The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day |
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Welcome to The Node! This is Ben Schiller to take you through the latest crypto news. In today's news: Bitcoin traders brace "fat tails"; miner Bitdeer could be a takeover target; Polymarket election trading explodes; JP Morgan says market rebound likely to be short-lived.
The Takeaway: how DePIN can make the flight-tracking industry more rewarding for flight enthusiasts, according to Wingbits cofounder Alex Lungu. 👇 |
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Bigger Role for Bitcoin With Trump? |
Donald Trump's impending appearance at the Nashville Bitcoin conference has traders preparing for fat-tails – extreme or unusual price movements in the leading cryptocurrency. Activity in the options market listed on Deribit and tracked by Amberdata shows a noticeable increase in the "butterfly index," which measures the volatility of the out-of-the-money (OTM) 25-delta call and put options listed at a distance from the going market price of bitcoin [BTC] relative to at-the-money (ATM) options closer the spot price. The spike in the index indicates expectations for more extreme market movements. "This week we’re going to hear Trump speak at the Nashville Bitcoin conference. As long as Trump remains a front-runner, this is a potential catalyst for 'something to happen' this week. The derivative markets seem to agree, and we’re seeing pricing support the 'something is about to happen' narrative." Greg Magadini, director of derivatives at Amberdata, said in an email. |
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Bitdeer a Takeover Target? |
Bitcoin miner (BTC) Bitdeer Technologies (BTDR) has become an alluring takeover target, broker Benchmark said in a research report on Monday. Bitdeer's value has been bolstered by the growing interest in crypto miners’ energy assets from artificial intelligence (AI) and high performance computing (HPC) firms in recent months. The broker raised its Bitdeer price target to $16 from $13 and reiterated its buy rating on the shares. The stock was changing hands at $11.10 in premarket trading. Bitdeer shares have more than doubled in the last two months, the report noted, as the company has been recognized as one of the bitcoin miners with “ample existing and planned power capacity” that could be used for mining crypto or for powering AI and HPC projects. |
Polymarket Election Trading Explodes |
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Joe Biden's decision not to seek re-election isn't completely unprecedented: U.S. presidents from James Polk to Lyndon B. Johnson also declined to serve another term for one reason or another. But what is unique is how late Biden decided to throw in the towel, only a month before the Democratic National Convention (where the party officially decides who its presidential candidate is), and only days after he told party faithful that the "elites" wouldn't succeed in kicking him out. The decision fueled a surge in bets on election-related contracts on the Polymarket prediction market, pushing volume to levels never seen in the platform's history. According to a Dashboard powered by Dune Analytics, daily volume on the platform pushed past a record $28 million as bettors raced to take a position on a presidential race that's unlike any other in recent history. |
JP Morgan: Crypto Rebound Short-Lived |
Any rebound in cryptocurrency markets in the near term is likely to be tactical in nature and not the beginning of a new long term bullish uptrend, JPMorgan (JPM) said in a research report last week. The bank said this was because the price of bitcoin (BTC) is currently too high versus its production cost of $43,000, and relative to its volatility-adjusted comparison to gold, which is $53,000. Bitcoin was trading around $67,220 at publication time. JPMorgan notes that momentum in bitcoin futures has been weak in recent weeks due to BTC liquidations by creditors of Gemini, Mt. Gox creditors and the German government. Liquidations are expected to subside this month and the bank continues to look for a rebound in Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) bitcoin futures positioning into August. Bitcoin and gold are both expected to benefit from the higher likelihood of a Trump election win, as a “second Trump presidency is seen by some investors as more friendly towards crypto companies and towards crypto regulations, in contrast to the current Biden administration,” analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote. There is speculation that Trump could announce bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset at the Nashville Bitcoin conference later this week, and this “could trigger a parabolic rise in bitcoin’s price,” according to Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research. |
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Being Compliant is the Key: Understanding the Growth of Fastex There’s a new art gallery in Yerevan, Armenia. You’ll find a sleek space, tasteful lighting, and creative works of art. Sculptures that look like eyeballs are emblazoned with bursts of color — fiery reds, bold yellows, soothing blues. But there’s a twist. Each eyeball is linked to a corresponding NFT, meaning it’s a blend of the physical and the digital. The art galleries are “phygital.” Continue reading. |
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The Takeaway: DePINs Take Off |
Guest post by Alex Lungu, cofounder of Wingbits When I was in college, social networks were all the rage. Up until that point, the internet was read-only; you visited a web page and read someone else’s opinion on a topic. We wanted more: we wanted to post our own photos, express our own opinions, and share them with our friends. Those were amazing times; everyone loved the internet, and it was all for free! However, we slowly learned that if something is free, you’re the product. Or, better said, your data is the product. It was kind of fair, though. You got access to a platform that costs money to run; in return, you provide some data about yourself. They use this data to sell you relevant ads, ad companies reach the right audience, and everyone wins. As time passed, data collection became more advanced and intrusive, profits increased, while your side of the deal stayed the same. This model was so profitable that it ended up being implemented everywhere — from social media and online newspapers, to TVs that run ads in their menus. And, as it turns out, even in flight tracking. I will come back to this last one in a minute. Web3 promised us the solution. Instead of giving away your data, what if you kept ownership over it? During the last bull market, everyone tried to find problems that Web3 could fix. Everything was tokenized: art, watches, carbon credits and random memes. It should have been the other way around: first identify the problem, then apply the solution. Helium was doing just that. By using Web3 incentives, it built a decentralized network of hotspots that together provide connectivity to IoT sensors. It incentivized people who don't know each other to work together and create the largest telecom network in history by combining their home Wi-Fi networks. It did this successfully by proving that the problem was not in data ownership. Instead, it's in how the profit is distributed among the data providers or the ones that provide the infrastructure for the data to travel from one place to another. The value is in the network of people that generate the data — a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN). So, what does any of this have to do with flight tracking? The flight enthusiasts' community is a small but global group that collects data from airplanes flying around them and sends it to a couple of large flight tracking networks. In return, they get full access to the platforms (sounds familiar?). Those networks then collect this data and sell it to all sorts of different companies operating in aviation, travel and logistics. This data is critical for aviation operations, yet it's being collected by enthusiasts using cheap Raspberry PIs. Flight tracking networks such as Flightradar24 and Flightaware are highly profitable, yet the people who provide the data that makes these networks possible do not get paid for their contributions. By applying a DePIN model to flight tracking, Wingbits is building a much fairer and more performant network where the data providers will get a share of the profits that their data generates, based on their performance and uptime. While data providers for the other networks don’t have any incentive to maximize their coverage and uptime, the Wingbits rewards model makes sure that the best participants earn the most. It's just the right thing to do and we can see the results. Since we launched our public beta in November 2023, the Wingbits community grew from 40 to over 1450 live antennas, growing in half a year more than Flightradar did in their first three years. We now have almost complete coverage over Europe and a large part of the U.S., tracking over 35,000 flights daily. Read the rest here. |
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