📉 Bitcoin Rally Stalls After Hawkish Fed Comments

But Bitcoin NFTs and runes are booming.

Apr 05, 2024

GM!

Today's top news:

Bitcoin falls after hawkish fed comments
Solana and memes falls harder as nodes spam the network
Bitcoin Puppets and $PUPS lead notable movers
Mocaverse announces MocaList as new launchpad
OpenSea teases Blast integration
Thanks for reading Morning Minute! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Today's Morning Minute is brought to you by MetaStreet, THE best new way to earn yield in NFTfi.

Interested in earning yield via NFT lending? Like points farming, or gaining exposure to Blast? MetaStreet is for you.

MetaStreet solves 3 issues in the current NFT lending market by:

not depending on oracles
offering dynamic interest rates, and
operating permissionlessly via its Automated Tranche Maker (ATM).

Recently they launched their Pudgy Ascend Tower, allowing those interested in lending against Pudgy Penguins to do so with up to 26.7% yield (and major points).

And just yesterday they announced a new open edition mint with Metaverse HQ to celebrate the Blast launch!

New things are happening almost daily with MetaStreet right now, and users are winning.

So deposit now and start earning!

📈 Bitcoin and Stocks Falls, Solana and Memes Fall Harder

Yesterday was shaping up to be a big green day.

Bitcoin had rallied from a $66k overnight low all the way up to $69k.

There was green across alts and memecoins across chains.

Then a Fed president weighed in and stopped the music.

The bears are trying to come out - we simply must not let them

What Happened To Bitcoin?

Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari made some hawkish comments during a virtual LinkedIn event yesterday that had a big impact on markets.

"If we continue to see inflation moving sideways," said Kaskhari, "then that would make me question whether we [need] to do those rate cuts at all."

The comments were enough to send stocks down 2% and Bitcoin back to $67k from its local high of $69k.

It should be noted those comments from Kashkari were at odds with what Powell had said just the day before (he still expects to cut rates sometime this year).

Regardless, the impact was made.

Solana Gets Attacked From Inside

This is what happened to Solana yesterday (diagram from 0xBreadguy)

Solana was borderline unusable on Thursday for those trying to trade coins or even do basic sends.

Mert, the CEO of Helius and notable Solana dev, explained the situation as a large bot spam attack on Solana's networking stack.

It's the node providers who are doing the spamming, making the situation worse.

Another problem he raises in his explanation is that there is no immediate fix before the next network patches are rolled out, so this could sustain for some time.

SOL's price got hit hard on the day, falling 8% to $171.

Its leading memecoins got hit even harder.

Solana DEX coins were down 10-20% across the board (or more), with only 4 of the top 30 coins by liquidity in green on the day.

I guess people weren't able to buy but they were able to sell.

Why It Matters

If the Solana issues continue, SOL meme szn may go into a brief winter.

That's likely bullish for Base. And Bitcoin.

The rotation to Bitcoin NFTs and Runes is showing signs of already happening, with Puppets and NodeMonkes both in green on the day.

And the $PUPS token was the #1 notable performer on the day across chains, jumping 70% to a $50M market cap.

With the halving now just 2 weeks away, Runes are squarely in sight. And there aren't many coin options to choose from yet.

It's an easy market to play.

The case for Base is that it's the fastest, cheapest alternative to Solana which has a real community and blossoming ecosystem.

It's set up to win here too.

We'll certainly see how it plays out...

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

ETH led NFT trading volume with $10.5M (+10%) on the day; BTC was next with $8.2M (+24%) and then Solana with $4.7M (-21%)
ETH NFT leaders were mixed with Pudgy (+5%) to 12 ETH, Mocaverse +9% to 4.2 ETH, BAYC even at 11.4 and Azuki -7% to 3.92
Doodles introduced a "groundbreaking storytelling experience" from Doodles x Pharell Williams coming Summer 2024 (Doodles -6% to 1.58)
Mocaverse announced the MocaList as a co-branded token launchpad with Coinlist, curating gaming and culture tokens for $MOCA holders
Bitcoin Puppets led the BTC NFT board with 35 BTC volume and jumping 20% to 0.297 BTC and Rune Pups 2x'd to 0.023 BTC; Nodes were +8% to 0.53 BTC
Solana NFTs saw more red as bleeding continues; Mad Lads -1% at 123 SOL, Tensorians -13% at 31, Claynos -3% at 19
OpenSea teased a new Blast integration, with details expected today
NBA Top Shot teased the last Holo Icon pack drop for this NBA regular reasons featuring moments form Kawhi, Luka Doncic, Tatum, Giannis and more all stars

💰 Token, Airdrop & Points Tracker

Here's a rundown of major token or airdrop news from the day:

Stars Arena told users to connect a wallet within the app to be eligible to claim the upcoming $ARENA drop
Munchables completed their full refund from the $60M Blast exploit last week
The $PUPS token soared 70% on the day to $6.60 and a $50M market cap
Wasabi's $PAC vault reached a new record over $2.5M after the $PAC token soared 40% to $0.042 and many airdrop claimers simply staked vs selling
FriendTech won't require users to link X/Twitter profiles starting next week, also meaning those users who were previously exploited now have a path to re-start on the app and safely claim their points

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

Crypto majors are mixed this morning after hawkish Fed comments led to a stock market dip; BTC +1% at $67,035; ETH -2% at $3,275; SOL -7% at $172
Leading memecoins were hit hard with Doge -5%, WIF -15% and PEPE -7%
Zeus Network's $ZEUS reached $720M FDV in its debut
Coinbase will be adding $ORDI perp futures starting on April 11
Ellipsis announced a $20M Series A led by Paradigm, to further their mission of building a sustainable DeFi ecosystem
Notable web3 personality ThreadGuy has seemingly accepted a job at Monad, potentially to lead NFT ecosystem growth

🚀 Memecoin Movers (new section!)

$FUNGI (+129%, $17M mc, Base)
$PEACH (+38%, $16M mc, Base)
$PAC (+27%, $12M market cap, Blast)
$MUMU (+24%, $22M mc, Solana)
$BOMEOW (+12%, $12M mc, Solana)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)

Flyfish Club (75%, 1.91 ETH Floor)
Porsche 911 (31%, 0.134ETH)
Hape Prime (23%, 0.23 ETH)
loomlock (10%, 0.54 ETH)
Overworld Incarna (21%, 1.7 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is a slow day of drops to round out the week.

The wild card could be any surprise announcements out of NFT NYC with 2 days left of parties.

See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor.

Memes by 6529 (11:00 a.m. ET)
AyeFrens (2:00 p.m. ET)
Swatches (3:00 p.m. ET)

Enjoy this write-up and/or want to sponsor the Morning Minute? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email to tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.