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Health, Wealth, and Happiness

June 7, 2024

"Successful people have a social responsibility to make the world a better place and not just take from it."

- Carrie Underwood

Howdy, investors!

Are you investing with impact? In our updated guide on responsible ESG crypto investing, we show how you can do well AND do good.

In news set to shock the DeFi world, retail investment platform Robinhood is set to buy crypto exchange Bitstamp, expanding its crypto features and opening foreign investment markets.

Does increased crypto lending forecast a bull market? We review the numbers and discuss why some platforms (specifically Aave) lead the pack in lending.

Read on!

The Guide to Crypto Impact Investing

by John Hargrave

Nathan Cummings was a grocery tycoon (you don’t hear those two words very often) who built Consolidated Foods, later known as the Sara Lee Corporation. You may know Sara Lee for their frozen cakes, but the company was much more, selling a wide variety of foods, beverages, and household products around the world.

Born in Canada as the first child of Jewish Lithuanian immigrants, Cummings became a very rich man. As his wealth grew, he gave much of it away, becoming an avid philanthropist, especially in the arts. Later, he established the Nathan Cummings Foundation, whose mission is “creating a more just, vibrant, sustainable, and democratic society.”

This is what we call “impact investing,” or investing in companies and causes that will a) make money, and b) have a measurable and beneficial social or environmental impact.

In today's guide, we'll show you how the principles of impact investing can be applied to crypto investing as well.

Click to learn more about doing well by doing good >>

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New Investor Scorecard: Ronin (RON)

Like much of the crypto market, Ronin and its native governance token (RON) have been under pressure since mid-March, taking it more than 40% below its March high. However, the token still has a 175% gain over the past year.

With that kind of price rollercoaster, a simple question remains: Is RON a good investment?

Premium members can download our new Ronin Investor Scorecard here to learn what our analysts say about Immutable, its fundamentals, and investing in RON.

Are you not yet a Premium member? Sign up now to access our tools and tips for becoming a better crypto investor.

Must Read

Today's most important stories for crypto investors.

Robinhood to Buy Crypto Exchange Bitstamp (Wall Street Journal)

Robinhood, a beacon of investing for retail investors and a major trading platform in the U.S., has agreed to buy Bitstamp for $200M. Expected to close in 2025, the deal will integrate advanced crypto-trading features into the Robinhood system while expanding their reach outside the United States. More importantly, this is a huge step forward for mainstream crypto adoption while ramping up competition with major exchanges like Coinbase.

Kraken Said to Be Raising Over $100M Pre-IPO Funding (CoinDesk)

Bloomberg reports that the crypto exchange Kraken is in talks for pre-IPO funding, signaling its plans to make the company public. This follows issues with the SEC over registration and fund handling. As a public company, Kraken would fall under different rules and regulations, including transparency and reporting laws, that could boost investor confidence in the platform.

Crypto Hacks Increase in 2024, but Smart Contracts Are Not to Blame (CoinTelegraph)

Common knowledge suggests that smart contracts are the most significant vector through which hackers undermine a blockchain, but leaks of private keys and social engineering are the primary threats. The weakest link is often the human one: never share or publicize your private keys, and be paranoid about your passwords.

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Chart of the Day

Aave Dominates Active Loans

While we love daily active users as a metric for determining a project's usage and growth, other metrics can sometimes serve well as proxies. In the lending space, we can measure the health of a company by Daily Active Loans.

This metric shows the number of loans outstanding. Active users would count a single user just once, even if that user has multiple loans open. Active loans shows us all the activity on the platform.

After the pullback in April, May has seen a resurgence in crypto lending, with the massive ecosystem expanding from roughly $10 billion to nearly $12 billion in active loans.

Aave (AAVE) is the clear leader in this space, with over half of the active loans held by Aave. This generates significant revenue and makes Aave the most valuable lending platform in a vast market.

ICYMI