image above.

So my strategy is to simply place a limit buy order betting NO (No Major CEX insolvent in 2026) right below the mid price, and after the order gets filled, place a sell limit order for the NO shares right above the mid price.

It’s very important to place the limit order very close to the mid price to earn rewards.

I’ve been doing this for quite a few days for this market and earned a few dozen dollars. The idea is not to get rich by providing liquidity, as the LP rewards are small, but earning LP rewards might qualify you for the Polymarket airdrop.

Polymarket needs deep liquidity, so if it does an airdrop, I am pretty sure it will reward liquidity providers.

2. Arbitrage prediction markets

The great thing about the prediction markets available on Opinion, Predict, and Probable is that almost all of them are also available on Polymarket.

This enables generating a lot of prediction volume while earning a nice yield risk-free by arbitraging them when the odds are slightly different.

To give you an example, let’s say that there’s a market “Will Trump resign by March 31?” on both Polymarket and Opinion.

On Polymarket, suppose that you can bet YES on this happening at 8c (8% chance).

On Opinion, let’s imagine you can bet NO on this happening at 90c (90% chance of this not happening).

When this market expires, either the YES or the NO shares will be worth $1.

But you can buy 1 YES share on Polymarket at 8c and 1 NO share on Opinion at 90c, for a total of 98c, which will turn into $1 when the market expires, regardless of the outcome. (leaving you with a ~2% return)

My recommendation is to arbitrage only markets that expire within 60 days.

This is the best way to generate volume and farm prediction markets risk-free, as long as you carefully read the rules to make sure you don’t arbitrage two different markets.

You can find prediction market arbitrage opportunities in two ways:

• Manually, by searching for identical markets with slightly different odds on two prediction market platforms (the advantage is that you can do this 100% free, although it may take you some time to find an opportunity)

• Automatically, by using a tool like Alert Pilot or Oxygen Delta that uses AI to automatically find arbitrage opportunities

The tool I’ve been using the most is Alert Pilot. It’s the best one out there in my opinion, but it requires paying a monthly subscription, so it’s probably worth using only if you’re planning to do prediction market arbitrage with significant capital.

Oxygen Delta is a tool for prediction market arbitrage that's free, though, based on my experience, it is less accurate and doesn’t show all opportunities.

And those are the ways I wanted to show you for farming prediction markets.

This has been a long post, but I really hope that you found it helpful!

I strongly believe that farming prediction markets airdrops will pay off big in 2026.

Polymarket could easily do one of the biggest crypto airdrops ever, even if it decides to airdrop only a small percentage of its supply.

Chart of the week

Altcoin selling pressure is at multi-year highs

Crypto meme of the week😂

The latest developments in DeFi

Aave proposed directing 100% of product revenue to Aave DAO

Hyperliquid introduced Hyperliquid Policy Center - a US lobbying group to advocate for DeFi-friendly regulations

INFINIT launched Prompt-to-DeFi to the public with enhanced AI strategy creation features and a rewards program

Base left Optimism Stack to build its own chain stack

Jupiter’s proposal to pause JUP token emissions went live

Lighter launched unified collateral for spot and perps

Mantle launched a 6-month incentive program for Aave users on Mantle

Ethereum Foundation Co-Executive Director stepped down

Morpho announced that Apollo, an asset manager with $840B+ assets, will buy up to 90M MORPHO tokens over the next 4 years

Tether invested in Hyperliquid frontend Dreamcash

Hibachi received an investment from Circle Ventures

EtherFi is migrating its crypto card from Scroll to OP Mainnet

Canton Network launched the first private payroll for institutions

DeFiLlama launched DefiLlama Search - a free tool that protects users against fake domain scams

Aptos announced it is moving to performance-driven token unlocks

That’s all for this week!

Until next time,

The DeFi Investor

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Aurion is building the liquidity hub of MegaETH. Check it out here.

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

🔎All you need to know about MegaETH

📊 Crypto chart of the week

🗞️ The latest DeFi news

🔎All you need to know about MegaETH

MegaETH, one of the most anticipated Ethereum L2 blockchains, is finally here.

I’ve spent a few hours exploring its ecosystem and thought it would be interesting to highlight the most interesting dApps I’ve found.

But first of all, let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room:

Why do we need another L2, and what makes MegaETH unique?

