5 Minute Crypto ⏳ - Binance byes Canada, Tether 🧑🏻‍💻, US 4.9% infl, Do Kwon bails, 🌽 halving 0.9%

Two Degens (resources, interviews, on all things crypto and some AI)

Howdy everyone — this is the 5 minute crypto update for Monday May 15th
It’s been 5 days since the last one, so this episode will be a bit longer than usual
We’ve got a metrics update, Binance pulling out, Bitfinexed with more Tether tea, US inflation, Dork Kwon, bitcoin halving, crypto hopium, and more more more
Let’s get it on!
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As of this recording,
Bitcoin continues its slow downward slide, currently at $26,800; it’s down 6% for the week
ETH is at $1788, down a bit less, 5.6% for the week
A few tokens managed some greens including Lido and Rocket Pool, both up 4% for the week
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What’s going on in crypto land…
According to https://moneyprinter.info/
The top chains by value of daily issuance are bitcoin at $25M, Solana at $2M, and dogecoin at $1M
The top chains by issuance rate are Solana at 6%, Avalanche at 4%, and dogecoin at 3.5%
So, uh, you may not want to buy so much doge or Solana
https://www.theblock.co/post/230689/bitcoin-binance-pulling-out-of-canada
https://twitter.com/binance/status/1657099651210969088?s=20
Binance is leaving Canada
https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/1656304700872962049?s=20
From Bitfinexed, famous for its criticisms of Tether, so treat as grain of salt
-Tether holds $53B in US Treasury bills
-$7.5B in money market funds
-$1.5B in bitcoin
-$3.4B in precious metals
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/05/10/us-internal-revenue-service-files-claims-worth-44-billion-against-ftx-bankruptcy/
The US tax collection agency, the IRS, just filed a claim against FTX and Alameda in the amount of $44B
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/current-inflation-rate/
US inflation has fallen to 4.9% for April, compared to 5% in March and 8% the same time last year
https://twitter.com/theblock__/status/1656987557668827137?s=46
Do Kwon getting a little taste of freedom
His lawyers have negotiated a $436K bail from Montenegro jail
https://medium.com/paradigm-research/defi-in-d908ea8b
-Curve deploys a US dollar stablecoin
-Synthetix adds markets for 9 new perps futures including SHIB, Curve, and Lido
-total value locked in Defi is $47.3B, with Lido dominating at 25%
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Paradigm itself made news recently for buying $50M worth of Coinbase’s stock COIN
BRC-20s explainer
https://twitter.com/the_smart_ape/status/1655905530982850560?s=46
-The BRC-20 standard was created by Twitter user @domodata on March 8th, 2023
https://www.onceinaspecies.com/p/bitcoins-halving-is-less-than-a-year
Great essay from Jesse Myers aka Croesus BTC
Right now, Bitcoin’s supply inflates by ~1.8% every year. In April 2024, the 4th halving will happen and suddenly, Bitcoin’s supply inflation will drop to 0.9% per year. This will make Bitcoin a “harder” asset than gold, whose supply grows 1.5-2% every year from global gold mining efforts.
https://ournetwork.substack.com/p/ournetwork-issue-168
OpenSea's volume is primarily driven by Normal users (64%), with the the top 1% contributing 24% to the total volume. On the other hand, Blur's volume is led by the the top 1% of NFT traders (69.5%), with Normal users accounting for 18% of total volume

https://twitter.com/redphonecrypto/status/1654173100139847681
I expect the next cycle to onboard the biggest group of crypto users we've ever seen.
It will be the beginning of the grand migration from Web 2 to Web 3.

Amazon’s new NFT marketplace is launching May 15 / this week
https://twitter.com/moritz_web3/status/1653716087752769536
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That’s it for today! All the links are in the show notes. You can follow @twodegenspod on Twitter and subscribe for more!
For our outro clip… Jeff Booth talking about how Bitcoin holders will experience growing purchasing power o