Morning Update: Thu 7th Sep

Ark files for spot ETH ETF

The information in this message does not represent any financial or investment advice. They're just random thoughts in my head.

gm

**MACRO** - It continues to be rather ugly in the equity market as SPX finds itself down another 0.7% while the move in NDQ is 1.4% lower. Interest rates have stayed fairly steady with the curve at 500/441/428/436bps across 2/5/10/30y. Today we saw initial jobless claims data come in at 216k vs 234k expected which is the lowest level it's been since February this year. I don't think this is the "flagship" metric for US labour market data, compared to payrolls, but markets just seem to be moving with each little bit of data we get. My guess is we continue to see a lot of second-guessing of what the Fed is going to do or say and tbh I'm only really interested in what the Fed actually say at the next FOMC because a lot of what I'm hearing and seeing now feels very shilled and position pushing. The Fed may also not say anything specific, who knows...with stocks having performed well this year and inflation seemingly coming lower, there's no need for them to really change course in either direction.

**CRYPTO** - Zzzzzz as BTC sits at 25.6K and ETH at 1630. Yesterday we saw the headline that Cathie Wood's Ark is applying for the first ever spot ETH ETF. We did see ETH get a small pump on the headline but it was instantly sold down. Allegedly there was an increase in open interest of about $200m when ETH moved lower and then $100m of it was wiped out on that headline so it just feels like it was a short-squeeze liquidation thing which tbh explains a lot. I think it's a bullish headline, and my guess is we'll see others apply for it too; would be cool to see a Blackrock ETH application...it just all comes down to if and when we start getting approvals. There continues to be a lot of Binance FUD out there which I think is also hurting the sentiment. From what I've read, it feels like people are clutching at straws with regard to conclusions and a lot of it is coming from this post by someone who has PTSD from getting burnt by FTX (guess he never heard about not your keys not your crypto):

https://twitter.com/Travis_Kling/status/1699135859885236432?s=20.

BNB is at a $32bn market cap so if you really believe Binance has issues then maybe that's a good market hedge, but I can imagine it's already heavily shorted.

**NFTs** - The NFT market continues its current run rate of doing about $8-10m a day in volumes. Price action seems to be drifting a little lower again to the tune of about 1-3%. WoY seems to have locally peaked and is down 8% to a price of 9.5ETH, still a whopping 3-4x from mint I think. We saw some good activity in Pudgy Penguins after Luca Netz mentioned that they are on track to do $10m in revenue in the first 7 months of selling toys which is impressive to see and I think one of the first seemingly successful uses of web3 IP in the real world. Nakamigos volumes really dropped off rather quick but they seem to have maintained a .39 FP and I imagine we see a bit of a standstill here as people wait for the next update from the team.

**REPORTS** - Today we look at CharlesAI. Here is the first paragraph to get your excited for our in depth report releasing tomorrow:

Charlesai, originally from France, started as a doctor working in the ER during COVID. To cope with the intense pressures of his job he turned to art, a passion he's had since childhood. While he traditionally painted, his discovery of AI art using VQGAN + CLIP in 2021 marked a turning point. He soon began minting his AI-generated pieces, launching his notable collection "Surprised by AI" on Opensea, which garnered significant attention. This collection was a precursor to further recognition, with his artworks being exhibited at various galleries including MoCa, IHAM, and the IHAM art gallery in Paris.

**MANDO MINUTES** - ‘The Great Mando’, as many know him, has recently released MandoMinutes, an amazing daily summary that covers some of the things we don’t quite touch on with this newsletter. We are so lucky to have him on the team at Degenz and we can’t recommend subscribing to MandoMinutes enough.

mandominutes.com/subscribe

GL today!