The short answer is that, for most dApps, the chains we have are good enough.

That said, MegaETH is taking blockchain performance to another level.

During its recent stress test that lasted a few days, MegaETH processed 10.7B transactions, more than Ethereum L1 has processed in its entire history!

According to its team, it can process 100k TPS with sub-millisecond latency.

So it’s probably the most scalable chain in crypto right now. This level of scalability is not needed for most dApps, but for certain apps, such as orderbook-based DEXs or web3 games, a high network speed is essential to deliver a good UX.

Besides its high performance, there are some other things that set it apart:

• Native stablecoin - MegaETH launched its own native stablecoin USDM, which is backed mainly by assets invested in BlackRock's tokenized U.S. Treasury fund

The interesting thing is that all the revenue generated by USDM will go towards MEGA token buybacks after MegaETH launches a token.

• MegaMafia - MegaMafia is an accelerator that supports early-stage founders building new dApps on MegaETH

Now, there are a lot of different accelerators in web3. What’s interesting about this one is that MegaETH managed to attract, through MegaMafia, several teams building truly innovative products. (a few which I’ll cover a bit later in this article)

• KPI-based rewards - The MegaETH token will have an unlock schedule that will be based on the ecosystem achievements

Until a certain ecosystem growth, performance, or decentralization goal is hit, most tokens won’t enter circulation. The goal is to address the low float high FDV issue.

I’m not sure how efficient this is, but I like to see more tokenomics experimentation.

And that’s basically it. Overall, it’s safe to say that MegaETH is not just another fork, as it is bringing some new mechanisms to the market.

What can you do on MegaETH right now?

Well… to be frank, less than I expected.

That said, there are a lot of interesting dApps building on MegaETH that will be deployed in the near future.

To get started today, you should visit RabbitHole (here).

This is basically a prompt-based interface for the MegaETH ecosystem.

You can ask any questions related to MegaETH, including where you can earn yield, what unique dApps are built on MegaETH, how to bridge, etc.

It’s an interesting idea to build a chatbot for MegaETH-related questions.

Speaking about dApps, here are a few that are already live and caught my attention:

• Avon - A new kind of lending protocol that lets lenders and borrowers set custom borrowing rates and terms - I personally deposited some USDm in Avon MegaVault as early depositors get a 3x points boost this week

• Aave - The largest DeFi money market needs no introduction. I like that Aave was deployed on MegaETH, as I think that there might be some juicy MEGA token incentives for the Aave users on MegaETH in the future

• Huntertale - a GameFi project native to MegaETH that reminds me of DeFi Kingdoms (I am generally not a big fan of GameFi, but this one seems interesting)

• Prism - an AMM native to MegaETH that will soon also offer prediction markets, lending, and perps products

As I said, there are also a lot of interesting dApps yet to go live:

• Aurion - An advanced DEX + prediction markets platform with gamified mechanisms built natively on MegaETH

• Supernova - A CLOB-based rates exchange for trading or hedging interest rates, FX, and crypto cross-rates that will also offer fixed-rate and term borrowing

• Blackhaven - A reserve-backed treasury, the so-called OlympusDAO of MegaETH

• Premarket - A platform for trading premarket options for TGEs, IPOs, RWAs, and other assets before they officially launch

If you want to see a full list, I suggest checking out this page.

To sum it up, I think it’s worth keeping an eye on MegaETH.

Rumors are spreading that it will launch an incentive program soon (it’s not confirmed yet, though), which could create great opportunities for DeFi farmers.

But I think MegaETH’s success depends on whether any innovative dApps built on it manage to gain massive traction and attract external capital from other chains.

Together with Aurion

The Liquidity Hub of MegaETH

MegaETH is pushing the limits of on-chain trading with its insanely high speed.

But speed means nothing without deep, efficient liquidity.

This is where Aurion comes in - an upcoming high-performance AMM built natively for MegaETH and powered by Algebra.

A few things you should know about it:

• Aurion combines concentrated liquidity with ultra-low-latency execution to offer a great experience for both traders and liquidity providers

• It will offer multiple pool types, including CLMM, stableswap, and volatile pools tailored for different needs

• Automated liquidity management will be available for liquidity providers to minimize losses and maximize returns

But perhaps the most interesting thing about it is that Aurion will also soon launch a built-in prediction market with gamified mechanisms.

