The Blockchain Bulletin Edition#12

GM! The past week has been eventful, with altcoin treasuries being discussed and countries looking to finalize their trade deals with the US before the looming August 1 deadline. There might be a prize in this one at the end. So strap in and read on for more!

Global markets and web3 with ZR

Tariffs and rate cuts

All eyes were on the Fed this past week. On Wednesday last week, Chair Powell kept the interest rates unchanged, which did not please President Trump (or the market) too much. 

For many in CT, a reduction in interest rates is seen as a potential catalyst for a massive pump since lower interest rates on borrowing generally tends to incentivize investing in high-risk assets such as crypto. All eyes are now on Powell’s upcoming September press conference for a potential change in heart.

The August 1 deadline for trade deals with the US has now passed. Most states, including important trading partners such as China and India have not yet managed to ink agreements with Washington.

These deals will be agreed (eventually), but the failure of the states to find common ground did not help market sentiment last week.Fresh tariffs are already in place and will continue to be a problem unless deals are struck sooner rather than later.

Bitcoin breakdown?

Last week saw a large number of outflows from BTC ETFs and the general sentiment has been a little less optimistic than before. A lot of this has to do with the general macro conditions mentioned above.

The weekend bleed saw BTC touch $111920 before going up to $114420 once again. Trade deals would help a renewed push upwards, as would something positive in the market, to stop the sell pressure from the whales that lasted all over the weekend.

Ethereum: Red after five weeks

Ethereum also saw red and dropped to $3554 over the weekend. There was a nearly 10% drop in its value this past week, after five weeks of consistent green. The dump will not lead to excessive selling however, since there are still committed buyers accumulating more even with the drop in price. 

A single whale purchased $300 million worth of ETH; hopefully he knows something we don’t? 

Polymarket trades on the horizon

Polymarket has a couple of interesting trades to consider, if you are so inclined. The first is the market assessing whether Hyperliquid will launch stocks perps by the end of the year. This is a medium-term trade that can be exited at a range, if you do not want to wait till December 31 this year to close it. A positive news about this could propel the ‘Yes’ up from its existing 44 cent mark.

Another potential scalp with higher risk is the ‘OpenAI browser by August 31’ market. The browser is rumoured to drop in a couple of weeks, which should potentially be in the timeframe of the winning position.

NFTs: BRC 2.0 and more

New NFT drops on ETH have had a hard time finding volume, but there have been exceptions to this rule. A Mysterious Bag of Glowing Seeds has been a positive outlier, pumping to 0.2 ETH after a mint price of 0.01. No Bad Trippers also did well, going up to .2 at its top.

BRC 2.0 has seen some cooks as well, due to the Adderells craze, but a lot of projects on BRC 2.0 have also gone to 0, or have not even managed to get sold out. Keep an eye out on the BTC ecosystem, exciting things are afoot. The underground Labibtu mint was very much like the ordinals space when it first started; no marketplaces, no checkers, just vibes and trying out new tech for the first time. I hope for my own sake and for others at Olympus that Labibtu cooks HARD.

Airdrops and farms with Zumbah

This past week we got some important updates to share in airdropland. The Plasma XPL sale ended with 373 million+ overcommitted to buy 0.4% of the supply left. The mainnet and token are supposed to go live after a 40-day lock period.

We also finally got a Linea tokenomics announcement. The total supply will be 72 billion Linea tokens with 10% of the supply given to early users (LXP holders with thresholds and multipliers) and early contributors, completely unlocked on TGE. 12% of the supply will also be in circulation on TGE, solely to provide exchange liquidity and market making. 

Current sentiment around the announcements seems positive. considering there is no allocation of supply to VCs or investors, and the Linea token won't be a governance or a gas token, but an ecosystem fund token.

The Succinct eligibility checker for the $PROVE token came on July 28, with the most token allocations going for discord and yapping community, with many testnet users complaining about very low allocations despite having a higher number of stars.

New protocols and dApps

Regarding other, newer protocols, we got a whitepaper for Intelligent Internet; a protocol I personally am excited about. Created by the founder of Stable Diffusion (@EMostaque), Intelligent Internet is a bitcoin-forked architecture with a new consensus mechanism and multiple structural changes to it. The protocol is very nascent in its roadmap, and the network is scheduled to launch in 2027.

Final note: There is a very limited-use invite in this newsletter. There are four links in the text above. One of those is the invite. Only the fastest fingers will make it in! Good luck.

That’s a wrap! Another one drops soon. Keep email notifications on!