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IS SOLANA DEAD? 💀

Is Solana dead? Short answer: no.

We just poked it with a stick – and it moaned! So it’s still alive. It’s just… resting.

The long answer?

Everyone’s focusing on the fact that Solana has fallen from $290 to $170 over the past month – without realizing that the run to $290 was a bit of an anomaly (driven by $TRUMP).

It wasn’t really meant to happen – the whole market has been in a downtrend over the past few months, and Solana is no exception.

And when markets are in a downtrend, bad news hits differently (and Solana just got t-boned with bad news).

Here’s how it all went down…

1/ Solana’s rough week

ICYMI: Solana is down 12.3% over the last seven days! 

This is thanks in most part to the fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) surrounding the launch of Argentina’s $LIBRA token, alongside accusations that the owners/employees of Jupiter (the DEX) and Meteora (the memecoin launchpad) were trading on inside information. 

(None of which have been solidly proven or verified).

2/ All of this led to fears that the ‘memecoin bubble’ had burst

Memecoin trading typically makes up anywhere between 50-70% of DEX trading volume on Solana, so this would be a problem. A big problem.

But as of Monday, memecoins are still making up 67% of all DEX trading volume on Solana, at ~$3.2B.

For context: Back in late December, total daily trading volume on Solana bottomed out at $3.7B. 

So as bad as things feel right now, current volume is still above its two month low. 👇

The problem is – overall trading volume has fallen off a cliff since January 19th (that big spike in the chart above 👆), which is spooking a lot of people.

But as we mentioned, that was an anomaly driven by the release of the $TRUMP token.

And when it launched, both Solana and the broader crypto market were already in a larger down trend…

3/ It’s not just Solana – it’s the whole market

This is the total crypto market cap – it has been stuck in a descending channel since December 17th. 👇

This is Solana’s price – it has been in a descending triangle since November 22nd, and had only broken thanks to the mania surrounding the $TRUMP token launch. 👇

So here’s the math on all of that…

Solana downtrend + general market downtrend + bad news hitting Solana recently = a 12.3% puke in the past week.

(It’s way less scary when you look at it from that angle).

And if you zoom way out? 

You’ll see that this isn’t ‘The Death of Solana’ – hell, it’s an opportunity! 👇

JACK DORSEY = SATOSHI NAKAMOTO? 🤔

Babe, wake up! New Satoshi conspiracy theory just dropped! 

Matthew Sigel, Head Of Digital Assets Research at VanEck, just dropped some Charlie Kelly-level research on X, essentially naming Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, as Satoshi Nakamoto.

It’s a looooong thread – so we’re going to drop the highlight here, and let you dig through the full report at your own leisure.

Before we jump into it, let’s set some context around Jack’s interests and capabilities:

1/ The coinciding timelines

In August 2008, Twitter’s execs were looking to fire Jack as CEO of Twitter because he was too distracted with other ‘hobbies’ → Aug 18, 2008 Satoshi registered the Bitcoin.org domain.

Jack removes his personal blog which details his love for cryptography on October 30, 2008 → Satoshi releases the Bitcoin whitepaper on October 31, 2008.

January 9, 2009, Jack attends an awards show in San Francisco → January 10, 2009, Satoshi accidentally logs in to IRC from a real IP address in California.

Jack joins a US State Department delegation to Iraq, announcing that he's leaving at 2:34 am on April 19, 2009, and that he has arrived back in SF on April 27, 2009 → April 19, 2009 (at 2:14 am), just 20 minutes before Jack's Tweet, Satoshi sends his last email for eight days.

May 8, 2009, Jack's new payment startup "Squirrel" (Square) leaked to the press → July 21, 2009, Satoshi emails that he’s been “pretty busy with work”.

March 28, 2011, Jack tweets, announcing his return as Executive Chairman of Twitter while remaining CEO of Square → April 23, 2011, Satoshi sends his final email, writing "I've moved on to other things. It's in good hands with Gavin and everyone".

2/ The hidden messages

To understand these ‘hidden messages,’ we first need to set some context: 

Satoshi once generated a custom address for a proposed transaction with Hal Finney, where the address started with NS (Nakamoto, Satoshi).

(Leading to the question: did he hide other messages within other generated addresses?)

Jack has tweeted in the past that he likes to share his location using landmarks, more than addresses. 

At the time he was “One dude, living in SF” at 2 Mint Plaza, by a corner store with an awning that read “Latte Express, Vietnamese Sandwiches”.

Oh, and one of his favorite books was Cryptonomicon, which featured a fictional server-like system called “HomeFTP”.

Here’s how that all (kinda) connects…

3/ The love of numerology and potential alignments

The history…

The potential alignment…

See what we mean when we say “Charlie Kelly-level research”? 👇

It seems compelling at first…but there’s nothing concrete at the end of it all.

Hell – someone used the same coincidence theory in the comments to suggest Steve Jobs was Satoshi.

What do you think – is Matthew onto something here, or too far down the rabbit hole?

👉 Reply to this email and let us know!

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.