By combining capital-efficient trading with on-chain prediction markets, Aurion aims to become MegaETH’s DeFi hub.

If you are exploring the MegaETH ecosystem, it’s worth checking it out.

Start exploring Aurion here!

Chart of the week

ETH staking ratio surged past 30% for the first time

Crypto meme of the week😂

The latest developments in DeFi

MegaETH launched its public mainnet

Aave went live on Mantle with a new MNT incentive program

Polymarket filed trademark application for POLY ticker

Sui launched suiUSDe, a native stablecoin for Sui backed by Ethena

LayerZero introduced Zero, its own blockchain targeting 2 million TPS

BlackRock bought $UNI and listed its BUIDL fund for trading on Uniswap

Citrea announced the Citrea Mainnet Campaign - a campaign tracking the activity of the early users of its ecosystem dApps

Ondo enabled the use of tokenized stocks as collateral on lending markets

Lighter introduced Funding Rate Rebates for perps traders who stake LIT. Funding rate rebates are also available for traders in the Premium fee tier

USDai announced its ICO on Coinlist and its upcoming TGE in March

Robinhood launched Robinhood Chain public testnet, which is powered by Arbitrum

Coinbase introduced Agentic Wallets - its first-ever wallet infrastructure built for autonomous AI agents

Kamino announced it will support borrowing against off-chain collateral

Kaito AI partnered with Polymarket to roll out attention markets

Royco introduced tranched yield vaults that split yield sources from any DeFi vaults into two pools: Senior and Junior

Backpack allocated 25% of its upcoming token supply for airdrop at TGE

Sushiswap went live on Solana

That’s all for this week!

Until next time,

The DeFi Investor

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dYdX launched a highly rewarding incentive program for traders. Check it out here!

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

• 10 crypto events to watch this week

• A new tool for tracking project fundamentals

• Some great crypto reads

Let’s dive in👇

Crypto catalysts to watch this week

1. PENDLE buybacks - sPENDLE buybacks go live today. sPENDLE will start generating yield for PENDLE stakers on Feb. 13

2. MegaETH mainnet - MegaETH mainnet launched today

3. XRP Community Day - Ripple, the project behind XRP, will reveal its roadmap and its latest ecosystem updates on Feb. 11 and Feb. 12

4. Lighter’s protocol upgrades - Lighter will soon add LLP vault and ETH as trading collateral on the perps DEX

5. Coinbase’s earnings call - Coinbase's earnings call will happen on Feb. 12

6. LayerZero’s announcement - LayerZero teased a big announcement on Feb. 10

7. Macro events - There's a 76% chance of a new US government shutdown by Feb. 14 (according to Polymarket) + U.S. unemployment rate will be released on Feb. 11

8. Based’s TGE details - Based will release info about its upcoming TGE this week

9. Superform TGE - Superform’s UP token launches on Feb. 10

10. Sushiswap’s Solana deployment - Sushiswap is expected to expand to Solana soon

Together with dYdX

Trade, Compete, and Earn all February

If you’re a perps trader, you should check out dYdX’s Surge Season 11.

dYdX is one of the leading decentralized perpetual exchanges, and for February, it is rolling out a lot of interesting incentives.

This month, dYdX is bringing fee-free trading, competitive leagues, liquidation rebates, and affiliate rewards under one program.

Here’s what you can take advantage of in February:

• $100,000 BONK P&L Based Trading League - In partnership with Bonk, dYdX is giving away $100,000 in total to the top 20 BONK traders by P&L

• Zero trading fees on BTC and BONK perps for the entire month

• Up to $1M in Liquidation Rebates - If you get liquidated on non-BTC markets, dYdX will give you back a portion of your losses

• New affiliate rewards - Refer new traders to the platform until Feb. 16 and earn a share of the $200,000 rewards pool based on their trading activity (register here)

Whether you’re a trader or you know some whales that you can refer, there’s a way for you to take advantage of these new incentives.

Surge Season 11 is simply making trading more rewarding.

Check out the new incentives on dYdX!

🛠️Crypto tool of the week

A new tool for tracking project fundamentals

Recently, Aragon released a new tool called Ownership Token Framework that shows how much control token holders have over a protocol.

It supports only a very small number of tokens, but the idea seems interesting.

Using it, you can check for a token that you choose:

• Its value accrual mechanisms

• Whether its maximum token supply is fixed or not

• What’s its exact utility

It can be pretty useful when analyzing tokenomics.

Here’s a link to it.

6 Alpha Articles

How to build a Trade Analyzer with Claude Code

Study: Lessons from PnL & Tuition

Vitalik’s thoughts about the role of L2s

Stephen’s favorite yield opportunities

Reasons why crypto is down

The math needed for trading on Polymarket

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Avantis just released a 4-week trading competition with a 100K USDC prize pool on Base App. Check it out here.

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

🔎My crypto strategy for 2026

📊 Crypto chart of the week

🗞️ The latest DeFi news

🔎My crypto strategy for 2026

It’s been another rough week for crypto.

It feels like every time the stock market dips 1%, crypto dips 10%.

This has been happening for quite a few months. That said, I’m fully convinced that crypto will make a comeback at some point, as it always has.

No one likes bear markets and aggressive downtrends. But I strongly believe that many of the opportunities we’ll get over the next few months will be life-changing.

In this issue, I wanted to share a few thoughts about what I expect to happen next, and at the end, I will also share my strategy for 2026 👇

First of all, I will try to explain my current market stance.

If you take a closer look at what happened in the past cycles, you realize that they’ve been pretty similar to this one so far.

1. In 2017: BTC hit the cycle top in December

2. In 2018: BTC entered a bear market and bottomed in Dec. 2018

1. In 2021: BTC hit the cycle top in November

2. In 2022: BTC entered a bear market and bottomed in Nov. 2022

1. In 2025: BTC hit the cycle top in October

2. In 2026: BTC entered a bear market
   

The common thing is that BTC hit the cycle top in Q4 of the post-Halving year in both 2017 and 2021, and it bottomed 12 months later.

This is called “the 4-year cycle theory”, which, for a lot of people, doesn’t make sense and may seem dumb, but what happened in the past few months only validates it.

This is one of the reasons I believe BTC could hit the cycle bottom in late Q3 or early Q4 this year, similar to what happened in the past.

But obviously, an entire bullish or bearish thesis can’t be based only on historical performance and historical patterns. On the fundamental side, there are also a few things that make me believe that this downtrend is unfortunately not over:

• There’s still a lot of macro uncertainty, which is bad for risk-on assets (Will the US attack Iran? Will the Supreme Court cancel Trump’s tariffs? What happens if the new FED Chair also doesn’t cut rates?)

• AI completely stole the spotlight from crypto (the reason I believe retail investors unfortunately never really came back to buy our altcoins this cycle is that AI stocks captured all their attention. This is why tech stocks have been in a bull market of their own over the past months)

• There’s no major upcoming crypto catalyst in the near future that could attract new buyers

I expanded on the last point in a newsletter two weeks ago, and I think it explains pretty well why large amounts of money haven’t flown into crypto lately:

Next, I’ll share my short-term market expectations and what my exact plan is for the next few months.

Together with Avantis

The “App-First” Alpha: Why Your Next Base Move Should Be via Avantis

In the fast-moving world of L2s, being “early” is a badge of honor, but being “active” is the real currency. Avantis has just raised the stakes with its Leagues of Leverage campaign, and if you’re looking to establish yourself as a power player in the ecosystem, this is your signal.

Crucially, this campaign is exclusively for Base App users. Powered by Base, the initiative is designed to reward those who leverage the native Base App to navigate the decentralized markets. For the strategic trader, this isn’t just about the immediate leaderboard; it’s about utilizing the primary gateway to the network to curate a rich, verifiable history of engagement.

The Ladder to the Grand Finale

The competition runs from February 2 to March 2, 2026, featuring a massive $100,000 USDC total prize pool. The rewards are structured to favor those who stay consistent, with weekly payouts scaling up to a staggering $50,000 finale in the fourth week.

Check out the Leagues of Leverage competition here.

In other words, do I believe we’re going down only from here?

No. I think it’s very likely we will see a market bounce at some point in February or early March. In every bear market, there are also occasional rallies.

That being said, I think the pumps we will see in the next few months will not last for more than a few weeks. So personally, I am not interested in trading them.

BTC has been underperforming the stock market for months, and I unfortunately don’t see any signs that this underperformance period is over yet.

For the reasons I explained above, I think the most likely scenario is that the BTC bottom will be reached in late Q3-early Q4, perhaps in September, as September is historically the worst-performing month for BTC.

So, what’s my strategy for 2026?

Even though I believe the bottom will be reached later this year, I think timing the market with your entire portfolio is generally a bad idea.

For this reason, my plan is the following:

• Buy some BTC at every major support level - My first buy was at $81k a few days ago. My plan is to buy next at $69-70k, $59k, $50k, and $43k

I have no idea if BTC will actually hit $43k by the way. It would be insane to see it at this level again. But in case it happens, I have some stablecoins that I am planning to deploy into the market at that point. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

By buying BTC at every major support level, I make sure that even if my thesis is wrong and BTC resumes the uptrend before Q3, I still have some market exposure.

• Start dollar-cost averaging daily into BTC sometime in July-August, depending on market conditions, and continue until October-November. This is when I plan to deploy most of my capital into the market

• Don’t accumulate altcoins until late Q3. As long as I don’t believe the BTC bottom is in, I don’t think it makes much sense for me to buy altcoins, since they are correlated with BTC's performance and typically underperform it during downtrends. This is why I plan to wait till Q3 and buy only BTC in the meantime

I haven’t decided yet how much of my crypto portfolio to allocate to altcoins and how much to BTC, but at least 60% will be in BTC.

This is because, as you’ve all seen, only a few select altcoins have outperformed BTC in 2025, and we never really got an altseason like in 2021. For this reason, I prefer to allocate most of the portfolio to BTC, as I believe it’s by far the safest long-term crypto bet, given that BTC is seen more like “digital gold”.

Now obviously, your strategy can differ based on your risk tolerance.

Speaking about altcoins, I haven’t decided which ones I will buy yet. There is still a lot of time until late Q3, so I will be closely monitoring a lot of projects and probably share in this newsletter what I am buying in the next few months. But my goal is to invest in high-revenue-generating dApps.

In the meantime, my focus remains airdrop farming. I think that especially prediction markets airdrops have huge potential. (keep an eye on Opinion and Polymarket)

I am also still heavily farming perps DEXs via a funding rate arbitrage strategy. The fact that a perps DEX like Extended gives traders an APR of up to 15-21% on their collateral used for trading makes it a great farming opportunity.

You can find my main airdrop farms here:

My final advice is to not blindly copy trade me. Unlike other people on CT, I don’t pretend to have a crystal ball. I am just sharing what I am doing with my own capital.

I have a recommendation, though: listen to market opinions from as many people as possible (both bulls and bears), do your research well, and form your own thesis based on what you believe is most likely to happen next.

Then make sure that you create a plan that you actually stick to.

With this recipe, it’s very likely you will win in the long run as long as you always keep an open mind and learn from your own mistakes.

Chart of the week

The prediction market trading volume continues to hit new ATHs

Crypto meme of the week😂

The latest developments in DeFi

Hyperliquid announced plans to add support for prediction markets

AAVE is expanding to MegaETH in exchange for $10M guaranteed revenue

Boros, the funding rates trading product built by Pendle, hit $10 billion in notional trading volume

MetaMask partnered with Ondo Finance to offer tokenized US stocks, ETFs, and commodities in-wallet

Jupiter secured a $35M investment into JUP from ParaFi Capital at the spot price

Resolv announced plans to implement delta-neutral equity and commodity strategies to diversify yield sources for its stablecoin

Lighter introduced Lighter EVM - a ZK rollup Ethereum L2 that is fully composable with the Ethereum ecosystem

Ethena introduced Ethena Exchange Points - a points program that rewards trading activity on Ethena-powered exchanges like Ethereal and Hyena

Avantis launched the Leagues of Leverage trading competition on the Base App

Ondo introduced Ondo Perps - 24/7 perpetual futures for both U.S. stocks and ETFs

Hey Anon released Pandora Parlays - a product built on Polymarket that lets users combine 3-10 prediction markets into a single bet

Lido v3 went live on the Ethereum mainnet

Polymarket expanded to Solana and can now be accessed via Jupiter

Vitalik Buterin said that the original vision of L2 no longer makes sense as Ethereum L1 is finally scaling

Cap announced plans to airdrop $12M in cUSD stablecoins to its users

That’s all for this week!

Until next time,

The DeFi Investor

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CoinQuant is a no-code platform that lets you build, analyse, and automate trading strategies. Explore CoinQuant now.

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

• 10 crypto events to watch this week

• A dashboard for perps DEXs

• Some great crypto reads

Let’s dive in👇

Crypto catalysts to watch this week

1. Hyperliquid’s prediction markets - Hyperliquid team just started testing prediction markets on testnet, which indicates that they might launch a prediction market product soon

2. Ondo Summit - Ondo Summit starts on Feb. 3. Expect some big announcements

3. Lido V3 Community Call - A Lido community call about the recent Lido V3 mainnet launch is scheduled for Feb. 3. The biggest change that Lido V3 brings is stVaults, which offer node operators much greater flexibility

4. Flying Tulip’s public ICO - Flying Tulip’s ICO on Coinlist starts on Feb. 2. The $1 billion ICO FDV seems way too high to me in the current market conditions, but the fact that it offers a refund option makes it a risk-free opportunity. The TGE date wasn’t announced yet

5. Hey Anon’s new product - Daniele Sesta’s project called Hey Anon will release a new prediction market product (Pandora Parlays for Polymarket) on Feb. 2

6. Venus Flux launch - Venus Flux, a new deployment of the Fluid money market on BNB Chain built by Fluid in partnership with Venus, launches on Feb. 4

7. OP token buybacks - Optimism will use 50% of its Superchain revenue to buy back OP tokens starting in February

8. Chiliz Vision 2030 - Chiliz Vision 2030 will be announced on Feb. 3

9. BERA token unlock - 41% of $BERA circulating supply ($31M at current prices) will be unlocked on Feb. 6

10. Saylor’s Strategy Q4 2025 earnings call - Saylor’s Strategy earnings call is scheduled for Feb. 5

Together with CoinQuant

CoinQuant, explained.

Trading infrastructure has moved fast over the past few years, but strategy research hasn’t kept pace.

Most traders still test ideas across charts and scripts, with no consistent way to understand how a strategy behaves across time, risk, and different market conditions.

CoinQuant is a no-code trading research platform built around that gap.

The platform

CoinQuant lets traders structure ideas into strategies, backtest them on historical, tick-level data across multiple assets, and review performance using consistent, research-focused metrics, not signals or shortcuts.

It’s designed for traders who want clearer insight into drawdowns, consistency, and risk before putting capital to work. As the platform evolves, new features will roll out alongside planned automation, execution, and institutional-grade integrations starting in Q2 2026.

👉Explore CoinQuant

Participation

Strategy building, backtesting, and performance analysis all happen in one environment, designed around real trading conditions.

Activity is tracked through a points system that reflects meaningful platform usage, such as onboarding, building strategies, and running backtests.

Rewards

CoinQuant is introducing $CQX, a utility token distributed through a long-term, activity-based airdrop program.

There is no presale. Instead of rewarding passive capital, token distribution is tied to real platform usage. Points earned through participation convert to token allocations after the token generation event.

If you’re interested in trading research and participation-based airdrops, CoinQuant is worth exploring.

You can see the $CQX token and distribution mechanics here.

🛠️Crypto tool of the week

A dashboard for perps DEXs

Dozens of perps DEXs have launched in the last year alone.

If you want to keep an eye on the sector and see which ones are gaining traction, I recommend using Perpetual Pulse.

It’s basically a Notion page created by @hansolar21 where you can see:

• The top perps DEXs by OI, volume, TVL, pairs, and fees

• How the stats of each DEX changed over time

• The pros and cons of each platform

I find it pretty useful to see how the perps DEX landscape is changing.

Here’s a link to it.

7 Alpha Articles

A great read if you feel lost

Why BTC and ETH haven’t rallied with other risk assets

MegaETH’s solution to the low-float, high-FDV dilemma

A thread on Lighter and its future developments

Some valuable advice

How to prompt Claude

This isn’t a crypto-related post, but I think you’ll find it useful if you use AI tools.

The bull case for on-chain lending

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Have a fantastic day!

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